Why Flawed Thinkers Failed to Identify Problems

A mechanic is attempting to diagnose a popping noise in the front end of your car. He knows that to properly diagnose a problem, he must first begin with assumptions that are true. As such, he begins with (claim 1) all of the universe is made up of space, matter, and/or energy. He then adds that (claim 2) The popping noise must itself be made up of space, matter, and/or energy; and so too, must the source of the noise.

Indeed, both claims are true, but what conclusion could result from this curious line of reasoning? The mechanic has framed the problem in such broad definitions that he is hardly closer to diagnosing the problem from the basis of these two claims than he was before introducing them.

For an argument to be both good and valid, the claims must be both true and precisely relevant. The mechanic failed in the latter test. To hammer this point in further, let us examine a few more examples of would-be problem solvers failing similarly.

A father addressing his sad teenager begins with (claim 1) sadness is a state to be avoided and (claim 2) discovering the source of the sadness will aid in avoiding this state. Neither of these claims furthers his position in identifying the cause of the sadness, yet both claims are clearly true and both are relevant to the issue. Unfortunately for the sad teen, neither of the claims are precise enough to lead to a useful or actionable conclusion. In fact, the claims are so imprecise that they were a waste of time to state.

A political pundit attempts to diagnose a particular conflict within society. He begins with (claim 1) this issue is between differing groups of people and (claim 2) culture differences result in conflict. As such, he ends with (conclusion) what we have is a culture war. In this last example and the topic of this essay, we have both claims and a conclusion. Note that both of the claims are stating the same thing (a useless redundancy), but even if the political pundit arrives at the culture war conclusion with different claims, he is not performing legitimate intellectual work because the conclusion, while obviously true, is too broad to contain meaning to his specific issue. Any conflict between people where two groups form on either side of the conflict is technically a culture war because "culture" is every interpersonal (and most personal) human action in a society.

Culture is the product of human choice.

Given this insight, his conclusion can actually be stated as:

What we have here is a difference in interpersonal and personal choices between two groups of people.

This statement is merely defining differences between groups of people. It is so broadly applicable that it cannot possibly lead to the addressing of specific problems. The conclusion of one argument often becomes one of the claims of another argument, which is what a sequence of logic is, after all. The political pundit uses the "culture war" appeal as the basis for his arguments, and as we will soon see, he repeatedly fails to solve problems or enlighten his audience beyond superficial outrage.

Let us accurately identify the source of several problems in society without appealing to the ill-defined "culture war" to illustrate its ineptness

Woke Corporations

Claim 1: A significant portion of large corporations are woke, where woke is defined as left-leaning statism.^*

Claim 2: A significant quantity of legislative powers exist which can be wielded arbitrary against businesses in the name of woke non-causes (where "cause" is a problem and a proposed solution).

This latter claim states that our government apparatus contains legislative powers that citizens can use arbitrarily to mulct their fellows in the name of issues inadequately identified or entirely imagined in the mind of the woke (left-leaning statist), such as government's supernatural ability to eliminate symbolic threats such as "extremism" or "hate" or "discrimination". Indeed, anti-discrimination lawsuits have recently become one of the greatest threats to a business's acquired wealth; and contrary to the woke's belief in the supernatural power of government, such powers have only resulted in the institutionalization of hate, only where the hate are targeted by their ability to compete and provide services to their communities. The liberal (or leftist or Marxist etc.) does indeed despise competition, unfettered innovation, and unregulated success of any man beyond his peers; and his very hatred of such innocuous (or beneficent!) actions is argued in terms of "anti-hate". Due to such contradictory argumentation, many people when given the opportunity now attempt to acquire their wealth in life by wielding these legislative powers against businesses of all sizes.

Given these two claims, both of which are incontrovertibly observed in modern American society, the conclusion that can be drawn is far more useful and precise than the modern conservative pundit's incessant appeals to "The Culture War!"

Broadly speaking, to arrive at one's own economic ends, one must be able to both acquire wealth and protect one's current wealth. Successful businesses are no exception. One need only ask if the hiring of pseudo-intellectuals such as the woke could be a form of wealth protection, and given our two claims, it is.

Conclusion: The corporations became woke, primarily in their Human Resources departments to protect themselves from arbitrary left-statist lawsuits.

If a person(s) is faced with being mulcted by others or faced with being looted by government, and his only recourse is to hire flawed scholars to maintain whatever arbitrary image the mulcters/looters want of him, then he must conform to those arbitrary standards or have his property taken from him. The corporations are woke for the same reason that the construction sector of the markets must follow costly and mostly useless safety protocol - to protect themselves from safety-related legislation which has become arbitrary.

It is the unique result of legal coercion that creates such bizarre scenarios such as woke HR departments and wasteful safety protocols in construction.

Racism!

The political pundit on both sides of the aisle failed to analyze this [non-]issue. One fabricates a scenario while the other fails to identify the source of the fabrication.

The Left claims it is an issue, mostly by mistaking opinion polls (and deeply flawed opinion polls, at that) as crime data; but a number of other fallacies he implements to support his hypothesis that racism (or "extremism" or "hate" or "discrimination") is significant threat include the citing of flawed statistical reports. ¹

Of course, the Right broadens the issue up to the useless category of "culture" instead of reducing the issue down to something more precise. The conservative is correct in that racism is trivial, but he is incapable of identifying the source of racism myths. We will now show where these left-statist myths originate.

In 2016, the Department of Homeland Security issued out a promise of $1 billion worth of grants to researchers in the fields of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism for the purpose of identifying (pseudo-scientific reports) and handling (censorship and indoctrination programs online) domestic threats. ² The implicit criteria, given that the funding would originate from the security state apparatus, is that the reports must be in the interest of the security state apparatus (i.e. the reports must conclude that more governing chastisement programs/agencies are required along with further looting of society via taxation and money printing). Of course, grants are merely excess taxation, and as such, entities given excess taxation for acts that benefit government indoctrination or censorship programs are by proxy, government officials themselves. The entities carrying out these demands are given the citizenry's stolen property (taxes) to benefit government. These entities are a form of proxy government tasked with carrying out that which government wishes to do but currently cannot.

Despite wielding awesome powers that the world had never seen before, these entities that refer to themselves as "counter-violent extremists" (CVEs) could not produce sound statistical measurements of extremisms and hate. Despite some of them having access to data on literally billions of devices, and the power to place government indoctrination in front of whomsoever they pleased, their data sets and lack of consistent scientific methodology were astounding, often resorting to changing definitions of words to suit their interests or appealing to emotion with tales of single individuals in lieu of proper data collection. Yet despite all of their intellectual shortcomings,³ their reports found their way onto state-funded academic institutions and policy institutes. From there, groups like Media Diversity Institute,and neo-Marxist groups cited the academics and policy scholars. Finally, NPR and mainstream news outlets cited those groups. At the beginning of it all was a handful of flawed CVE reports that originated from the promise of excess taxation.

The conservative pundit might still classify this as a "culture war", but that argument in isolation is a grave mistake because there is a major conceptual distinction to make here. That distinction is the dichotomy of force and liberty.

Claim 1: High-tech censorship and indoctrination programs online were incentivized, both financially and via legal privileges, by government.

Claim 2: Taxation and legal coercions are based on force or the threat of force.

Conclusion: What the public refers to as "big tech censorship" is government censorship/indoctrination and all citizens under the jurisdiction of that government are legally coerced into participating in such acts.

Censorship software programs (that the conservative pundit made his wealth on by producing empty headlines of) were developed by the counter-violent extremists...as was indoctrination software programs...as was online collective techniques to censor and indoctrinate. All of it was incentivized by government spending. This is censorship, indoctrination, and language degradation that has origins in force - not the free exchange. One does not pay taxes in the same way one purchases or sells on the market. One of these actions bears the threat of force (further fines, imprisonment, violence, etc.) if refused.

The conservative pundit fails in this topic twofold. First, he fails to precisely identify the source of the problem, ever labeling the issue at hand a culture issue. Secondly, since he fails to identify the source, he fails to identify the solution - he calls for more government! He calls for antitrust enforcement to be wielded against the tech platforms that host the CVEs programs, techniques, and propaganda. In short, he calls for more government to fix a problem that government is the source of, and he does this by ignorantly appealing a body of law that is arbitrary, manipulative to its illogical core, and dangerous [read about the logical fallacies of antitrust enforcement in V. The Great Legal Indoctrination of The Modern Control of Information].

Two of the largest topics discussed by the pundit were not solved by him. Instead, it was solved from careful argumentation and investigation - rationalism and empiricism. Primarily, the flaws of the pundit is failing to understand that his chosen field (politics) reduces down to two fundamental fields: economics and ethics. Hence, he is destined to never grasp the true nature of the evils he observes. He incessantly talks about Left and Right, yet he does not understand the source of the false political dichotomy. Stay tuned for that very essay: The Origin of Liberal and Conservative.

The Culture War Argument

Claim 1: To be understood, a problem must be precisely defined.

Claim 2: Appeals to culture cannot possibly be precise, by their very definition.

Conclusion: A socio-political problem cannot be addressed via the "culture war" appeal.

^* Left-leaning statism: Beliefs in publicly-owned government framed in the terms of "the good of society" or "the will of the people". Pro-government indoctrination from the basis of government beneficence programs.

[1] Offield, Kelly Chase. "America is Not Racist". The ARKA Journal.

[2] Offield, Kelly Chase. "Information Control in America". The ARKA Journal.

[3] Offield, Kelly Chase. "Propaganda Directory". The ARKA Journal.