Truth

Katerina Witt

 (I could not find a suitable picture of Ludwig Wittgenstein so I got one from my date with Katerina Witt.)

Although we have all grown up idolizing Wittgenstein, his assumption of a world of facts is a metaphysicsal construct that sort of assumes what it was to prove, at least in the dim-light-bulb factory of my head.

Propositional logic applies to propositions. Period. A true proposition corresponds to a Fact in the world, at least we hope so.
However, there are no "true" facts in the world - "true" in the same sense as propositions are true.
Wittgenstein wants a Fact to stand for what-is-the-case, which is the surrogate for "true" in the logic of non-propositional worlds.

OK. But how does one finds these happy, happy facts?

We have religion and politics. Consider them. In politics, in a political party, we may have millions of adherents, each of whose belief system varies from that of their fellows in small degree or in large degree; they may contain contradictions.
Indeed, our own beliefs may contain contradictions, for as Christians we believe in love and peace, but as political Christians , we believe in force and compulsion... and that is the way of all flesh.

How does one describe these belief systems? Obviously if they contain contradictions, they cannot correspond to a Fact of the world in the Wittgenstein sense. Even if they differ in varying degrees, it is difficult how to see they correspond to any Fact.

Any reality may have a logic. Propositions have propositional logic. Then there are facts of the world and Wittgenstein tried to speak of what was almost unspeakable: the underlying Facts of the world. These Facts have their own logic, and their "truth value" is defined as "what-is-the-case"

It really does not work.
I also think Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism is responsible for his ability to envisage a clean and pure Fact - sort of like Descartes' clear and distinct ideas - which stands in Being as a tangible and non-volatile What-Is-The-Case.

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Fake News?

 A Photo of A Self-Contradictory Headline

Many people are writing about Fake News, but the irony of writing about fake news seems to escape their understanding.
Essentially, if all news is fake, then the reporting on fake news is fake also. Sort of the Cretan Liar paradox made new.


Mainstream Media is Now Whining About the “Fake News” Hysteria It Created
Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Dec 29, 2016 at 10:54 am
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/12/29/mainstream-media-is-now-whining-about-the-fake-news-hysteria-it-created/

After coming under attack, the alternative media successfully appropriated and reassigned the now ubiquitous term “fake news” to a variety of disingenuous mainstream media outlets. The corporate media is not too happy about this, and is doing what it does best (aside from cheerleading for war). It’s whining about it to its readers.

Nothing more perfectly highlights the mainstream media’s instinctual response to complain than an article published on Christmas Day in The New York Times, which reinvents history by claiming alternative media is to blame for turning “fake news” into an overly expansive and thus meaningless term. Here are a few excerpts:

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as “left-wing fake news.”

Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. “The fake news is the everyday news” in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. “They just make it up.”

Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of “Fake news!”

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.

The line highlighted above is a complete fabrication, and is either the result of extreme ignorance or intentional deceit. Either way, The New York Times should be ashamed of itself.

“Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue,” said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. “Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we’re doing a disservice to lump all those things together.”

As someone who followed the fluid and rapid progression of the “fake news” meme very closely, I can tell you that it didn’t happen the way The New York Times claims...

It is all full of sound and fury and self-righteousness...
Yet it is - like everything these days - fake.

That's why I stopped writing the past year... the year of our accepting our self deceptions.

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Tantalos Shrugged

I was spending a hour yesterday reading about the allies of Troy in the Trojan War. In particular, I read about the Thracians and the Phrygians. I think I became interested as I had yesterday put up a post with a picture of Helen and Paris in which Paris was wearing a Phrygian cap:

Helen on the left, Paris on the right

Phrygia was a land approximately in the middle of Asia Minor. In the Trojan War, we have the Greeks (Argives, Achaeans, Danaans, etc.) in the West, the Trojans and the Phrygians and the other Trojan allies in the East and Northeast, and the Aegean Sea in the middle.
This same area was to be the setting for the war between the Greeks and the Persians centuries later.

I referred to Wikipedia for some quick references to Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and other allies of Troy in Asia Minor:
Phrygians. (2015, October 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:35, November 9, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phrygians&oldid=686383740

[...]

Mythological Accounts
The name of the earliest known mythical king was Nannacus (aka Annacus).[4] This king resided at Iconium, the most eastern city of the kingdom of Phrygia at that time, and after his death, at the age of 300 years, a great flood overwhelmed the country, as had been foretold by an ancient oracle. The next king mentioned in extant classical sources was called Manis or Masdes. According to Plutarch, because of his splendid exploits, great things were called "manic" in Phrygia.[5] Thereafter the kingdom of Phrygia seems to have become fragmented among various kings. One of the kings was Tantalus who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished in Tartarus, because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

(emphasis mine)

I came to an abrupt halt. What lotteries were these? I do not think I have ever heard of the lotteries of Tantalus. So I began to look around for some starting points where I could commence my search.

Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia entry for "Tantalus" does not mention it.
Tantalus. (2015, November 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:42, November 9, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tantalus&oldid=689697146

but there is more information by which you may recall Tantalus:

...Tantalus's punishment for his act, now a proverbial term for temptation without satisfaction (the source of the English word tantalise[19]), was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone like the one that Sisyphus is punished to roll up a hill.[20] This fate has cursed him with eternal deprivation of nourishment...

Tantalus was reputed to be rich. Another king of Phrygia was Midas of the golden touch, and Croesus - "rich as Croesus" - was a Lydian king whose realm included Phrygia. Tantalus' father was Zeus and his mother was the nymph Plouto, and "plouto" meaning "rich, wealthy" can refer to absolute riches or it can be a euphemism for the gods of the underworld.

From the Suidas, Porus and Kuster, 1705 edition:

which in Greek and Latin describes the saying applied to someone very rich, that is, "he gathers the talents of Tantalus", where "talent" is a Greek word for a large sum of money.

The word outlined in red is a declensional form of "plouto", meaning wealth and also being the name of the nymph who was Tantalus' mother.

But there is no mention of "lotteries"

However, it seems that subsequently people using Wikipedia may have mentioned "lotteries" to a very great degree. Searching on Google using "Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented" :

1)LiquiSearch
 Phrygia- The Mythic Past
http://www.liquisearch.com/phrygia/mythic_past

...he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

no citation to any source

2) Atlantipedia
Turkey, Phrygia
http://atlantipedia.com/doku.php?id=turkey_phrygia
...because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...
no citation to any source

3) Hurdan Answers
Tantalus
http://www.hurdan.com/q/tantalus

Tantalus » was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries Tantalus had invented »

no citation to any source

4)Omics International
Phrygians
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Phrygians

...One of the kings was Tantalus who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished in Tartarus, because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented...

no citation

This goes on for a while.
There is no reference to the lotteries of Tantalus anywhere I can find in the ancient literature, nor in the philological work up to the present, until the mentions made at present, and all of these quotes are exactly the same, indicating that they were copied whole from some basic source.

The only thing I can possibly think of is that possibly someone has seen klērourgia which is a word based upon klēros, meaning "lot", as in "casting or drawing lots". The word klēros may also meant a "lot (of land)", "an estate", and klērourgia means "inheritance (of estates)".

There could be an accusation of theft of inheritances, but I cannot find it anywhere else.

Case in point:

Today on Facebook a friend posted an excerpt from a book of something wherein there was a list of some things that Mr. Obama once asserted to be true and turned out to be false.

This seems to be some sort of support for Ben Carson's fast-and-loose... with-the-truth.
(Sort of a Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly Syndrome, possibly stemming from the trauma Mr. Carson experienced when he stabbed his best friend.)

The trouble is, where do the assertions come from? With Carson, we have the documents in the case in front of us. With Mr. Obama's past, we have nothing but our faith in the goofiness of politics and what someone says on Facebook. And as far as whether Mr. Obama's assertions listed were true of not, that is too much dependent upon our predetermined world view.

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The Laughing Curve

Laughing all the way to the bank, that is, with trickle-down monies that somehow were stuck in the spigot and never made it down to the rest of of us schnorrers.

What does one make of an economist who writes an opinion in a prestigious daily newspaper about matters that seem to have been politically distorted?

First piece,

The Laffer Curve turns 40: the legacy of a controversial idea
By Stephen Moore December 26, 2014
Stephen Moore is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and a co-author with Arthur Laffer of “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States.”

... Even liberals unwittingly acknowledge the Laffer Curve truth when they support higher tobacco taxes to stop smoking or a new carbon tax to reduce global warming. If higher carbon taxes reduce CO2 emissions, why is it so hard to understand that higher taxes on work or investment lead to less of these?

When I asked Laffer if, 40 years later, there is any point of consensus in economics on the Laffer Curve, he replied: “I think today everyone agrees with the premise that when you tax something you get less of it, and when you tax something less, you get more of it.”

My favorite portion is that which I underlined.
First, higher tobacco taxes were intended to help pay for the social costs of smoking... well, maybe not totally:

http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/tobacco.htm

... Unequal taxation amounts to subjugation, and in the smoker’s case… callous subjugation. It is clear, the states have abandoned all notions of protecting the rights of its citizens… only the pretext of protection remains. Health is not the issue in the state’s war on tobacco… the states don’t give a damn about health... zero, nada, zilch.

If they did they’d be forking out their tobacco revenue on actual treatments. Further, most states have actually cut their tobacco prevention programs and in many states as much as 75% of tobacco revenue goes into their general fund. The remaining 25% is spent mainly on administrating nothingness and thus serves their empire-building agenda more than ill-affected smokers. Of little substance, these programs are empty shells with a facade psychologically engineered to reflect otherwise.

In other words, outcomes are a little messy, but he is pretending that for the Laffer curve they are precise.
Furthermore, when speaking of CO2 emissions, the writer willfully ignores the fact that a CO2 tax would not lead to less energy all around, but would lead to replacement sources of energy... you know, like capitalist economist like to say, "Creative Destruction!"  Destroy the old way and new sites of investment will arise!

Paul Krugman responded:
The New York Times
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/lies-damned-lies-and-reaganolatry/?_r=0
Lies, Damned Lies, and Reaganolatry
December 27, 2014 3:23 pm

... He [Moore] declares that under Reagan

the government’s budget numbers show that tax receipts expanded from $517 billion in 1980 to $909 billion in 1988 — close to a 75 percent change (25 percent after inflation).

I have a suspicion that the Post forced him to include the inflation-adjusted number, rather than let him get away with the gee-whiz nominal number, which is, um, inflated by the relatively high rate of inflation that prevailed even in the later Reagan years. In any case, however, Moore offers no context, leaving the impression that this was an extraordinary achievement.

So I looked at real federal receipts over a longer period, shown above using a log scale so that the slope of the line represents the rate of growth. If you take the period Reagan was in the White House, 1981:1 to 1989:1, I get an increase of 14.3 percent; I’m not sure why Moore’s number is bigger, but never mind. What you might want to do, however, is compare that performance with the 8 years preceding and the 8 years following. And here’s what we get:

1973:1-1981:1: 30.3%
1981:1-1989:1: 14.3%
1989:1-1997:1: 31.4%

Laffer roolz! Or maybe not.

Does the WaPo mind being used as a platform for deliberately deceptive innuendo, with some plain old falsehoods thrown in for good measure?

Mr. Moore does work for The Heritage Foundation, which is now run by the Republican ex-Senator Jim DeMint. I find it extremely difficult to believe Mr. DeMint would approve of stretching the truth so far, but he can't be everywhere at once, sticking his finger in the dike of falsehoods that pours out from The Heritage Foundation.

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Truth: "I Coulda Been A Contender..."

...instead of a bum, which is what I am !!!" -
a quote of Truth, as reported in the news.

I got some heat for saying there is no Truth. The problem with Truth - absolute truth - is that everyone essentially proves its existence by assuming the fact which is to be proved. Duh. Some people said God exists and God is Truth. The heck He is. And you will find that if you keep trivializing the deity by trying to apply your inadequate concepts to it, you will not be happy at the outcome.

There is no Truth. There is God. Truth is not what God sez. What we say may or may not be true. Not God. God is the One. There are no distinctions within God. And all distinctions are potential there. Think of love. We use words to try to describe it, but the proof of love is in the acts of love. In those actions is the reality, the understanding, the "truth" of love. We know this. God is the act of all acts, the very act of existing and creating. Within this maelstrom is the "truth" you wish to disentangle, separate, and set up on some pedestal.

Try and separate the milk from your latte.

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