Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Wisdom Sociologically

 A cooperative society must be wise. It is the primary virtue.

 A wise society must commit to believing true things. 

 First, it must commit to believing something at all. The group, more particularly its leader, must have an explicit dogma. 

 Next, it must commit to allowing itself to be proven wrong. The beliefs must be cast in the most vulnerable form. The beliefs cannot be spared exposure to any test which they might fail. Only the most robust beliefs can be allowed to survive. 

 Third, it must explicitly persecute lies, lying, and liars. Encouraging disproofs does much of this, but disproofs can be faked. The tells for fakery need to be explicitly persecuted. Even if a signal might be true, if it could be faked, it can't be used. Again, encouraging disproof does much of this: signals must be actively verified, actively proven. Never assumed correct before replication. All ideas are presumed guilty until proven innocent.


 Harshly testing beliefs, discarding failed beliefs, discarding possibly-fraudulent evidence, and refusing to forward possibly-fraudulent evidence all require great discipline. It is well beyond Democratic Man. 

 As a stupid yet illustrative example, a properly wise society can't say [good day to you] or any of its variants. Spoofing this is trivial. It should be well-known that this is spoofable, thus anyone saying it can be assumed to be intentionally spoofing you. Extraordinarily rude. "Oh, how gullible do you think I am?" P.S. The society would likewise be aware of the buddhist koan, and know the insulter profanes himself, not the target.

 Likewise, you can't ask a stranger how they're feeling, because the Nash equilibrium is to lie to that question. Expecting them not to lie is to assume weird and creepy levels of intimacy, wholly unsuitable for a stranger. 


 Fourth, the meta-dogma. Actually, the disproofs of logical positivism are all bullshit. Or batshit. Or both. 

 Even the idea that ideas can and should be challenged can itself be challenged - it's merely that the challenge will always fail. Faith in challenge will survive all tests, on account of being true. Contra the anti-positivists: it is their position, that some ideas cannot be challenged, which is self-contradictory. I take the position that challenge is unchallengeable, anti-positivism proves positivism, QED.

 There's an epistemic third rail which can't be defined without going circular. Learning can't be learned, you have to already know. Identity is identical. Predictions are predictive. Existence, we say, Exists.

 This belief is the core dogma if a wise leader.

 The wise define a true belief as one that allows understanding of and foreseeing the future. You can't cooperate if you don't know which actions lead to the consequences you've promised to bring about. You can't cooperate if you don't know the consequences you want to promise are impossible to bring about. 

 Corollary: possible ideas can always be tested in a prediction duel. Edge case: meaningless ideas can't be tested, but if they have no significant consequences, testing them is pointless. 

 Wise leaders believe the future is foreseeable, that the tools of foresight are testable, and that scholastic security is affordable. Consequences are knowable, and the tools for investigating consequences are known & profitable.


 P.P.S. Don't forget [I don't know] is a valid position. Sometimes the evidence proves there is no good evidence either way. 

 P.P.P.S. Don't forget the conclusion that some special future is unforeseeable is also a valid and possible conclusion.


 Related:

 https://alrenous.blogspot.com/2021/12/three-deadly-sins.html

 https://alrenous.blogspot.com/2023/08/scholars-cant-not-rule.html

No comments: