SF: The Dosadi Experiment, Frank Herbert, 1970's
This story by the genius Frank Herbert, has the best one paragraph exegesis of the socialist honey trap I have ever come across. It goes like this:
Behavioral engineering in all of its manifestations always degenerates into merciless manipulation. It reduces all (manipulators and manipulated alike) to a deadly 'mass effect'. The central assumption, that manipulation of individual personalities can achieve uniform behavioral responses, has been exposed as a lie by many species, but never with more telling effect than by the Gowachin on Dosadi. Here, they showed us the "Walden Fallacy" in ultimate foolishness, explaining, "Given any species which reproduces by genetic mingling such as every individual is a unique specimen, all attempts to impose a decision matrix based on assumed uniform behavior will prove lethal".
---The Dosadi Papers
BuSab Reference
The story also shows how traits can become established in a natural or artificially selected manner.
Behavioral engineering in all of its manifestations always degenerates into merciless manipulation. It reduces all (manipulators and manipulated alike) to a deadly 'mass effect'. The central assumption, that manipulation of individual personalities can achieve uniform behavioral responses, has been exposed as a lie by many species, but never with more telling effect than by the Gowachin on Dosadi. Here, they showed us the "Walden Fallacy" in ultimate foolishness, explaining, "Given any species which reproduces by genetic mingling such as every individual is a unique specimen, all attempts to impose a decision matrix based on assumed uniform behavior will prove lethal".
---The Dosadi Papers
BuSab Reference
The story also shows how traits can become established in a natural or artificially selected manner.
This can happen when (a)narchistic personalities settle and enjoin in trade. Self-rule yet mutual benefit.
The Objectivist's Ethics provides reason for both.
Descartes: Cogito ergo sum.
Dan Appleton (Quora, Dec. 2021; What is the human mind, how does it work and what is its future?) Quod cogito ergo sum (It thinks therefore I am) Lesson: Beware of what messages are noise or information (Claude Shannon; Information Theory); this requires objective base from which to evaluate.
Perhaps a twist of Christian expression. Instead of "Forgive them for they know not what they do"; Forgive them for they know not what they are ..... goes both ways on the manipulation spectrum.
Welcome to The Gulch
What Descartes really meant: I am, therefore I think. For some at any rate. Most humans just ARE. But then, I have always felt mathematicians should stick to mathematics, and not try to solve problems of existence.
Humans, with expressive language and opposable digits, created tools. Tools created trading as insights and techniques of individuals merged. We are Traders, ephemeral and technological.
I Think requires expressive conceptualization through language. Therefore I Am is the resultant identification of singularity, aware of self.
"Most humans just ARE". No are-gument there!
If I Had a Million Dollars
And its importance in ability to understand cause and effect, actions and consequence.
That's another thing with me: I tend to see the forest, the overall effect of tying together different threads to make a whole.
As for thinking, there are different types of thinking. So your 'expressions' in language are not always in tune with thinking or reasoning. Analysis is only one way of attempting to represent and control our environment. In fact, your thinking in this comment seems more on the level of a 'syncretism' of different types of say, details of thought; but not reason per se.
Awareness
Involvement
Commitment
Evaluation
Insight
Trust
Wisdom (Hopefully the ontological expression of simplicity beyond complexity)
At each stage Evaluation is the central mechanism. Is it objective or subjective? It all depends on the individual. Has the individual settled with belief as foundational for their perspective?
When you get into singularity, I think of the awesomeness of space and time; and the abstractions of vector algebra. Don't try using works like 'numinous' and stuff like that, because I will laugh at you. Or with you.
So it appears we may never conceptualize on the same page or even same volume of the space encyclopedia.
At a psychology convention in France he took a break. Sat next to an old man on a bench and managed to convey the question: What is your philosophy of life? The old man replied: Keep your mind full and your bowels empty.
Numinous? I had to look that up. Now I'm thinking of creating a whimsical acronym. Because I can.
When we withdraw, we leave the world to the 'sinners' or in this case, the 'haters'.
I think Rand used the Gulch in Atlas Shrugged as the ideal, to demonstrate that choice is the foundation of freedom. The working title of the novel was "The Strike", what would happen should the producers withdraw to a place suited for those freedom lovers who understood responsibility. And the effect of producers not producing stopped the world, period.
But today we are faced with a more severe problem: the existence of technology that could destroy us, even in isolated places like Chile.
I find the effort sharpens my clarity of thought and ability to communicate issues. For example, why hydrogen is so silly. One of my soccer-buddies sons just challenged me on this last Sunday. Lots of circular arguments and lack of technical clarity, but I was able to take him on like Robin Hood sword fighting with an unnamed man-at-arms.
Most of the messages are noise and not information. It does give a good example of the rhetoric of which humans are capable.