Note 126

Empirics: The (infinite?) process of refining educated guesses.

Personal Identity 1

The problem is that the form of correspondence of the correlation between the inside-out perspective of the “I” and the outside-in perspective of the “I” is arbitrary and pragmatic. They are not the same kind of object, and the connection cannot be derived from either perspective, but must be established by empirical experience. This makes it essentially unknowable.

The I is not fully identified with either, and both do not fully capture what I is as a set of phenomena.

The process of identifying the I as a set of phenomena and the I as attribution of self-same identity to that phenomena involves the integration of the phenomena to the contrasting frame through explanation.

For example, the I of the inside-out frame requires some way of differentiating internal from external phenomena, and the only way to do so is to establish that division via an externalist narrative of an object with special features in the world. Similarly, the I of the outside-in frame needs to establish the provenance of the material object via correlation of material observations with internal experiences. The combination of the two gives rise to the externalist narrative established via correlation of internal experience and the material world.

An object in two different frames of reference are thereby conflated with each other in a single language game of daily use.

Philosophical Investigations Note 4: Duck-Rabbit 1

Context is the set of associations which give rise to the content of identity conditions for phenomena. Identity conditions are not a function of the phenomena but of the language game. The phenomena is the cause/trigger of the language game. It causes it, and is the limiting condition. It plays the role of existence – the interface of meaning and non-meaning. (It identifies the language game from nothing).

(Heuristic)
Form of Life
↕
Identity
↕
Phenomena
↕
(Application)
Identity
↕
Associations
↕
Context
↕
Use

Note 125

Anything which is not found within is not truly yours. Identifying with external objects is a form of objectification, which is the start of misguided living.

Note 124

The problem is that there is never proof of a categorical distinction, only a manifestation of it through correlations. Therefore assertions cannot be proved or disproved by evidence. But that also means that nothing more can be said about them.

Inflation 1

There are 2 necessary conditions of inflation: excess credit and insufficient capacity. The former, combined with structural supply bottlenecks to increased investment (project obstacles, insufficient skills) in conditions of deficient aggregate demand, creates asset bubbles. The latter, which sees cyclical short-term bottlenecks to increased inventory production, combined with strong growth in aggregate demand, creates wage and goods price inflation. At root is lack of investment, and inflation is the early-stage recovery period of excess savings over investment, of which central bank policy is the price-taker.

Quote 18

"Looked at from the network point of view, survival depends on routings that provide better use of resources - for example, re-circulation of water and biocarbon in an ecosystem, or an improved multiplier effect for cash flow in an economy. Inside a network community, it is these routings that are favoured. As a consequence, the tags that determine these routings become persistent features of the community. Persistent tags, in turn, become building blocks for for further changes, and consequently, the source of new hierarchical organizations. In this process, the throughput from lower-level niches largely determines the nature of interactions between higher-level niches - persistent lower-level niches with higher throughput have more influence on the overall organization." - John Holland, Complexity

Note 123

It is a mistake to say that emergent phenomena derive from complex adaptive systems, like wetness from H2O molecules. Emergent phenomena come from the interaction between different systems, which creates new frames of reference - even if one system is causally antecedent to another.

Quote 17

Major insight from Dawkins: the noticing of structures is the fundamental nature of knowledge of the world.

“We humans, uniquely among animalkind, have the poet’s gift of metaphor: of noticing when things are like other things and using the relation as a fulcrum for our thoughts and feelings.” - Richard Dawkins

Quote 16

"Several chapters of the most important Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi, allude to "diminishing doing" or "diminishing will" as the key aspect of the sage's success. Taoist philosophy recognizes that the Universe already works harmoniously according to its own ways; as a person exerts their will against or upon the world they disrupt the harmony that already exists. This is not to say that a person should not exert agency and will. Rather, it is how one acts in relation to the natural processes already existent. The how, the Tao of intention and motivation, that is key." - Wikipedia

Game Theory in Politics

Foil to game theory in politics:
1. The commensurability of goods in terms of utility when preferences are context dependent, including interpersonal, inter-good, and inter-situational utility
2. Computational complexity of changing utility function in each round, which is a function of utility over distributed probabilities
3. Uncertainty
4. Is action by definition utility-maximising, or is utility something which is maximized by action? If the former, see 1, if the latter, how do we know that this concept of utility is commensurable with all goods across different contexts?

That is partly why we apply game theory models by analogy, when the situations are stable and the institutional context, values, preferences and payoff functions do not change too much over rounds.

Social History 1

History consists of multiple competing dynamically shifting equilibria, as motivating forces, whose relative and selected dominance as fact reshapes the conditions within which other equilibria are developed, and so on. Parameter satisfaction levels are based on interests and values, as are the permanence of constraints to the societal features which aim to address them. These parameter values are specified along a continuum, and give rise to other optimal structures and processes, laterally and vertically.

Note 122

Knowledge is a life-process, constantly de-fetishized, led by the hand of truth and evolving the terms of its conditionalities.

Quotes 15

"Suppose then, that you were not that Roman knight, but a freeman. You might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?", you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend. If there is anything that can make life happy, it is good on its own merits; for it cannot degenerate into evil. Where then, lies the mistake, since all men crave the happy life? It is that they regard the means for producing happiness as happiness itself, and while seeking happiness, they are really fleeing from it. For although the sum and substance of the happy life is unalloyed freedom from care, and though the secret of such freedom is unshaken confidence, yet men gather together that which causes worry, and, while travelling life's treacherous road, not only have burdens to bear, but even draw burdens to themselves; hence they recede farther and farther from the achievement of that which they seek, and the more effort they expend, the more they hinder themselves and are set back. This is what happens when you hurry through a maze; the faster you go, the worse you are entangled." - Seneca

Note 121

The two virtues of governance are adaptiveness and accountability. These may or may not be satisfied by mechanisms of democracy.

Mechanisms of accountability, including democratic ones, cannot be defined out of the context of the social, cultural and institutional legacies and structures within which they operate. There are multiple models and configurations of political management.

But the optimality of the system depends on its ability to identify problems and address them, while providing checks and accountability.

Conditions which determine the tradeoffs and scope of action which society faces change, as do the values and preferences of populations. This creates continual demand for adaptation of ancillary structures and relationships that constitute a political society. The success or failure of key institutions to adapt, mostly conditioned by human agency, drive systemic stress and change, in Plato’s sense of the word.

Quotes 14

"Structurally deficient nominal demand could arise if desired savings exceed desired investment, and forces at work in modern economies may make that imbalance inevitable."

"At the core of macroeconomic instability in modern economies lies the interaction between the limitless capacity of unconstrained private and shadow banking systems to create credit, money and purchasing power, and the inelastic supply and rising demand for locationally specific urban land. Most modern macroeconomics has failed to focus on this interaction. This is in large part because it was uninterested in the empirical reality of what banks actually do." - Adair Turner

Quotes 13

"Exceptional sense in everything, I say. It's the first and principle rule of conduct and speech, especially necessary the greater or higher your position. An ounce of good sense is worth a pound of subtlety. It's a sure path, although often not to praise, even though a reputation for sense is the crowning triumph of fame. It will suffice to please the wise, whose opinion is the touchstone of success." - Gracian

Note 120

The art of life: playing language games without becoming trapped in them. Floating free above the compartments, and yet being within them.

Note 119

Just as there are no means of escaping the iron laws of economics, there are no means of escaping the velvet laws of Society. One is a bondage to the physical; the other a bondage to the mind.

Note 118

An analytic fact describes itself, but cannot stand outside of itself to do so; while a synthetic fact describes something else, but must stand within itself to do so. So a fact is a fly bottle? Are we then relegated to interpretations? An unknowable fact within (a language game within) an unknowable fact?

And so we stand outside that fact and must take ourselves within it.

Note 117

What is a nation? It is a set of institutions that support a way of life for a group of people, which enables cultures and practices to form which become identified with, and reproduce the nation.

What is an institution? It is a set of conventions - codified, habitual, or customary - that defines the social context within which our actions are defined.

What creates institutions? Ends - the combination of necessary and ideal ends at any point in time. Power just is resourcing to achieve these ends.

So the trinity of discourse, institution and process, can be parsed into ends, social meaning, and agency. Each governed by parameters with endogenous and exogenous elements. Together they constitute the form of social life.

The interaction of what is stable and unstable over time creates change. Combinations of leverage factors in context determine what will be stable and what is unstable. There are probably little general rules to follow.

Note 116

What is the language game for life? There is no language game- how strange!

Philosophy 1

Philosophy belongs to the class of problems in which an affirmative answer is possible by necessity, but in which verification is impossible by definition.

Note 115

Philosophy is the paradox of the necessity of coherence (because there can be no absolute truth) and it's impossibility (because all systems of truth must refer outside themselves). This gap results in the dualism of idea and becoming, which is bridged by pragmatism. The system of ideas empirically refer to becoming to verify its latent assumptions, while becoming is a standalone entity which eludes characterisation, as a condition of its intelligibility. This provide our ideations with their unique quality, and their irresolvable dependence on means of verification that cannot be fully justified.

In short, pragmatism allows us to apply what theory requires without sufficient justification. We are left with coherence and forms of life.

Philosophical Investigations Note 3

"I know how the colour green looks to me": it is one thing to say that our use of language is determined by the coincidence of coherent structures in use, rather than correspondence at the granular level; it is another to say that there is no corresponding truth of the matter, or that to speak of it would be nonsense - even though it may be unverifiable, we would have an idea of what verification could be.

Although this too is problematic, and presupposes that we know what a subjective view entails. Ie, if it is subjective - would it be possible for someone else to gain a representation of it? Presumably that was how language was possible at all.

***
"Private sensations are not objects that we refer to, because referring to them becomes irrelevant if only we experience them." This depends on whether these experiences are necessary for the coherence of what we say so that we understand what another means when they talk about their experiences. We certainly assume correspondence as the best explanation for shared coherence. This inter-subjective space forms the basis of our manner of speaking, both of subjective and 'objective' reality. Structural isomorphism in the way in which we relate the internal to the external is embodied in language. So again - what content is constituent to this structural equivalence?

***
This is not to say that language just is embodied isomorphism. "No private language" claims must be accompanied by the claim that language can only be used for communication, not interpretation or constructing meaning.

Reason

Reason cannot be the ultimate basis of ends- at some point it has to stop. However, reasons are a tool to weigh, cohere and trade-off ends which may be irreconcilable. In doing so, we act with procedural reason- it forms a framework within which our ends are assessed, while simultaneously forming the basis for principles which determine what our ends ought to be. Hence our preferences are transmuted into reasons, in the formation of this framework for action, which is not reducible to utility, although utility may form a basis for reasoned action.

The key is that reason is not definitionally self-interested, but is characterised by an apositional stance, while the application of reason may be motivated by causes outside the framework of reasoned action itself. If ethics is the discussion of reasoned action, then the task of the utilitarian is to justify cause as reason.

Philosophical Investigations Note 2

In what sense are sensations private? Is it an a priori statement? What is being said? In this manner of speaking, the I of the social identity is not the I of the intention. They occupy different language games, and is a way to bifurcate the external/internal world of experience.

This points to the fact that the self is constituted by different functions that are tied together by language and underpinned by observed consistencies.

Sensations are not intentions, as we can be unaware of intentions, and they are descriptions of internal motivational structures.

***
Is it meaningless to say that "every rod has a length"? This presupposes a kind of contextual nominalism, where there is no property of length to which a rod belongs - it just is given as part of what a rod is - hence is tautological. He asks, can one imagine a rod without length?

But this is to ask the wrong question. One should ask: can one imagine length without a rod? For properties contain substance in thought, while substance contains properties in the way we think about the world.

***
Can one play language games with oneself? Why not? Can rules be arbitrary, and in what sense? The functioning of a language game is independent of the correspondence of its rules to an independent truth; rather, its form is a matter of structural isomorphism with the form of life, which is fulfilled within the use of private language.

Tractatus Notes 3: On Truth

The referent of knowledge is an infinite regress. Despite this, it can be useful. However, reality is by definition, pre-conceptual.

The form of verification does not then ground it in absolute truth, but rules of correctness. Truth for me is my relation to these rules, actualized in my conception of how conceptual relates to pre-conceptual truth.

Absolute truth is a contradiction in terms because truth is a quality of relation to something which transcends it. This is to say that there is a pre-conceptual that cannot be defined, as a necessity of truth.

Note 114

A caveat on the use of data or broad narratives for the basis of social action which affect individuals: the facts of the case in any problem are individual, requiring a targeted approach. Broad capacities can be built, but the interrelation of problems are individualised. Power can be defined as the level of control one has over the factors in this game of life, both in terms of internal and the external capacity to have them taken into consideration. The levelling role of the state ideally builds and extends capacity to solve problems.

Dualism

Experience is constituted by an intentional stance as structure, and content given through it. Nothing can be given without both structure and content. It is nonsensical to speak of one without the other. Questions about the intentional stance are questions about the space of possible structures; questions about the facts of experience the space of possible contents.


Dualism is a means of relating the intentional stance to its contents. However, the intentional stance is not itself given in content, but content is given through it.

So, how to reinterpret intentional stance and content in a way that transcends dualism? One suggestion is to divorce perceptual content from facts about the world. So the experience of an intentional stance does not suggest a subject agent, and the experience of content does not suggest the presence of external objects.

Another would be to suggest that the intentional stance itself is the content of a language game. This leaves space for other types of language games (phenomenology, Dennett).

Philosophical Investigations Note 1

Meaning is sited in use, which depends on the language game, given within forms of life.

***
But family resemblance is not a substitute for definition, for one must be able to say why one form of family resemblance applies and another does not, and for this, definition is still required.

These definitions are matters of convention, not fact, so the absence of consensus of what categories are at the boundaries speak to different definitions, and not to the metaphysical "blurriness" of definitions, as is claimed.

***
Is truth and falsehood only meaningful within the context of a language game? We can develop a philosophical language game where it can be used.

Think of truth as a function that ties all the dimensions of a game together, like the concept of competition that gives meaning to the rules of a chess game. A proposition would be a general form of a chess game, like "a board game where the goal is to retain certain, or a maximum number of pieces".

Tractatus Notes 2

"Philosophy represents the limit of what can be thought" - what does this mean? As an example, consider a solipsist and an anti-solipsist. One is wrong and another right. But perhaps both are right. Perhaps philosophical questions are defined as those in which answers are contradictory. Or rather those in which we cannot preclude a contradictory solution. So the question is meaningless.

Soft Power

Soft power is meta-power that defines the ideological and institutional frames within which power is defined, created, and reproduced. A specific form is Nye's definition of ideological suasion to achieve a given end, rather than the general form suggested here, a framework that is not predefined in terms of a given function. Nye's conception relates to agenda setting as power insofar as it fulfills the function that Nye describes. Our conception is essentially a Hegelian one.

Note 113

Democracy is a process of meta-government made explicit. It describes processes of governance as opposed to processes of government. This gives it durability compared to systems based on specific features of governments, although, underlying these are forms of governance which have been appropriated by the state, but not made explicit.

Note 112

The world as a game; solipsism as a specific form of coherentism. It just happens to be the self this time round as subject. If there is a question, there must be an answer. If there is truth, there is a questioner. There may be as many truths as there are questioners, but only one truth to one questioner.

The problem is not the problem, it is the solution.

***
Subjectivity and objectivity are akin to structure and content. There can be no structure without content, and no content without structure; the former to concretize, the latter to relate.

Note 111

Why we have not reached the end of history: just as private conflicts can be regulated only by the action of the society in which the individuals live, so inter-societal conflicts can be regulated only by a society which comprises in its scope all others. (Durkheim) World history includes this process of incorporation by a world society which is not yet formed.

Thoughts on AI 2

Human cognitive levels accompany the stages of economic development. A developing country requires one kind of cognitive process; a developed country another to grow.

The main effect of AI would be to reshape the landscape of the kind of cognitive processes required for growth into new forms, both from the supply and on the demand side, and engender new dynamics of evolution; in ways that may evolve quickly and with uncertainty. Permutations, already increased by the proliferation of interfaces, increase through the proliferation of cognitive process only bounded by testing for use. The key question is whether human nature will change. This will depend on the extent of augmentation and augmented interfaces.

Thoughts on AI 1

The real bottlenecks in economic growth are demand side, not supply side. By this, I mean not just meat-stick interface for processes, but meat-based consumption. Economic growth would be much higher if AI consumed what AI produced. It is precisely this paradox: that human consumption is the ultimate good at the macro level, yet counts for so little at the micro one in a Veblen society. This paradox is as necessary as it is inane, and just reminds you that values at the emergent level almost always contradict those that produce them, a weird construction of the world.

Tractatus Notes 1

Initial notes:

Representation is the characterizing of something in relation to its general form. What is the more general form of logic? Knowing this would allow us to represent logical propositions. But there is no "more general form of logic". Logic just are the relations represented by logical axioms.

As for rule following in elucidations of sense, it is more properly termed an identification of the terms by which one structure fits isomorphically with another. This identification is the act of fitting a specific framework of patterns within a more general and fine-grained fabric, and of identifying the patterns within both that represent the other.

***
Russell's paradox is a contradiction between two predicates, one an explicit one, and the other a predicate which defines a subject. It is not a general problem, and has received more attention than it deserves.

***
"As logic defines the limit of what can be thought, and as forms cannot represent themselves, one can only show, not speak logic."

Wittgenstein confuses sense and reference in defining the meaning of propositions. The picture theory of meaning allows him to claim that the limits of logic, which define the limits of reference, define the limits of what can be said. However, propositions point to sense also. Hence we can grasp the sense of "it is raining and not raining" or "purple is three years old" in order to point to its absence of reference.

At the level of sense, logic just is a set of rules for relationships between concepts, and is not a transcendental limit.

Note 110

Relative wages measure the relative marginal social benefit of effort. Inefficient labour markets abound, because wealth distorts the price of utility, because of imperfect information, and because of organisational complexity. Where this happens, economic inequalities worsen and social problems arise, creating adjustments in politics, aimed at correcting this imbalance.

Note 109

The thing about applied social subjects is that context is at least as, if not more important than broad principles per se. Statements are generalisable to a much lesser degree than often assumed. This is because theory is much more accessible than live information required for contextualised understanding.

For instance, our understanding of economics is incomplete because of a lack of understanding of the cultural and historically contingent factors that determine expectations of consumers and producers, the conditions and motivations of innovators and market adopters, and forms of economic organisation. This may not be easily generalised or mathematically tractable.

International relations often operates on an ideological-descriptive plane of broad generalizations, which often confuses debate when it is used to assess practice, and operates on the wrong level.

Note 108

At the meta level, principles and pragmatism become mutually reinforcing. One is principled because one is pragmatic (rule utilitarianism), and one cannot be effectively pragmatic unless one is principled (idealism).

This is a familiar contrast between an external necessity and internal necessity, and paradoxically, both are necessary for effective action. Contrasting the two is a pointless exercise in poor judgement.

Note 107

What is the role of the state? It is to be the center of gravity, the anchoring point, within relationships that are built on social order.

Note 106

The self is a way of reconstructing the structural features of the world within representational contexts that reflect the roles of differentiation and their combinations with each other.

There is not one structural feature that differentiates the self, but multiple, and the primacy of the features will depend on the situation represented.

Again, this is not to say that the self is constitutionally functionalist, as the structural features remain the underlying foundational reference parameters within which the representational construct of the self is built, and which secures its identity.

Of course, the claim is made that these are pragmatic, not essential. But this is a feature of the world, not of thought.

Note 105

One of the tasks in philosophy is to understand the roles of content and structure, to distinguish features within concepts which embody necessary structural forms from that which is contingent.

For example, in the argument over the fact-value distinction, there is a two-level separation: the selection of principles underlying rational acceptability is value-driven, while the notion of fact which is attributed to statements which fulfil the condition of rational acceptability is not, because they are not constituted by an intentional stance. As an example, while it is meaningful to say that what a computer states is true, it is meaningless to say that what a computer did is immoral.

This division is valid because the fact-value distinction is a matter of structural difference in notions, not of the ontological or conceptual content of the statements themselves. Hence, genealogical considerations are not relevant in the case here.

Within public debate, it may be right to note that choice of facts, and the selection of frames within which we relate facts to each other, must rely on pragmatic values. This is not to say that notions of facts themselves are empty without values.

Note 104

Cultures are pluralistic interpretations of the fundamental principles they embody, in determining the content and interactions of myths and symbols. The depth and adaptiveness of the interpretation will determine the flourishing of the individuals and societies that carry them.

The task for the post-colonial societies is to identify these guiding principles for a post-industrial age, so as to better determine the elements within the forms of culture which must align to universal necessity, rather than remain pejoratively neglected by conservatives as manifestations of "the West", and those which remain unique to the cultures that embody them.

Note 103

The pressure of a modern economy on politics is to create a system which enables the incorporation of an array of an expanding scope of interactions.

The push factor is increasing fragility due to rising expectations, which leads to the development of its opposite: incorporative mechanisms.

The pull factor is the idealistic quest for the incorporation of increasing numbers of parameters to generate perfection of form. The macro-dynamic is driven by multiple micro-dynamics (individuals, organizations) with different end products but similar principles of evolution. Note, however, path dependency, and collapse and rejuvenation.

The Paradox of American Power

The paradox of American power: in forgoing its national interest, it builds institutions that strengthen it. To do so, it relies on other countries to finance it. This weakens it. The American system is reciprocal, and creates stability in the short run, but instability over time. To offset this, it needs to maintain an ideological and technological advantage, as the basis for economic advantage. Sacrifice is the keyword to reciprocity, balanced by strength. Increasingly this strength is premised on dominance of key platform technologies within networks (not just technological, but linguistic, ideational, financial, economic, and political). American power is vested in the stable order created by these relationships; it functions as a platform power.

In contrast, the German hegemonic and Chinese hegemonic systems exhibit different core characteristics. The German hegemonic system is fundamentally extractive, as the response to the EU financial crisis has shown. The Chinese system is built on ethnic discretion, not universal ideas. The former forms the foundation of collapse, the latter the problem of incompleteness. The interesting development to watch will the influence of modernity on the Chinese capacity to promote universal forms of power, both pragmatic and ideological.

Note 102

There is path dependency in the taking of political decisions that influence inequality. In particular, the distribution of assets will determine the kind of decisions that economic agencies take that may influence the balance of inflation, growth and wages, and equality, and so on. Hence the distribution of wealth has a tendency to create feedback loops with policies that influence it.

Time 1

History is essentially a way of representing cause in terms of condition, becoming in terms of being.

Our conceptual notion of time is given in terms of the conceptual ordering of the condition stack. Time seems ordered because laws govern the conditions which express the order of time. The experience of time is neither linear or nonlinear, it is the ordering that interprets it, and gives it content. Cause is the coincidence of the forward movement of time and conditional relations.

Ordered time represents the incomplete actualization of condition stacks. If all condition stacks were given, or if the world were fully determined by given conditions, ordered time would be conceptually redundant. That is, it will play no ontological role as a platform for causal relations. It's role is then purely psychological.

Alternatively, time is a way of picking out one among many possible worlds, that is, it functions as existence, the slip between the lip (of becoming) and cup (of conditions).

Note 101

America's core competency is in global public goods, specifically, core platform technologies and the institutions that support them. Geostrategically, hard power issues regarding China will resolve themselves as US can conduct offshore balancing with Japan and India. Core platform technologies (English language, reserve currency services, ideology, pole position in internet and media governance, science and technology) need to be supplemented to offset the OBOR offensive.

China is placing large bets on emerging markets; India is a major foil. Internet and logistics companies are potential game-changers.

Multipolarity will create interesting and pragmatic alliances based on common interests. Institutional governance will become more fluid, along with more varied and syncretic cultural textures.

Note 100

Life is problem solving. How do problems relate to each other and why?

Note 99

What is cultural normalisation? An ideology which cannot incorporate an aspect of human nature de-normalises it, creating an extreme compensating excess. I am thinking of two examples: racism in Western societies, and alcoholism (the compensation to a tyranny of social norms) in Britain. I am contrasting this with normalised, institutionalised racism in East Asian societies, and integrated drinking cultures in the Mediterranean.

Objects 1

Objects are a function (in the functional, not in the input-output sense) relating properties to systems. Objects are collections of properties that function within a system, while properties are elemental facts that are brought together by systemic functioning. Objects are anchors of expression of emergent systems of meaning (by turning some properties into nouns and other properties into verbs), and function in a mutually reciprocating relation to these ways of thinking.

Note 98

It seems that the world operates as a single mind, so recognizing this, and having an awareness of the form of alignment with this, is needed.

Globalizing States

States serve as the foundational final arbiter of control over institutional networked flows, whether ideational, social, economic or cultural, that happen within and between borders. Therefore, despite being undermined in scope of action due to the autonomy of the control centers of these networked flows - key agents, nodal points - thereby leading to necessary convergence among states - states, by providing the legal framework for world order, remain crucially sovereign, as the key aspect of this order, thereby anchoring identities to geographical boundaries.

What is interesting to observe is the dynamic of gradual regionalism, it's coming together and coming apart. It seems that the state remains a nation-state; that it's function to preserve culture retains the vote. Cultures are not sacred; they come and go, but the conservatism of a people will shape (though is unlikely in the long run, to reverse) the turns that globalisation makes, as well as the inevitably cosmopolitan cultures that result.

Note 97

The world as a series of revolutions, the dialectical self-overcoming of power, and the re-formation of the constellation of institutions around the evolution of the core institutions of power. At the macro level then, the dynamics of a will to power.

***
What is the greatest good also contains within it the greatest evil. What is the greatest joy also contains within it the greatest suffering. That is the lesson that Nietzsche learned.

Hegel 3

"Now" as a way of characterizing change relationships as particulars of a universal object now. This is dialectical - ie, not logical - the negation of its negation is not it. It particularizes the universal through the role of the observing subject within the language game. Similarly for other identifiers.

***

The existing object referred to particularizes the universal. But the context of the object constitutes the meaning through which the universal is made particular in thought. In the case of concept, the universalized form of the object is itself the means through which the universal is particularized in thought. So a mental object is really a universal holding a mirror up to itself in order to be thought.

Note 96

The discreteness of social and political reality; the dissolution of personality.

Hegel 2

Hegel

1. Consciousness is subjective (criterion is for-itself)
2. But the criterion references the in-itself.

Contra Hegel, truth does not reference the agent of truth. Subjectivity as contingent, because the form within which it is is not given within the criteria of the in-itself. Truths for us reference the agent, for example those in social studies or quantum mechanics, but these are contingent facts which are not generalizable relations between truth and subject. The criterion for truth for consciousness is for-itself, but this does not free the truth for consciousness from the criteria of the truth in-itself.

Reply: Perspectivism vs subjectivity. Irreducible epistemic perspectivism. Subjectivity as the agent of perspectival truth. But contra that, truth is constituted by the underlying content within which something is framed. Truth lies behind the conscious framed perspectival truth. The act of framing is the act of standing outside of the truth to represent it to the mind, so it can be used, verified etc.

So what constitutes the criteria of for-itself is not for-itself per se. And what is the for-itself is framed truth which is not itself the truth to which it refers; therefore, learning is the reverse act of coverting the for-itself of framed truth into the in-itself of truth. In this way, the in-itself of truth can be repurposed into other contexts of the for-itself of framed truth.

In fact, the concept of knowledge rests on this distinction. Hence it cannot be that a fact can bridge a conceptual distinction.

Gift

Your gift to the world is to spread your love of a thing, to express and share it.

Note 95

Freedom is negation, a constant stepping outside of the frame of meaning of an activity. Thought is one of the products of freedom, of which the source is a nothingness which holds something before it, but which lies beyond it. The thought may be used to bring forward the dialectic, or to negate it. In bringing the dialectic forward, the source of freedom, the negation itself, is incorporated into the process and it's actuality.

Hegel 1

Hegel's task is the reconciliation of substance and subject, and being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Teleology is the thread through which the for-itself overcomes its necessary subjectivity and unites with the in-itself by being contained within the moments of the in-itself. This applies to objects, as well as the reflexive individual.

But by providing an account of truth as an event, he answers not the question of what is truth, but of what truth is. This is properly the realm of meta-history, or science, not philosophy.

***
In existence, the field of othering, which is the field in which something is said to exist, is itself created by the subject identifying itself as content, that is to say, self-identical determinateness.

***
There are two kinds of negation: internal self-othering and external negation.

***
Concept incorporating Being, and Being incorporating Concept, in a logical necessity, as the world. In incorporating the specific content of the world into forms of knowledge, the Notion is grasped.

Two World Trends

Two world trends: Convergence and multipolarity

Materialism drives industrialisation, which drives education, which drives value convergence. Every country is now subordinate to the global commons because of this value convergence within their electorates. States which do not follow this necessity eventually become irrelevant to the global order. Trade and Technology-driven power necessitates the primacy of the influence of this developmental dynamic. Convergence also implies that the technological gap between emerging and advanced economies will narrow in the long run.

Multipolarity is driven by the desire of emerging countries to free-ride on the developed countries for global public good provision until the latter can no longer afford them. World leadership will then evolve into multipolarity and regionalism as US cost-benefit calculation tilts in favour of self-interest, and its position subsides, without equivalent replacements. Strategic allocation of resources by the US would matter, but the ability of the polity to do so is in doubt. Perhaps some form of fee for safety and protection will be provided, as the US commercialises it's military advantage to serve as global policeman.

Note 94

The transcendence of space is possible if you understand that we are information, not things. Perception is just a process in which information is being used to interpret other information. Experience is determined by the way you perceive and interpret information, by the ways in which information interacts with other information.

Note 93

One of the most important issues in applied social science is understanding the correct level of analysis. Academics tend to speak in dangerously misleading generalities. This means that what they do is tangentially useful to the real world. The practitioner's job is to connect the many tangents within the current context. It is about identifying the appropriate level of analysis to the situation, and weighing the factors. This is an exercise in judgement, which is the ability to piece together key facts in a roughly right way in the presence of incomplete information.

Note 92

As the productivity of production grows while the productivity of consumption remains stagnant, and working hours remain fixed, demand lags production, and deflation ensues.

So what we need as a society is a flexible work schedule. Unemployment is an ineffective adjustment mechanism that occurs due the fundamental inability of society to develop work processes and structures that work around employment frictions. That is the task that economists, management scientist and unions have failed to set themselves. Adapting the efficiencies promoted by the gig economy while preventing the downsides is a useful step forward that policymakers at present can pursue.

Note 91

If you feel naked, weak and exposed in the shifting sea of men and ideas, that is exactly where you should be, not the dull comforting conformity of a cog in a machine.

Note 90

It is the specific characteristic of human development that negative freedom co-evolves with positive freedom. Negative freedom enables positive freedom to develop, which creates transcendence of a greater set of conditions, generating greater negative freedoms and more positive ones, and so on. More specifically, this happens not just in the physical dimension, but in the mental realm of ideas. So one could imagine a new utopia of transcendence through awareness- a radical incorporation of consciousness into the hard facts of life.

The strange miracle of existence

The reason why people feel lost is that they are looking for meaning in life which doesn't exist.

Life is like a spinning top; let it go round. When it drops, you wouldn't even know it was possible.

How do we enjoy life, when we have pressed ourselves into so many trellises of it, and are trapped in the infinite munificence of this maze?

Time is not real, it is just a way of identifying linearity in our perceptions of change. Because of this, we understand change, and know that life must end.

So we dance in this vast sea, mites in the universe, allotted our share of wonder, to witness the strange unknowable miracle of existence.

Bach

What does Bach teach us? To never give up on the soul.

Note 89

Consciousness is meta awareness - awareness of awareness. This is a kind, not a fact.

Solipsism

Solipsism is the form of mental constructs. The mind creates the world within which truths are assessed. Truths are only as real as the mind which creates them. Without mind, there is no truth. Mind constitutes the forms within which subcategories of truths are externalised and assessed. So what we mean by "God" is really an implicit recognition of the constitution of the forms of being by mind.

In other words, there has to be a coherence of principles within a framework for correspondence of objects to each other within that framework to be possible, which gives rise to what we might call "truth". A principle has to be applied within a field outside of itself in order to generate truth conditions.

In the case of existence, that framework is constituted by the coherence of being and mind, which is solipsistic in form. Hence mind and being are closely intertwined.

***
Subjective and objective are pairs within a frame. When there is no objectivity to compare subjectivity to, or when what we refer to as subjective is an experience and objective as an idea, then our talk becomes meaningless, for the question becomes whether there are objective experiences or subjective ideas.

Why Singapore feels/is sterile

Singapore is a top down country, where the state determines the forms that interactions between state and society, and state and economy takes. The state determines the parameters of society. Society does not know what it is; its functioning and purposes is interfered with by the state; there is an absence of the art of living; and without the ability to determine the forms that societal interactions take, there is no collective sense of the space of possibilities for the evolution of society. Without empowerment, there is no possibility of the development of institutional forms and principles for the energy of its people to latch onto, or to apply itself upon; no spirit; sterile.

Democracy is a continuous meta conversation, not just of the role of government, but the scope of government, within the space of interaction between state, society, and market mechanisms.

This is not to say that the system as it has evolved into its current state is not the best under the circumstances, although it is too early to tell ex ante what the best form is, involving a good deal of unknowables and luck. Good in such cases is so conditional as to be meaningless. The key question is if the combination of mechanisms and characteristics are optimising the energies and capabilities of a people at any point in time, as well as creating the incentives to do so across time, and if existing institutions are generating the balance between stability and discovery in the right ways. And if the essentially totalitarian system is antifragile.

There are 3 goals of government: law and order; empowerment of citizens to change state and society; risk pooling and intergenerational contracting.

***

Society consists of the building blocks of institutions and the ideologies that underlie them.

The life of a society is the embodiment of the continual philosophical conversations that it engages in to determine ends and means.

Sterility is the absence of philosophy due to the predetermination of values and actions and the institutions used to achieve them - namely, wealth creation.

That is the weakness of ossified societies - the predetermination, rather than the dynamic flux, of values.

In short, Singapore is a society of Last Men.

Note 88

The most important decisions are made not at the moment of conscious choice, but through the unintended effects of previous unconscious actions. Choice is just the surface culmination of these factors, which have been sedimented over time. Defining freedom through choice is hence empirically erroneous. Real freedom lies in the interstice of habits and tendencies.

Note 87

Existence is an infinite question. Laws govern laws. Do we lack the faculty for understanding the origin of laws? The problem is the limits in this form of thought.

Freedom

Freedom is set within an unfree world. The interplay gives rise to the fabric of life.

The only source of freedom is freedom from desires. But without desire, freedom has no value.

East or West

East or West:

Do you want to live in a culture where ideas are an instrument to well-being, or where life is instrumental to ideas, for only that can make life meaningful?

At the level of values, the trade off is between social freedom and individual well-being. But the mode of valuation differs, between valuing an idea and valuing an experience.

This is why "pragmatism" comes much more easily to policymakers in Asia, which is not for want of the ability of those in the liberal west to distinguish the proper place of ends and means (to have values and then to find the most effective means of achieving them), but because the idea itself constitutes the experience.

Millenials

Humans in society are but animals in a farm. What Millennials essentially demand is this: a new lifestyle that recognises the need for freedom; greater room for creative expression within a new form of work and life. The job hopping and drifting is a reflection of this search for optimal form, not optimal content.

This requires a new social contract, one based generationally less on the values of accumulation and tilted towards the search for autonomy and authenticity.

Sanders is a manifestation of that demand, and the rest of the politicians are conservatives. However, the US is unlikely to be the vanguard, because the state is insolvent. Also because of the distrust toward the state, forged in a context of a contest between different modes of production many years ago.

Note 86

Inauthenticity is the hallmark of a decadent society. Cynicism is its corollary, a revolution in embryo.

Note 85

Is knowledge contextual in form or expression? Depends on whether the relation in the language game constitutes knowledge, or the criteria underlying the use of the knowledge game constitute knowledge.

Language games do not identify contexts, but determine their form. The application of a language game requires a criteria outside of the game itself.

Note 84

The relation between policy, biology and culture must be studied for a full understanding of the development of societies.

This can only be done without repercussions if researchers (as well as society at large) understand and step outside their value frameworks and normative assumptions which define what the good life and the goals of social development (both at the collective and individual level) are. Similarly, society has to be pluralistic and robust enough to incorporate diversities of value frameworks without breaking down under the weight of contradictions and conflicts.

The potential of this is there; but it may take many decades, or centuries to reach this point. Perhaps when AI has rendered the scarcity value of intelligence to 0 can we have a matured and balanced conversation on human values (much like the history of the spice trade).

Intellectuals

Intellectuals are dangerous because they privilege the evolution and development of ideas through society above all other governmental or societal objectives. Because of this, they are the representatives of progress through sacrifice, and must be put down by society, for the sake of a stable inertia.

Note 83

What is the regulative principle through which the virtues of states are addressed? Warfare is no longer the force of creative destruction of obsolete or suboptimal processes, because the benefits of military power are no longer the source of a good life. Utilitarianism is the death of war.

What can secure the good life? It is the combination of wants and needs, identity, utility, material goods, social and spiritual needs, and freedom to choose one's course in life. The state can no longer secure the multiplicity of wants within the current framework, because it is itself a politicization of a sense of identity which is becoming increasingly fluid, as well as the guarantor, the source, and the outdated kernel of the notion of identity that exists at a previous point in time, that sets the parameters for the evolution of the operations that will render them redundant. In short, state mechanisms can no longer contain the tensions which have been drawn out by circumstances between national and transnational identities.

In response to conditions, identities form, ossify, institutionalise, generate regulative principles which affect their internal and external relations, affect a change in values and behaviours, create contradictions, adapt or collapse, depending on the relation to the regulative principles, and repeat the identities through the new set of conditions and actions which arise, endlessly.

Note 82

1. Existence is constituted by relation.
2. Relation cannot be to nothing but something.
3. Relation of the totality of existence has to be to itself.
4. Subject-object is the form of the relation of the totality of existence to itself.
5. Divinity is the embodiment of the entire scope of possibilities within the subject-object relation.

Note 81

The chief problem in the actuality of forms is not perspectivism, which is a way of constructing knowledge atop these principles, but the ontology of forms, and their relation to the necessary contingency of reality.