what i'm doing is very dry, and i've been easily distracted.
i'm going to try to focus again. soon.
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
what does a tabula rasa mean in the context of modern science?
we are not literally born with empty brains, but what role genetics plays on our cognitive development is still a pretty open question, and there really isn't any evidence to actually support the premise that it plays a great role. i think it's important to kind of take a step back and ask the question what is a gene, actually and the answer is that it's an instruction set to code for the production of hormones. it's not some magical thing; it's something very concrete. it follows that what genetics can do is really limited to the production of hormones, and that the role that genetics may play in more complicated development questions is really limited to the role that the hormones may play. while hormones do inform questions of sexual identity, as well as perhaps of sexual orientation in some contexts, it's harder to understand how hormones might potentially alter cognitive development, except in terms of perhaps providing for a greater opportunity to build capacity (that is physically store learning opportunities) under the presence of certain nutritional pre-requisites. that is, maybe some people may be born genetically configured with more brain-building hormones. but, you still need to allow for experience to actually allow for those learning opportunities - it is still a tabula rasa, in the sense of knowledge that exists, even if there are genetic factors underlying how efficiently what exists can be stored.
the idea that you're born more intelligent than other people is consequently probably absolute nonsense, even if the idea that some people are born with a larger cognitive potential is not. that is properly understanding the role of genetics in the tabula rasa question, which is restricting the role of genetics to a set of questions that don't directly address it, but rather set up the necessity of actual learning for the implied system to function, anyways.
what about these ideas that language and whatnot are in-born? well, again, that doesn't actually address the question of tabula rasa. humans may have a region in their brain that deals specifically with language, but it needs to be input a language in order to function. so, pointing to the brain as possessing language processing capabilities does nothing to address the tabula rasa hypothesis.
rather, consider an infant raised alone, without the use of language. that would be cruel, and i doubt it's been done, but would that infant spontaneously learn the language of it's parents, with no contact to it? no. like all advanced mammals, the human needs to be taught the language. we don't need to do that experiment to know it's true, but we know that adopted children will learn the language they are taught, rather than spontaneously start speaking the language of their parents.
there is still no hard-wired language, then, even if there are hard-wired language abilities. but, it is the former question that informs the question of a tabula rasa, not the latter.
then, what is this language processing ability in that region in your brain? well, it's just an organ in your body like any other. your stomach seems to know what it's doing, but it's just operating on chemical instructions. ultimately, it's processing information from outside of the body in the way it was programmed to do. it's just the same thing for that part of your brain.
so, i want to separate between the realization that there are certain mechanical functions in your brain and the question of whether the mind is a blank slate, or not. one does not disprove the other, it merely puts bounds around how such a blank slate would operate.
we are not literally born with empty brains, but what role genetics plays on our cognitive development is still a pretty open question, and there really isn't any evidence to actually support the premise that it plays a great role. i think it's important to kind of take a step back and ask the question what is a gene, actually and the answer is that it's an instruction set to code for the production of hormones. it's not some magical thing; it's something very concrete. it follows that what genetics can do is really limited to the production of hormones, and that the role that genetics may play in more complicated development questions is really limited to the role that the hormones may play. while hormones do inform questions of sexual identity, as well as perhaps of sexual orientation in some contexts, it's harder to understand how hormones might potentially alter cognitive development, except in terms of perhaps providing for a greater opportunity to build capacity (that is physically store learning opportunities) under the presence of certain nutritional pre-requisites. that is, maybe some people may be born genetically configured with more brain-building hormones. but, you still need to allow for experience to actually allow for those learning opportunities - it is still a tabula rasa, in the sense of knowledge that exists, even if there are genetic factors underlying how efficiently what exists can be stored.
the idea that you're born more intelligent than other people is consequently probably absolute nonsense, even if the idea that some people are born with a larger cognitive potential is not. that is properly understanding the role of genetics in the tabula rasa question, which is restricting the role of genetics to a set of questions that don't directly address it, but rather set up the necessity of actual learning for the implied system to function, anyways.
what about these ideas that language and whatnot are in-born? well, again, that doesn't actually address the question of tabula rasa. humans may have a region in their brain that deals specifically with language, but it needs to be input a language in order to function. so, pointing to the brain as possessing language processing capabilities does nothing to address the tabula rasa hypothesis.
rather, consider an infant raised alone, without the use of language. that would be cruel, and i doubt it's been done, but would that infant spontaneously learn the language of it's parents, with no contact to it? no. like all advanced mammals, the human needs to be taught the language. we don't need to do that experiment to know it's true, but we know that adopted children will learn the language they are taught, rather than spontaneously start speaking the language of their parents.
there is still no hard-wired language, then, even if there are hard-wired language abilities. but, it is the former question that informs the question of a tabula rasa, not the latter.
then, what is this language processing ability in that region in your brain? well, it's just an organ in your body like any other. your stomach seems to know what it's doing, but it's just operating on chemical instructions. ultimately, it's processing information from outside of the body in the way it was programmed to do. it's just the same thing for that part of your brain.
so, i want to separate between the realization that there are certain mechanical functions in your brain and the question of whether the mind is a blank slate, or not. one does not disprove the other, it merely puts bounds around how such a blank slate would operate.
at
21:57
there's a fiscal update today and it's going to be very scary and everything, but something that hasn't been reported on is that the government created this debt by printing money through the bank of canada rather than by borrowing it on the market from private banks. in printing this money interest-free, the government did the right thing in picking the more responsible way for governments to pump money into the economy; the result is internal national debt and not private or external debt, so the primary longterm issue surrounding this debt, namely interest payments, is of a very different nature than the type of debt we're used to talking about.
normally, when the government borrows money, it does so by taking a private loan out from a private bank, which many people (myself included.) think is sort of insane. they just borrow money on the market like everybody else, and then have to pay interest on the amount borrowed from the bank to the bank. there is some shoddily written theory underlying this to poorly justify it, but it's obvious that the truth is just that the bankers run the world and have designed the system so that they can get their pound of flesh.
that's not what this debt is. instead, the government printed bonds and then printed money at the central bank, interest free, to buy those bonds. in a modern economy, buying up bonds with printed money is what the government does when it seeks to expand the money supply, not what it does when it seeks to go into debt; this would have been less unusual before the nixon shock, but this is an unusual step to take in the post bretton woods system, where debt is supposed to be privately held. what it indicates is the severity of the situation, and how the pandemic is different than a budget deficit.
the bank of canada is in complete control of this debt, because it’s entirely of it’s own creation; they're in debt to themselves. they could, in the end, just destroy the bonds, which would undo the expansion of the money supply. more likely is that the bonds will be sold to mutual funds, meaning that this is likely to work out to a strict expansion of the money supply, as the assets just get shifted to the markets, albeit in slow motion. the bank of canada will then recover the debt it incurred to buy the bonds when it sells the bonds, and we just end up with more money in circulation, in the long run. money creation of this sort is broadly inconsequential, and largely good for the economy, as it’s just fiscal stimulus.
as mentioned, taking on this kind of debt is unusual in the really existing system of global capitalism, for shaky economic reasons that have really just been speciously upheld by the media-academic complex to ensure that the bankers get their cut. frankly, in terms of actual economic outcomes, the most lasting effect is likely to be a decreased level of competitiveness for the canadian dollar; actual inflation in the price of goods doesn't seem to ever happen from macreoeconomic effects. that’s an entirely debunked pseudo-academic non-theory with absolutely no empirical and absolutely no theoretical basis. it’s a total mythology derived from absolutely nothing.
yes, these numbers are going to be scary and, in response, you're going to see certain segments of the elite attempt to exploit and capitalize off of the crisis as they argue for the need to implement budget austerity and sell-off publicly owned resources to the private sector in order to implement a shock doctrine of structural readjustment programs, like the imf just woke up from a wet dream. this is coming. it’s the reason why i was so apprehensive about creating so much debt, as i didn’t want it to lead to a backdoor for the imf into the country.
however, the government actually created this debt responsibly. this debt is not real, it's just a slow motion expansion of the money supply. there is no justification for the imf to stomp it’s way in here and start smashing skulls and bludgeoning everything.
that said, certain metrics do need to be kept within certain limits in order to keep the imf away and it is imperative that everybody realizes that and seeks to hold the government to reasonable budget restraints that mostly have to do with debt-gdp ratios. this doesn’t apply to the united states, but canada has bondholders out there, and those bankers need their flesh.
at
08:36
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)