Author: Db0

Communism in the garbage bin of history

Db03 Comments

Has Communism been discredited so much that it’s not worth even considering anymore. Listening to online pundits, one might think so. But I wish to explain why this is greatly exagerrated.

Marching for Communism in Iran
Image by Petteri Sulonen via Flickr

As the Iran situation becomes worse ((Personally I refrain from saying much about it as it seems there is a lot of propaganda from both sides, for an external observer like me to decide either way. Furthermore, neither of the two warring parties are on the side of the people of Iran)) and more and more people start speaking about it online, it seems that many take it as an opportunity to take a swipe at communism while they’re at it.

I’ve started monitoring twitter for mentions of political currents I am interested in and among the usual ignorant bashing, the following phrase, in various similar forms, seems to be posted often:

Theocracy is destined for the garbage bin of history along with Communism and Fascism.

This seems to be repeated by Liberals, Conservatives, Rothbardian minarchists and a generally a lot of people standing on the “right” side of the political spectrum. Putting aside the idiocy of putting Communism and Fascism side to side, there’s the implicit assumption that Communist has indeed been delegated to the “dust bin of history”.

But how much truth is contained in such a statement? While it’s undeniable that Communism has been severely slandered by those who would rather that you don’t know much about it; has it been discredited like fascism, to the point where ideological basis is rejected by most people outright? As much as it would seem so in the US political scene, the answer fortunately is no.

In times of a capitalist boom, there’s always a lot of pundits who will eagerly proclaim the obsolescence of Communism, the end of class struggle and “The end of History”. That lasts only as much as the next bust, recession and depression when the socialist spirit once more rises up to haunt the ruling class. It is at this point where the same pundits will try to stem the tide by reminding us that they already proclaimed Communism obsolete so why are we bringing it up all over again?

But in fact, Communism itself has not been discredited. The core idea of Communism: a stateless, classless society can’t be, as instinctively it sounds positive for most people. Instead what has been discredited are the hijacked results of socialist revolutions of the early 20th century, results which for the delight of the western propagandists were self-described as “Communist” or “Socialist”.

These ideas, that a totalitarian regime can somehow act for the best of the working class, have deservedly been discredited by history itself, which is incidentally proved Anarchist predictions correct. But, and this is the important point, since Communism is not about totalitarianism, this does not affect it.

Now some US Americans might claim that due to popular use, Communism has been accepted to mean the USSR, PRC example and as such, the phrasing is right. But then of course one could easily point out that the USA has completely fucked up the political definitions they use to the extent that, like their measurement system, they are the only ones who accept it.

For most of the world, Communism is far from discredited and even the Stalinist currents in many countries are still going strong. Certainly, many people might think that Communism can’t work in practice, but that’s not the same as rejecting the system altogether. Indeed most of the time it simply takes a libertarian perspective on it to show that what’s practically impossible is only the authoritarian currents.

But if one can say this about Communism, how about Fascism? Doesn’t it mean that Fascism as well can be considered valid? The main difference between them is that Fascism has been rejected by most people altogether, from the ideological components (racism, xenophobia, anti-labour, cronyism etc) to the specific practical implementations of it. It’s been rejected because its whole base is rotten to the core. And while there will always be people rotten enough to embrace it, it’s unlikely to gain popular support. (although of course, I can always be proven wrong)

But this is not the case with Communism, which still has pure goals and people have simply been prevented from progressing towards them; not as a systematic fault but because of the particular (flawed) paths that people took towards the goal. But there’s still other ways to attempt, other paths to take and fortunately there’s quite a lot of people willing to listen.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Mutualist Political Economy ebook

Db04 Comments

Following the AFAQ, now you can get Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy in an ebook format as well.

Cover of Mutualist Political EconomyAfter converting the AFAQ to an ebook format, I’ve thought I might as well release some of the other stuff I’ve converted for my personal use. One of them is Studies in Mutualist Political Economy which I’ve been reading lately. Like the AFAQ, I’ll provide you below with a few popular versions for ebooks along with the master copy which you can use to create your own versions.

  • pdf – 9x12cm with index
  • rtf
  • epub
  • odt – master copy in open document format

Of course, I’ve already contacted Kevin Carson to get the OK for this and apparently the book is available on a copyleft license (GFDL? He didn’t specify) so I can post the files here without problem. Eventually he’s going to host the files on his own site as well.

Since I’m on the subject, perhaps it would be appropriate to say a few things about the content of the book. For someone like me who basically self-educated on libertarian socialism as who has come to the conclusion that the labour theory of value applies, a synthesis of LTV with Marginalism sounded promising. However, even though I enjoyed the refutation of Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism of the LTV, the actual synthesis didn’t impress me. I won’t make a substancial critique here (perhaps another time) but I’ll say that too much weight was given to Austrian “axioms” and shaky conclusions about free markets.

Nevertheless, it’s still an interesting book and it was the first time I read soemething from the Mutualist perspective. If nothing else, it gave me a few more ideas to write about and pointed out some differences between that and social anarchism.

An Anarchist FAQ on your e-reader

Db010 Comments

As the AFAQ is preparing to release the second volume in print, The division by zer0 is proud to present the ebook versions for your enjoyment

The Cover of AFAQI’ve been in contact with the collective behind the Anarchist FAQ in order to transform this excellent piece of work into a format that people can enjoy in portable devices as well as their monitor or as a book. Since I’m using a bebook, having it in such a format is much more comfortable than what I’ve used now (basically downloading the independent pdf files) and converting it so will hopefully allow more people to read it.

So now, with the revision of the AFAQ for Volume 2, I’ve been sent a copy with the new modifications in a single file that I could work on easier. And after a day of hacking at the template, I’ve finally completed the work and version 13.1 is for the first time available in ebook formats. I’m going to send the files to Iain as well of course but until they are updloaded to their site, feel free to download the version you prefer from the below links.

  • epub – With full Index
  • pdf – In 9x12cm page size (exact for bebook) and including full index and Table of Contents
  • rtf – For those of you that prefer it in something simple
  • mobi – Conversion was not great but index is available. If you can make something better, let me know and I’ll host it instead.

Of course there are more formats that are available for e-readers such as prc, fb2 etc but I don’t have a converter for everything so these will have to wait until someone with the correct tool takes over. I’m using the amazing ebook manager Calibre myself which has a lot of conversion options so I can only create what it allows to. For the rest, I’m afraid you’ll have to do it yourself. However feel free to use my master copy which is in odt format. This should hopefully allow you to easily turn it to whatever you prefer.

Enjoy!

Deciding on an Ownership System

Db04 Comments

Kevin Carson mentions that the best type of property system probably cannot be found from logical deduction from the axiom of self-ownership. But should it?

Barcode tattoo with "TSR" number bas...
Image via Wikipedia

In the Mutualist Political Economy I’ve reached the point where Kevin is now discussing the similarities and differences between the property systems as proposed by Lockeanists, Georgists or Mutualists. What struck a chord with me was the point where he expressed the opinion that none of these three systems could be proven by a logical deduction from “the axiom of self-ownership” but rather only by social consensus.

Now while I agree with this position, I cannot help but ask why would we wish in the first place to logically deduce the property rights to use from an axiom which is meaningless and logically inconsistent to boot. This is asking us to take an ideological concept and from that discover normative propositions for people to follow. Not only that, but the more this ideological concept approaches the sterilized status of an axiom, the more incapable it becomes of providing a clear path to a normative proposition, as can be seen from the three different property concepts that can follow from it (and that is while ignoring the rest of the varied ideas that can stem from an “axiom” of self-ownership)

To leave it to the ideologues then is akin to waiting for the metaphorical priests to decide how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Any type of argumentation will most likely be based on shaky erections of logic which would simply lead to different people espousing the one that is closer to the current mentality and social status. A stagnating perspective.

But if the type of ownership that one society should use is not deductible from ideological positions, then how would a social consensus decide on a “particular set of allocation rules”? What kind of argumentation can be used to not simply reinforce currently held but also to actually change them based on some sort of proof?

The answer lies in departing from the ideological perspective altogether and looking for the answer from a utilitarian one. To put it more simply: Which type of ownership system would lead to the maximum amount of good for the maximum amount of people? In this kind of problem-solving, there is no space left for vacillations on the degree of difference between sticky or non-sticky property. There is no use pondering on which ownership system (Lockean or Mutualist) respects abstracts concepts the more. Just figure out what makes people live happy lives and what is the best system that will allow them to experience them.

The first part should be relatively easy ((“Easy” Only inasmuch as we already have the scientific method which we know is best for discovering descriptive facts about reality)) to discover using scientific principles in psychological and sociological research.

However the later is a normative question and as a result must involve an ethical reasoning which cannot be based on scientific methodology. It is from this reasoning that the type of property system we should be using be discovered then discussed and finally spread memetically to a larger and larger amount of people, until the required consensus is achieved.

And in this attempts for consensus, ideological concepts and logical structures erected around them only serve to distract, confuse and ultimately slow down this process.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

The best solution for multilingual blogs is here!

Db012 Comments

Transposh is a new shiny plugin that promises to make translating your wordpress blog to other languages a breeze. If you’ve gor a multilingual blog, you can’t afford to miss it.

translation
Image by Swiv via Flickr

Through NoState.com I’ve come to discover Transposh, a new WordPress plugin that promises to make the task of translating pages of your site to other languages very easy, and to also take reduce the personal effort required to do so by crowd-sourcing the task.And boy does it deliver!

You may have noticed that I occasionally write in other languages, particularly in my native Greek. That doesn’t happen so often because my audience is mainly international now but it still bugged me that my choice of language was in effect making it difficult for my friends and relatives from my birthland to follow and participate. However the task of replicating each post on another language was simply too much to bother.

However Transposh finally gives me an opportunity to fix this. I can much more easily do the task of translating my pages to my native language myself, since it utilizes google translate to get your text changed, transparently. That is, the text will switch to the google translation of the language you want and you can edit and fix it right there and then, without having to go through the dashboard or anything.

Not only that, but the elements of the page which exist in other locations as well, such as the title or the header, once corrected once do not need to be corrected in every other page of your site as well, but rather are intelligently cached and served.

Oh, and did I mention the crowd-sourcing part? This is my favourite bit. Transposh gives the opportunity for the blog author to not only allow other registered users to translate, but also for anonymous as well. This means that all interested parties can help improve your site. This might not be of much use for small fishes such as me, but for larger players with an international audience, it will certainly provide a lot more labour. Of course, there’ always the issue of vandalism, but much like any wiki, some solutions should be possible.

You can see how translating with Tranposh looks like. The colour show the status of each sentence (Google-translation, Human-edited or none)
You can see how translating with Tranposh looks like. The colour show the status of each sentence (Google-translation, Human-edited or none)

This crowd-sourcing now means that if you find an interesting article in a Transposh-enabled site, you can help translate to the language you wish (of those the author made available) and then send the link to all your friends whos’ foreign language skills are not so good.

For an Alpha version plugin, I’m impressed. Both at the quality of the code but also at the quality of the support. The main developer is lightning quick to respond and help with problems (although that’s bound to change as the plugin becomes more popular I guess). For example, my first and largest problem was that it seemed that the translation of each page was taking forever, sucking all my resources and that caching was not happening. However after some discussion with the developer, I discovered that by simply leaving the first translation to finish, everything became much snappier on subsequent attempts. That is because the general elements are translated once on the first time (which on an element heavy page like mine can take a while) but are cached once this is completed.

Oh, and did I mention that that it can also make nice permalinks for your translated articles that are indexable by google and cacheable by Hyper-Cache? (And I assume WP Super-Cache as well). For example, you can find the Greek translation of this article here.

So if you’re writing a multi-language WordPress blog or if you have an international audience, I think it’s time you give this plugin a go. Even if you don’t have the time to perform the task, you give the capability for others to read it easily (without having to go to visit google first) or even do the full job of translation themselves for the most interesting stuff.

For the Division by Zer0, I’ve now activated the Greek and German languages since I don’t expect people from other places to visit much. However if you’d like another option, simply let me know and I’ll enable it.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Quote of the Day: Anarchist Trams

Db0

A quote about the Spanish Revolution

{{es|Una bandera del sindicato CNT-AIT}}
Image via Wikipedia

I just found a very nice and inspiring quote about the Spanish Revolution

Within workplaces wages were equalised and conditions greatly improved. Let us see how collectivisation actually made things better. Take for example the tramways. Out of the 7,000 workers, 6,500 were members of the CNT. Because of the street battles all transport had been brought to a halt. The transport syndicate (as unions of the CNT were known) appointed a commission of seven to occupy the administrative offices while others inspected the tracks and drew up a plan of repair work that needed to be done. Five days after the fighting stopped 700 tramcars, instead of the usual 600, all painted in the black and red colours of the CNT, were operating on the streets of Barcelona.

With the profit motive gone, safety became more important and the number of accidents was reduced. Fares were lowered and services improved. In I 936, 183,543, 516 passengers were carried. In 1937 this had gone up by 50 million. The trams were running so efficiently that the workers were able to give money to other sections of urban transport. Wages were equalised for all workers and increased over the previous rates. For the first time free medical care was provided for the work force.

I suggest all of you not already familiar with it, take the time to learn about the closest attempt to Anarchism that has happened, what it achieved during its small existence (a lot) and why it was defeated.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

100.000

Db02 Comments

The Division by Zer0 has finally passed the 100.000 unique visitors mark. W00t!

The Division by Zer0 has finally passed the 100.000 unique visitors mark.  W00t!

I only noticed this from my WordPress stats, which count my visitors since Feb 2008, but Google Analytics gives me about the same number since 2006 (and that is always much reduced). So I can safely say that I’ve passed this little milestone in the life of this site. It’s not incredibly important, but it’s nice to know that so many people have read what small I had to say.

Here’s to 1 Mil 🙂

And now, some stats, just for the heck of it:

  • Current RSS Subscribers: ~200
  • Most popular referrers: Google Search, Stumbleupon and Reddit.
  • Google Pagerank: 4
  • Number of posts: 653
  • Number of comments: 3.221
  • Number of times banned from blogs: 4 😉

Fun.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

It's not the end that's important but how we get there.

Db015 Comments

Many idealists focus to a large degree to the form a future society will have. But this is the least important part. It’s much more important to figure out a concrete path to it.

A group of Chinese migrant labourers arrive at...
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve spend a hefty chunk of the last 3 days arguing with various strands of market anarchists ((I will use this term to define those who support a stateless society where usury (wage-labour, rent & interest) is possible and a free market handles distribution)) where the discussion mainly centered around the form and limitations of the future society.

This is a main trend I’ve noticed from those Anarchists and “Anarchists” who espouse mainly the Austrian analysis of economics; the trend to emphasise a future possible reality and how in the ideal situation the free market would work in the best possible manner. However, in an idealized society, any system can work. Anyone can in their head imagine all the necessary factors that will have to exist in order to make the system run.

The problem however is that reality never conforms to the ideal. Any perfect system imagined in our head will always fall far shorter than practice and this is not because the person thinking about it is stupid, but simply due the sheer immensity of factors one must account for. One will always consider the problems he is most familiar with and their solutions, but for every situation one resolves, there’s a 100 we haven’t thought of and another 100 we can’t even consider because they will only appear in the future.

These kind of ideal systems are utopias. They work only because they are a shortened version of reality, only detailed to the extend that the original thinker and his followers have thought about potential problems and their solutions.

And the reasons why Utopias fail, is because the thinkers have wasted all their time imagining how the end result might be, and very little to plan how to get there. But the second part is the only thing that matters. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the particulars of any future society are almost not important at all. It’s the base that’s important. The main idea that permeates the future society that we want to achieve is enough to be painted in rough colours, and let the future people add the details

To speak for myself, I suggest egalitarianism. A future society where people will be equal in power. I maintain that as long as equality in power exists, coercion (active and passive) will be impossible and as a result true freedom will flourish. This a broad stroke, but it’s enough. And the benefit of such broad strokes is that it allows people to concentrate on getting the baseline right, rather than bickering over the details. It also directs the energy to the part that is most important. Getting there.

However, market anarchists seem to miss 2 important points: The difficulty of using free market tactics to get rid of distortions of power and the fact that the means strongly colour the ends.

The first part is almost obvious from today’s society. In a free market where (gross) inequality exist, the power keeps flowing towards the powerful. This happens because money is power, and in any market exchange between unequal individuals will benefit the strongest over the weakest. This allows the strongest to use all means at their disposal in order to protect their position, and one of those means is the state.

As such, it is silly to expect these people, the ruling class, to embrace the Free Market, to voluntary reduce the protectionism they enjoy and the like. If they start to do so, then it can only be because it is to their benefit. But it is equally silly to expect free market tactics to work immediately post-revolution. A revolutionary society will not immediately arrive at the end of the road, in fact the biggest challenge will only be starting. That path will be the most crucial, with counter-revolutionaries waiting for a chance to return to the old system, relics of the previous society standing which will need to be dismantled and many people who still think by the old values.

To attempt and go directly to a free market economy at this point would be to ignore the fact that the free markets exarberate inequality.

Which leads us to the second problem. Mainly that the path ones takes is what defines the end one will have. If we have a revolution, the methods by which it will happen will define the immediate post-revolutionary organizations we will have. And those organizational methods will define how the society will slowly evolve to its newer form.

To give you an example, if a revolution happens due to syndicalist action (say larger and larger strikes and takeovers) then these unions will be the classic form around which a society will condense as the heat of action cools down.  People will then continue working with the organizational form which has proven successful to them, forming federations and confederations of syndics and so on. Thus, they will have small incentive to switch to a system they are not familiar with.

This poses a tricky problem for those who envision a different kind of ideal society. Taking market anarchism again, if we accept that free market tactics and rhetoric cannot take down the current system (because they will promote the current distribution of power), then this means that market anarchists will have to support another type of organization that has a chance of revolt. But once this happens, people will still need to deal and extinguish relics of the previous system, on which a free market cannot stand (as it needs an idea society remember?).

So at which point will these piggy-backing market anarchists get to put their system into action? If they wait until the system solidifies in an anarchist form, it will be already too late. The system will be communist, syndicalist or whatever. There will be no further reason for reform. If they try to take over soon after the revolution, then the lingering inequalities and mentality will take hold and possibly defeat the whole thing.

The only chance then left for idealists, is to somehow prove that they have some means of provoking an anarchist revolution in the first place which will then be able to progress towards the perfect free market. Or to expect that a future non-market society will be so unstable that it will voluntarily cry out for the free market. To tell the truth, the later does not really worry me, as long as market anarchist support a social revolution now. And the former has not yet, provided any convincing (to me) methodology.

For those idealists of the free market though, who do not see any path towards it; to stick to the ideology is simply useless. If you can’t figure out how to achieve it (and no, I do not consider begging the government to be a viable tactic) then you might as well not waste your time thinking about it. If you think you can only get there once the socialists have created an egalitarian society, then start struggling for that and don’t waste our time about the Free Market.

And if you are of those few that think there is a way through free market tactics, then you’d better have a damn good excuse on why these tactics can work, even though the free market theory is only valid for a very particular society in the first place.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Why the Free Markets concept is useless

Db038 Comments

Free markets are presented by Market Anarchists or Apologist of capitalism as the panacea we should all be aiming for. This post will attempt to show why this is based on non-existant ground.

Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility
Image via Wikipedia

It is something I stumble onto extremely regularly lately, people who claim that only a free market economy would be capable of efficiently allocating resources, or maximizing the utility of most people. That any other system will by definition lead to disutility.

This is a very bold claim, and one is well justified in asking what proof we have that such a system would indeed have this result. And this is where the problems start. The most common answer, especially from proponents of the Austrian school of economics or people accepting most of their arguments, is that this is not provable. Rather, this is based on logical deductions from axioms.

This capability of the markets is then contrasted with mathematical proof. That is, the fact that free markets would lead to efficient allocation etc is as solid as saying 2+2=4.

However, if this kind of argument is espoused, then a major flaw appears. Mainly that mathematics, and other axiomatic concepts, cannot tell us anything useful in isolation from reality and empirical evidence. To give you an example, to claim that markets are axiomatically defined as always leading to pareto efficiency does not tell us anything about which system humans should organize their societies around. It simply means that the concept of the markets is separated from what is commonly referred as the markets now.

Under this kind of proof, the market can easily be, say, a communist society. But if whatever will lead to Pareto efficiency will automatically be a “free market”, as humans we still face the problem of discovering which kind of system will lead to Pareto efficiency. To turn around and say that the free markets will, and by that imply a very particular system based on particular property rights and laws, is an equivocation fallacy.

The problem of course, is not that some concepts have been turned into axioms, as by itself this practice wouldn’t lead to any normative conclusions, much like pure mathematics can’t either. The problem comes because Free Market economists have attempted to sneak descriptive concepts as axioms, something which would allow them to make claims about reality. For example, the idea that a human always acts to fulfill his strongest desire first.

But the problem with such an act, is that these descriptive facts have been conceived out of pure air. Without empirical proof, any such “axioms” introduced run the problem of having minor errors, minor facts that the original thinker didn’t know about. And as most people know, the slightest error in a purely logical edifice, can lead to a wholly wrong result.

Which is why actual science requires empirical observation, repeatability and falsification as it attempts to iron out errors of human thought or modify the facts, ever so slightly, so as to make the rest of the logical deductions from the facts, as solid and correct as possible.

Proponents of the Free Markets do not do this however. They start from a few basic premises, a few of which should have been empirically tested before being accepted, and then build based on pure logic from there. They then claim that like mathematics, the result, as long as no errors in the calculation have been found, cannot be anything but correct.

And most importantly, real empirical data that refutes the results, is not used to find errors in the premises, but rather dismissed. It is claimed that if logical results do not match the reality, then there’s some factor in reality that skews them (what it is, is not important but it’s most likely the government). But this is the problem! What exactly is the factor might be critical, as the factor might be that one of the “axioms” is wrong!

Market Anarchists would have us believe that a free markets within a very particular society would work for the best result and thus, we as humans should aim for this particular society structure. But this is not proven. It is asserted. It starts from the premise that a Free Market works in a particular way and that is based on assumption of how reality and particularly human psychology works!

So why is the concept of the Free Markets useless? If “Free Markets” is defined as being a utilitarian result, then anything that achieves this result is a “Free Market”, and to find that “anything” we’ll again need to use empirical evidence. If Free Market is logically concluded from a few premises to lead to a utilitarian result in a particular society, then unless these few premises are empirically proven, we cannot and should not trust the results, nor aim for that particular society.

In the end, the Free Market concept is useless because it tries to prescribe reality independently of any empirical evidence. And like all other such independent concepts, like mathematics or language it can either tell us nothing, or lead us to the wrong path based on equivocations.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Mathematics

Db012 Comments

What is mathematics anyway? A system that can help us understand the world? A system of absolute truths? In this post I lay the case for their true purpose.

What Is Mathematics?
Image via Wikipedia

What is Mathematics? As a concept, you’d be hard pressed to find someone not using it one a daily basis which tells us that this is something that comes somewhat naturally to humans.It is of course popularized and taught from a young age in the modern age, but this is not of course to mean that this is the reason for its popularity, since even unschooled people can intuitively understand and perform basic calculations.

However, this does not explain to us what Mathematics actually is and this is actually becoming a sticky point lately, as weird as that sounds. For this reason, I think we need to dispel some misconceptions about the role of mathematics in human life.

Mathematics is not descriptive

The role of mathematics is not to describe reality. In fact, mathematics cannot tell us anything useful in isolation. I cannot make any prediction at all from the equation of 1+1=2. I cannot make any conclusion, moral or empirical from any possible calculation or mathematical proof.

Rather, mathematics is explanatory. It’s role is not to provide us with knowledge, but much like logic and language, to provide us with a method to communicate ideas to other humans, or more explicitly, other brains that we expect to grasp the concept.

For example, language is not descriptive either. Me saying “this is an apple” only describes reality inasmuch as the other person understands what “this”, “is” and “apple” are. This is especially pointed in language, as it is obvious that its form is such as to utilize only the sounds the human mouth makes (and more specifically, the sounds a particular group of humans is used to make most)

And much like we can swap languages around and still communicate the same ideas, so we can swap mathematical systems around with the same effect. It is precisely because mathematics are only use to explain concepts, that the form they take does not matter, as long as those communicating use the same system.

To put it more simply: Logic, mathematics and language are not universal and external concepts, somehow outside and above reality, they are simply the means that evolved primate brains use to explain ideas to one another.

Mathematics is not a science

From the above, it naturally follows that mathematics cannot help us understand how the world works. They cannot provide us with knowledge. They can only help us express this knowledge once we have it.

However, this does not mean that they are not useful in the pursuit of knowledge. In fact, they, along with logic are immensely useful. But this is not because they are a tool that has been invented or discovered by previous generations. In fact it is a misconception to think them as such (which is why it leads to nonsense such as considering logic as proof of a deity) as they are simply the result of how human brains process information. That is to say, they are useful as much as our evolved brain is useful, as they are its result. The brain itself is the actual tool.

Certainly, mathematics take more and more complex forms, on which even more can be based on. However, all of these still do not constitute knowledge, but rather expressions of different logical concepts. That is to say, they are not useful because they give us information we did not possess before, but because they can easily transmit more complex information in a smaller package. One could even think of them as the brain’s compression capability.

The same of course applies to language with its more complex words, which only make sense if one knows a vast number of definitions required to explain them. And much like language, these compressed packets of info, can make no sense to others unless they already have the capacity (ie IQ ((Well, more appropriately I guess it should be Time*IQ)) ) to “decompress”‘ them.

Mathematics is not proof

Mathematics are axiomatic. They are like they are because we say so. Because it’s useful to have them in a particular form which other will understand. But an axiom is not a proof, it’s simply the starting points we set to start explaining the proof.

To give you an example, when I say “I put one apple in a bowl, and then I put another apple in the bowl, so I have 2 apples in the bowl now”, this is not because 1+1=2 proves it. That is simply what I used to describe how many apples I put in the bowl and how many I have in the end. It is simply used to communicate what I did.

It is nonsense to assume that anything that begins with axioms can prove or describe anything. Axioms are only useful only if there is external information which we can use them on, to discover knowledge. This is simply because they can tell us what to expect with the information we have at hand, and the deviation from this expectation, alerts us to the fact that we are missing something.

It is very important to recognise that axiomatic concepts by themselves are useless as it’s impossible to draw any conclusions without applying them to empirical observations. It is this very fine point that many seem to be missing which results in huge edifices of pure logic, which however have no relation to reality. That happens because, in order to turn an axiomatic edifice into a prescription, the ideologue needs to assume a fact, a descriptive concept for reality, and sneak that in as an immutable axiom as well. However, any assumptions that are not based in empirical testing cannot under any circumstances be considered true or unchallengeable.

Objectivism is a good example of this kind of fallacious thinking, as it tried to build itself on top of axioms (“A is A“) but in order to say anything of substance, had to assume facts out of thin air (eg “man qua man”), which of course, ended being it’s Achillean heel.

So to summarize: Mathematics do no describe reality, they merely provide the concept we need to do so. Mathematics do not provide any useful information, only the way to process it. Mathematics cannot prove or disprove anything, but can only draw our attention to missing facts, and that is only if we base them on previous proven facts, not assumptions.

Of course, one might rightly say now that this is all obvious and known. Perhaps, but in order to avoid confusions in my forthcoming posts, I think it’s important to lay some groundwork, and this should also provide an opportunity for people to point out errors in this analysis.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]