Early this year I was mad at a friend
And I was also I was right
But I remembered he is a friend
And kept my mouth shut tight

Some time passed and then some more
And now we talk again
For talking is what friends are for
Not to defeat and win

Truth statements about reality come from where they come. They are not post-facto made into science if they are accurate. Nor are they post-facto made into falsehood if they do not come from science. A truth statement about reality can come from a poem. Just a poem, not a science-poem, not a poem subject to a refutation.

Karl Popper writes about tradition as being a story, and science being a story, and either may be an accurate story or a useful story. So how are they different? Science includes a refutation component. That refutation component is the only thing that differentiates science stories from other stories. But Popper writes in Conjectures and Refutations (and everywhere else he writes) that the other stories are not lesser stories, and that one can become the other. This past-few-thousand-years bubble (at most) of science has done much! But the stories of tradition has done and continue to do much more. It’s residual Marxism to think science supplants tradition, that progress exists, it’s creationism applied to history. Science is one story among many, a story with a refutation burden that other stories are free from. A newer story but not a better one.

Like a lobster
In a pot
We just watch
As things get hot

If we can
We should climb out
But if we can’t
No need to shout

It’s kind of sad
But here’s the thing
The Gods feed on
Our suffering

In the past, the priesthood held literacy itself, maybe a few merchants and royalty could read and write but mostly nobody else. This model lasted a long time and does still exist. But with the internet a couple different models were added. One of them is that the data goes back and forth. First, people put in their photos to Flickr to build “community.” Second, Flickr gets bought and is now owned by big data. Third (the new part) people / groups pirate Flickr content back out of big data. So big data still owns it in court but not in action. Same with music, books, more. This new back and forth model is not the main model but it’s in there.

“What is the source of morality?” As if morality were like hydrogen, one thing that is itself in every instance throughout the entire universe. As if morality were like “measurement” – as if how much does a thing (cost / weight / move / occupy space / etc.) were all the same because they are all “measurement.”

I think “morality” is an over-broad category that includes and excludes whatever the speakers prefer it to include and exclude. Every argument for and against and about morality is equally correct, because it’s an overly-broad category that gets defined to make the speaker into a good guy. Morality, in full: good is good, bad is bad, good is not bad, bad is not good.

“The criminal returns to the scene of the crime”

Also defines the crime the first time.

Because he before it, and he after all

Committed the crime – because he’s a criminal.

The truth is manifest.
Oppression causes rebellion.
Equality.
Prayer works.

These survival all counter-examples.

If you’re going to fight battles
Know when the battle is done
“This is a battle I lost”
“This is a battle I won”