In previous item:
Every real experience has non-verbal cultural factors that can’t be acquired through books or Google.
This meshes with my assertion that secrecy is the default. Secrecy in this form is not enforced by government rules and censors; it arises from the natural barrier around the culture and experience of a group. The culture simply CAN’T be transferred in words.
Jury service is the clearest example. Media and schools spread verbal myths about juries. The school myths are overly idealistic, and the media myths are overly cynical. After you go through the process you know what really happens, and you end up trusting juries more than other governing procedures.
Bookkeeping: When you spend all day entering numbers in opposing columns and then adding the columns to reach a balance at the end of the day, you naturally acquire a sense of responsibility and integrity. You’re offended at every attempt to distort numbers or reports, because the distortion WILL break the balance. Afterward, you trust ledger-like processes more than other structures.
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Reprinting an item on secrecy that fits into today’s other topics…
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If we start from my unconventional thought that secrecy is the default, what happens? If we treat this as the baseline assumption, what about “innovation” and “robust debate”?
First some clarification. I’m talking about secrecy and language within a family or tribe or guild, not secrecy between all individuals. Language forms the circle and keeps outsiders at bay. Secrecy inside the guild is natural and easy. Secrecy between individuals (within the circle) is not natural and interferes with civilization. Modern technology is designed to break down the natural forms of secrecy. Destroy the workplace, destroy the family, destroy clubs and Mutual Benefit Associations. The state penetrates all boundaries.
I was casting around for a way to organize this random crap, until I read this proposal for breaking an important part of secrecy. “Transparency” is a favorite fake goal of reformers. “Transparency” breaks the privacy of the guild.
“Transparency” in the process of research and development would ruin research, because competing teams with more money would be able to catch the idea and frontrun it.
This was the original purpose of the Web. NSA wanted a way to catch research ideas early in their formation so NSA could get ahead of them. It’s bad enough to have NSA frontrunning all your tentative thoughts and hypotheses, but it would be vastly worse if the team at MIT could see an early form of a brilliant idea or clever experiment at Podunk Community College.
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Polistra's Mill 