On Assumptions once again

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

That historic greeting quoted above shows that our ancestors of Darwinian time were far more conscious of the conditionality of statements than we are today; and for that reason, they had no need for the service of so-called "fact-checkers" - in fact, they most likely would have found such a notion itself an insult to their intelligence and integrity.

They knew of alternative facts and their relevance (the night is cold, but also dark - if one won't endanger you, then the other one might) and waged their words carefully.

Why do I keep banging on about this?

Never forget The big IF

Keep it in mind, always. Even if listening to others (especially then):

"IF" or "I am assuming that" [These people are right] [These people are benign (i. e., do not bear false witness)] [The internal logic (mathematics) are correct] [...] [...] [...] THEN (and ONLY then) [Their narrative is correct]

In which the [...], the hidden, unconscious, or simply granted assumptions are the real trap.

Now, if JUST ONE one of these assumptions is wrong - the whole thing goes out of the window.

(And how would find that wrong assumption? Perhaps by breaking down the subconscious decision chain into a series of single binary yes/no decisions)

And very easily so. There shall be no "Taken for Granted"

>> I do not accept those prerequisitions as given.

>> I do not believe those assertions (or those people) you cite are correct.

>> I'm not buying it.

>> This is a free decision. An act of will. And final.

Not because it is then proven to be wrong - it could still be right - but because it has not been proven right.

And if you try to be tricky and skip, waive or discard presumptions you are not sure of, then the whole chain of thought is simply worthless.

To give you a simple example: The White Swan Fallacy

Without a proper declaration of assumptions, any attempt of proof is just null and void - you cannot even tell if it is wrong.

It's empty.

Which, of course, leads to the notion that you never can tell, with absolute certainty, that you have indeed declared ALL relevant assumptions and are therefore able to make a statement.

Hence the black swan events.

Take, for instance, the continental drift saga:

"IF" or "Assuming that" [The Earth was a sphere] [Its surface geography was stable] THEN [There was no explaining the presence of mountains (they would have eroded long ago, leaving a planet covered completely by a very shallow ocean)]

So they came up with

"IF" or "Assuming that" [The earth was a sphere] [Its surface geography was stable] [It is shrinking (by cooling off)] THEN [Like on a desiccating apple, wrinkles will form on its surface, i. e. mountains] [IF this works out] - which it did not. For one thing, the ‘wrinkles’ AKA mountains were not random enough.

So Wegener came up with

"IF" or "Assuming that" [The earth was a sphere] [Its surface geography was NOT stable] AND [The continents can and do move ("drift"] THEN [Their collisions will form mountains on the Earth's surface] [IF this works out] - which for a long time, it did not. Nobody could provide a mechanism for the ASSUMED continental drift.

(YES, one Assumption leads to another - never forget that either)

So they came up with

"IF" or "Assuming that" [The Earth was a sphere] [Its surface geography was NOT stable] [Its internal geography was NOT stable either] AND [Heat convection induces magma movements] THEN [The continents drift around on these currents randomly like bumper cars] AND [Their collisions will form mountains on its surface] [IF this works out]

To which I of course say, no, it does not - half of the mountains on this planet's surface are in the wrong place for that to be so; and the earth's geography is far too symmetric (or rather, regularly asymmetric) to have been formed by random action.

Very often, too, timelines are ignored, or the assumptions for age are completely off (during the darwinistic revolution, which concerned geography as well as biology, the supposed age of the Earth was vastly expanded) - which in turn throws all conclusions anchoring on those false assumptions into the trasher.

This isn't bad - it's the way it should be.

Or take the whole realm of economics, which is so fascinating, as every single time something happens and people try to get to the bottom of it, they dredge up the narrative that profits from the exploitation of human labor were shrinking or missing or had gone too far because or even though the machines were taking over, so that wages were too high or too low or profits were too high or too low or out of control or controlled too much or whatever.

To which I of course say, IF there is a profit from labor, human or otherwise [why do you think machines are employed to replace humans? To make profits shrink?], then that depends entirely on your very relative point of view; which is why all these narratives are so randomly unhinged.

They all anchor on that one ASSUMPTION that labor (by anyone or anything) produces a profit in itself and this is the primal booty to be distributed; but that anchor is completely adrift (which is why every price and value is a RELATIVE market price and value - a stroke of genius in itself).

A similar narrative changeling was able to be observed in the matter of interest on capital - as long as there was positive interest, it was defamed as "laborless income exploiting labor by forcing it to ever expand the money supply"; and the minute it disappeared from view, not only did no-one breathe a sigh of relief and look for to the brave new economy without interest, but their narrative was gone - no more to complain about.

And then the new narrative began to form: The nefarious deviosity of no-interest economies destroying the people's income and savings through inflation - because, of course, the money printing did not stop at all; on the contrary, it became central.

It is not that one of these narratives is true and the other one isn't - they are both true, which makes them contradictory (interest is both good and bad), if seen absolutely, and therefore interchangeable - and therefore worthless and empty: you cannot tell.

For seen absolutely, there very possibly is no profit at all to be formally derived from labor, and the whole thing is a ponzy scheme, a snowball gathering volume going downhill until it hits the village below as an avalanche of relative debt extracted on paper counterbalancing the relative profit extracted on paper; and the one choice that exists is to see to it that the volume of the monetary avalanche becomes so huge that it hits your town only after you're dead (which does have a limit, AKA globalization) AKA Surfing the Tsunami.

Interest or no interest.

Choosing your narrative

So, there we are:

IF [labor produces a profit] THEN [choose your narrative]

IF [labor does NOT produce a profit] THEN [they all go out of the window, one and all]

Which leads to the Ayn Rand construction of:

IF there is a contradiction - and nothing is as internally contradictory as the realm of economics; were it otherwise, the results would be predictable in FORESIGHT, not HINDSIGHT, and speculation would have no place in it; instead, speculation (i.e. betting) is at the heart of it (and rightly so, given the circumstances) and 99% of all predictions fail (well, at least, over 50% of the serious ones), and it would be recognized as a true science leading to true engineering (which is not necessarily a comforting thought!) - well, then, one of your assumptions is wrong. (And you won't escape the consequences.)

And if the plethora of economic theories all hinge on one central assumption, well, then, as an exercise of will and experiment of thought, let's assume that to be wrong.

And the whole thing unfolds...

What's so nice about this?

As it is YOU that is making, rejecting or accepting the assumptions, it is YOU that gets to decide which to make and which to break.

YOU DECIDE which assumptions you accept to represent reality and which you don’t; and so YOU decide on the narrative YOU will find acceptable. No need to get mired in the arguments - just look at which presumptions these arguments are based upon. And you need to find just one to disagree with - and that’s it.

Whatever people tell you, you are free to follow their train of thought or not, after taking it apart, to deviate from or to discard their presumptions.

The one thing you have to grapple with, the one and only test is reality - not its interpretation by someone else.

See to it that the time lag between test and consequence is as short as possible by playing all possibilities out in your head before trying it out in the back yard - remember your assumptions are your own choice within the frame of your own mind:

You could be wrong.

And so could I.