Why we shouldn't leave anyone in charge

1. Leaving a set group of exclusive people in charge of society necessarily causes good ideas to get excluded from the meme pool.

2. On the other hand, getting rid of government really only means that a manmade government will be replaced by nature. This is why anarchism fails.

3. Therefore, the solution is to be ruled not by men, and not by nature, but by a methodology.

There is no President of the scientific community; on the other hand, "cryptozoologists" aren't considered real scientists for a reason.

All decisions should be made within the parameters of something akin to the scientific community; there is no qualitative difference between "We shouldn't waste resources" and "E=mc^2".

Mental disorders are slavery

Mental afflictions are caused by a combination of genes and environment, but often require a specific configuration of both in order to manifest. Properly changing the environment, then, even without actually changing the genes, would, in most cases, completely eliminate a given "disorder" -- so why, after having developed some arbitrarily defined mental "illness," are we taught that our thoughts are irrational, rather than that there is a mismatch between our genes and our environment?

Simple: because psychiatrists would be out of jobs if there were no more patients to retroactively treat

Imagine a world where, instead of abolishing slavery outright, we felt like we were doing the right thing by teaching American blacks that all that matters is that they're "cured" of their slavery -- while completely ignoring the responsible system. Instead of stopping slavery at its source, we'd "treat" slaves -- the "patients" -- by setting up slave-freeing services, which would require a small fee for our efforts. "Hey, I can get you off of this plantation. Just sign right here, and we'll have someone come by tonight to pick you up. Who's your insurance company?" In such a world, we could make ourselves feel good for freeing finite numbers of slaves while simultaneously making tons of money by doing so, because there would always be more slaves being born into the system to treat after the fact.

Metaphorically speaking, the solution to mental disorders is to abolish slavery (and to educate the population about its adverse effects). Literally speaking, it's to establish an entirely new societal system.

Mental disorders are not unique in this regard, of course. The underlying problem, itself both fundamental and abstract in nature, also manifests in the forms of: police forces, charity organizations, political lobbyists...

A note on the future directive of this blog

In the future, I will be making fewer posts on specific, derivative problems, even if they are fairly fundamental, as in the cases of suffering, the agenda of life, the eternal struggle between logic and sensation, etc. As previously stated, solving problems requires that we first solve the problem of being bad at solving problems -- in a word, meta-cognition. Actively and pragmatically refine cognitive processes and hardware, and you'll become much better at decision-making and problem-solving. Better yet, do this in iterative increments involving lots of testing for errors, and you'll be more likely to maximize your productivity. In short, it's more important to teach people how to arrive at conclusions than that they should arrive at your conclusions (bonus points if you don't ever draw any conclusions at all, given the inability to confirm your senses' reliability without relying on your senses, and instead merely act as though you draw conclusions out of practical necessity).

Plus, there are so many descendant problems all around us that, unless we work alongside those who process data using the same algorithms and mechanisms that we do, it doesn't matter whom we choose to support; we'll never get anything done. You can agree with liberals that the war in Iraq was a dumb idea, but that doesn't make you a liberal. Most people get something right, so declaring yourself a something-ist every time that you encounter a good idea is going to be quite tedious and time-consuming!

If you agree with someone, but have different reasons from him or her for your tentative conclusions, then your agreement is ultimately trivial. It is of no practical value to share commonalities when it comes to what you think, so long as you do not share commonalities when it comes to how you think. You may agree now, but if your mode of thinking allows you to change your mind, or if the other person uses his mode of thinking to arrive at an erroneous conclusion in another realm, then you are effectively wasting time by associating or working with him -- that is, unless you can help him see his errors, or vice versa.

So, then, let's get down to business: Bad memes prevent progress, and faulty cognitive agents and mechanisms prevent good memes from doing their jobs. Until we clean ourselves up, it doesn't really matter who agrees with whom -- we're all part of the problem.

No desire has ever been fulfilled for anyone

Our desires as living organisms accomplish absolutely nothing; their continued reintroduction into the environment, therefore, only drives the problem of sentience into perpetuity. Here's why:

Imagine having a swimming pool in your backyard that you fill at the start of the summer. On the first day, you go swimming for a few hours and have a lot of fun. At the start of the next day, however, you go outside to realize that the pool is, once again, empty. So you fill it again and have a great time for a second day in a row, though you're also wondering what could have possibly happened to the original water content with which you'd filled the pool the day before.

Upon waking on the third day, guess what? The pool is empty again. You have to get out the hose, the chlorine -- everything involved in keeping the pool clean and temperate. You do this laboriously, but when all of the hard work is done, you only have an hour to actually go swimming, meaning that most of the day was spent preparing yourself for the fulfillment of your desire instead of actually fulfilling it. "The preparation, the process of getting to the point of being able to swim, is also fun," you rationalize to yourself. "The work involved is what makes it all worth it."

This goes on for two weeks. At the start of every day, you have to fill the pool all over again, and this consumes the vast majority of time dedicated to your pool-related activities. Are you accomplishing something? Are you solving the problem of there being no water in the pool? No, but the renewed problem, to your psychology, is a good thing, because it gives you something to solve every day. Unlike in other areas of your life, where solving a problem is perceived as a good thing, the renewal of this problem seems to justify itself based on the intensity of your desire to go swimming. After all, you feel like swimming matters, so it must, right?

But wait! You don't just have one desire. No, you have a multitude of them: cars to keep clean, computers to maintain. Now, every morning, in addition to an empty pool, you're also presented with a car completely covered in mud and a computer without Internet access. Every day, not only do you have to fill up the pool, you also have to wash off the mud and call your ISP. It happens every day, and despite all your efforts, none of these problems is ever solved.

Eventually, you get tired of putting up with it all, so you decide to ignore the pool for a few weeks. "It can stay empty for a little while, I'm sure," you say to yourself. But then, something happens: the deprivation created by the lack of water in the pool causes you to contract AIDS. You've been punished for ignoring the problem!

Are any of the above any different from eating, sleeping, having sex, obtaining money, or enjoying so-called fun experiences? Once we satisfy our deprivations, do they ever go away, or do they come back as strong as ever in a relatively short amount of time? If it's all in good fun, then why are we punished so powerfully for ignoring the deprivations as they deepen? Why is the chase sane or logical? Why would we impose it on a new generation, other than to satisfy our egos?