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.