Truth

I believe that the conscious act of planning, thinking and experimenting is the only truth there is, and that the particular thoughts, plans, processes and results that we generate in the process are transient artifacts.

Belief

I believe in beliefs, i.e., I believe in making basic assumptions.

Consistency

I believe that the human mind in trying to prove that it is consistent and complete, from within itself, it is proving exactly the opposite, i.e. that it is inconsistent.

Arguments

Based on my belief about the inconsistency of the human mind, I find myself going full circle back to my definition of truth, which is as intended in this progression of thought, i.e. the act of argument and not the particular results is the only truth.

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I look forward to seeing the result of your work implemented!

And thank you again for the debate.

Marc

Here is my final statement on the subject, taking into consideration your and Sam’s arguments.

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What is Truth?

I believe that the conscious act of planning, thinking and experimenting is the only truth there is, and that the particular thoughts, plans, processes and results that we generate in the process are transient artifacts.

What is Belief?

I believe in beliefs, i.e., I believe in making basic assumptions.

Future of Governance

My basic assumption is that the process of governing human societies in cyberspace will ultimately go back to the classical model we have today in the Western world. It may take 10, 20 or 50 years of experimenting with but I believe we will come full circle to what we have today.

I believe that the core governance process that is our democratic process (which is in essence the same basic idea as that invented by the Greeks, with several important innovations built on top of it) is immune to innovation in the short range. This belief applies to our core governance process now or at any time, i.e. it will always be immune to innovation in the short range. Change in such a process that is fundamental to our existence and progress tend to happen every so many thousand years, not at once in a broad manner.

I don’t believe that we will succeed in changing the core process that is the current process we have today. believe that we can innovate on top of it.

That does not mean we shouldn’t experiment with ideas.

So let’s think, plan and experiment and let’s do that differently (on purpose) because the particular thoughts, plans and experiments are nothing. The act of thinking, planning and experimenting is everything.

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Marc

However, I also think that Marc conflates various political ideals and governance modes, which are better distinguished:

1) it is useful to distinguish centralized networks, decentralized networks, and distributed networks

2) it is useful to distinguish hierarchical modes of governance, heterarchical modes of governance, and distributed modes of governance

3) peer projects, in distributed networks, use modes of govenrance that cannot, and should not, be equated with the heterarchical decentralized model of parliamentary democracy

There is no such thing as a 10,000 year experience with our current, and limited form of democracy. Most modes of egalitarian governance, before class society, and outside the limits of the influence of empires, such as the village level, had distributed and consensus-based modes of governance, as there was no outside agent of coercion. The Athenian democracy cannot be equated with the current format.

Peer governance is best applied to peer groups in common projects; democratic governance besta applied when different interest groups are at stake; but it can be enriched with forms of multistakeholdership inspired by peer governance.

In any case, democracy and peer governance cannot be limited to the sphere of politics, cannot be limited to electoral politics, and should be freed of a state beholden to corporate interests.

I posted this on Sam’s blog

Sam,

Thank you for taking the time to debate it.

I believe that we are talking at vastly different levels of interpretation, almost completely different levels of meaning.

Your view is correct from your level and mine I hold to be correct from my level.

It has received extremely excited attention from normal folks because the meaning conveyed is at their level and that is by intention.

Imagine comparing two algorithms written in two computer languages such as assembly and C#.

They may achieve the same purpose but they cannot be compared line by line.

The key decider in my opinion is how the people (average everyday people in this case, including Web designers, bloggers and the like, who are my audience) react to the message.

Many such people have been heavily influenced by it, already, or so it seems from their writing about it.

Thank you again for the review.

I believe that our arguments are exactly like two algorithms written in different languages (e.g. asm vs C#) that cannot be compared line by line, yet they may very well be intended to achieve the same purpose.

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Addendum:

To stress the avove, I believe we’re run into a level-of-meaning issue, which is a real issue… as real as comparing assembly language encoding of the CLR functions, data and flow to the C# representation. They’re two vastly different systems of logic. A line by line comparison just won’t work.

Having said that, my belief (stated at my level of meaning, or that which I use to convery meaning to others) is that the core of the governance process is so fundamental that innovation in it happens over thousands of years not thousands of days.

We tried all forms of governance throughout our human existence and the system was invented 2000 years ago (or more) by the greeks (i.e. democracy) is basically the same as our current best system for governing human society. We tried many different systems, including socialism, dictatorships, free-market-flavored dicatorships etc. We know from evidence (whatever we consider to be evidence) that the best is the kind of system we have in the Western world.

If we build structures that enhance this core system then I don’t see the trouble. But if we attempt to change the core design of the system then I’m afraid that we would realize sooner or later that this kind of fundamental process is immune to innovation over the short range.

That is my belief.

Thank you for your detailed agrument. I do understand the points you made and agree with them at your level of meaning, but they cannot be mapped line by line to the level of meaning I use to convey ideas to everyday people.

It’ll everyday people who’ll make an idea like this (i.e. how to move forward) live or die.

🙂

Marc

Marc