List of New Concepts

Here are some of the concepts I've discussed on this blog.

Dolphin belief - an utterance where the apparent propositional, truth-claim part of it is less impotant than the emotional or group signaling content. The person saying a dolphin is not aware that this is what they're doing. Much of what humans say is like this, with the content of the statement just window-dressing for its true purpose. An actual meaningful truth claim is like a fish, while one of these utterances with decorative verbal content looks superfically the same, but is actually something completely different - like a dolphin. (More here.)

Viceroy authorities - there is a spectrum of justification of authority, from people who actually try to derive their authority from making true claims, and others whose principal aim is to manipulate others, regardless of the truth. Those who want to manipulate of course want to seem like (and often believe they are) justified authorities, so they imitate justified authority. Justified correct authorities are like monarch butterflies, and dogmatists aiming at manipulation are like viceroys trying to mimic them. (More here.)

White beast - the opposite of a bête noire. A white beast is a sacred object or event in the history of an identity-forming community - it is a usually a tragedy that has negative consequences for the community down to the modern day. The paradox is that when an outgroup suggests a remedy, even though a demand for justice over this tragedy is central to the group's identity, a remedy ironically threatens that identity, and is met with outrage from the outgroup which puzzles the outgroup. (More here.)

Inherent cyclic crisis - A process by which any dynamic organized entity (living things, organisms, individual humans and their beliefs, human organizations) must have inherent contradictions between the drive to avoid damage and dissolution, and the way they represent aversive stimuli, leading to a distorted model of the external world which results in either paroxysmal suffering or death. (More here.)

The ISE theory of dealing outsiders - humans have only devised three ways of dealing with other humans that do not follow the same moral authority - remaining Ignorant, treating them as Subhumans outside of moral consideration, or Evangelizing (assimilating) them.

The tyranny of territory stops us from having true choice and therefore brings competition between governments for human capital close to zero. Since social organization rests ultimately on the threat of violence, no one has thought of an effective way to have individuals be able to choose which agency they would like involved in which aspect of their life (i.e. I like the Nebraska DMV better than Idaho's, so I'll get my license there.) Rare exceptions exist such as international tax law but this applies to legal entities. The closest solution has been charter cities. A similar argument applies to living in a simulation - the hardware where your experience originates has to reside in physical space somewhere, even if distributed.

A substate of inherent cyclic crisis above: states demonstrate a 200 to 250 year cycle. This is most obvious in the case of China, only because China has a large fertile plain which lends itself to political unification and few neighboring states that can threaten them (with obvious exceptions.) But the same cycle can be seen applying to other states when it has the opportunity to run without interruption.

Population drops off west of the 100th meridian in the U.S. because around the time people reached that point, trains became a practical means of getting all the way to the coast.

When discussing the simulation argument, "simulation" is almost always poorly defined, and in a meaningful way, if you feel pain pleasure or emotion, you are in a simulation. Simulation argument proponents also smuggle in characteristics and motivaitons of the simulators (including the assumption that they exist and have intentions) similar to theology.

We should stop METI, or any attempt to actively alert aliens to our presence.

CLAHSF (pronounced "CLASH EFF") - the Coordinated Labor and Agriculture Hypothesis of State Formation. The nuclei of early civilizations was generally in agriculturally marginal environments (deserts with a river, arid cold plateaus.) In these environments, centrally coordinated agriculture (e.g. planting or harvesting in large numbers based on river flooding) could actually result in population growth, and there was no ability to leave the group and survive outside of the system. Centralized states with more coordination in warfare developed and dominated neighbors. This explains why places like Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, central Mexico or the Andes produced growing civilizations when more productive areas did not. The exception is China, but there, the chosen crop of rice demands similar central coordination. Could be thought of as the counterpart to Scott's Seeing Like a State. (More here.)

The Bad Stripe - in the U.S. there is a zone of low human development stretching from the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, down the Appalachians through West Virginia into Kentucky and Tennessee, where it turns west through Arkansas and into Oklahoma. This corresponds roughly to the areas settled by Border Reavers in Fischer's Albion's Seed, and could be called Greater Appalachia. (More here.)