Semantic Baggage

"You can't step in the same river twice" according to Heraclitus is an example of a statement at a memetic level that bring a lot of invisible baggage with it. One can immediately engage cognitive functions to show how true it is. However, it invisibly brings a world view of constant change and flux that is at odds with a lot of our daily experiences. These experiences can be from our address remains the same, our relationships don't vary all the time, we don't lose our skills, ..... There are interesting philosophical roots for this notion. An innocent sounding "wise" phrase brings with it an entire world view which we may end up espousing without even realizing that we have pulled in to a semantic gravity well. Another way to think about is that such statements bring with them a frame that we enter without often realizing that we are not in a different "reality" / perspective / worldview.

Presuppositions and Logic Errors

If we have the presupposition that the world is a fair and just place, then it follows that what happens has to be cast in that light. The victim then has a causal relationship in what happened to them. The victim has to be responsible (in part?) for what happened to them, otherwise the presupposition is invalid. And since the presupposition is generally invisible and out of consciousness, victim blaming is the result. There is some psychological research on this phenomena.

Individual / Group Fractal

There seems to be a deep fractal pattern in behavior of an individual vs an individual as part of a group. We can see this from particles on up. A hydrogen atom by itself has different behavior characteristics than the same atom as part of an H₂O complex. Can we then fractally generalize this to: and individual person's characteristics / behavior pattern is different when that same person is part of a group, tribe, organization, nation, ...

More Thoughts About Moral Foundations

There are some earlier thoughts on Haidt's Moral Foundations model.Take the moral foundations model with the six foundations: The six foundations are Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Sanctity/degradation, Authority/subversion. It creates a characteristic "personality type" for an individual. This creates a bit of a "flat earth" model of a person's type. If we include the integral perspective, then people are at various level / stages of development. So, a conservative person can be at an ethnocentric level or an integral level. It seems to me that how a "conservative" at these different levels would behave, could / would be very different.

Thoughts About Moral Foundations Model

There are some earlier thoughts on Haidt's Moral Foundations model. It occurred to me that in a number of social science models, there is no linkage to biological structures as possible bases for the proposed model. Take the moral foundations model with the six foundations: The six foundations are Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Sanctity/degradation, Authority/subversion.

Pitfall in the Learning Process

When we are learning something new, e.g., a language, a programming language, math, ... we are in an open receptive mode. The syntax and grammar of what we are learning is often being assimilated into the neurology  past critical thinking filters or questions about the presuppositions built into the syntax and grammar of what we are learning. That syntax and grammar then become filters for what we perceive. They also limit the expressibility of what we perceive by the constraints of that same syntax and grammar.

Fairness as a value

Came across this article about how fairness is perceived differently by conservatives vs liberals. One way to parse the difference is that liberals want to satisfy needs, e.g., hunger for the poor (provide aid where it is needed). For conservatives, this is modified by whether those getting aid are deserving of  the aid, i.e., are they / have they worked, contributed, ... to deserve any aid.