Foundations of Concepts (2-3:A)

[Note: This is part two of a three part introductory series to my blog, all three posts are prerequisites to every other post but for this post in particular, its important to have gone through the first entry and to have fully absorbed its implications for how you piece together the world in your mind, this took me months on my own with no real guidance however it is my hope that I was able to save you some time with my explanation. My experience was that almost every conclusion I had arrived at was flawed in this non-reflective way with the eventual arrival and ongoing process of examining my own foundations and the realization that there are always competing values to consider.]

Concepts are built up from values and facts, this INTERPLAY between the different parts of reality along with the way you choose to respond to those scenarios combines together on a lower level to form independent concepts that can be inserted or replaced with other concepts in someone's argument depending on the context.  This may seem self evident to most but the reason why I feel this is worth spelling out and more importantly drawing a distinction in the mind is how fluid individual concepts are, how a concept is not dependent on the much larger 'Belief System' or presented argument and can be adopted or examined in isolation which helps with bridging the differences between two individuals who seem to have no way to reconcile their differences.  Typically a concept is not broken down into its individual facts and values because the concept is widely accepted and overlooked for time purposes or because the concept is not vital to the much larger discussion of beliefs, so would only serve as a distraction however when a concept is vital to a disagreement it helps to break up the idea into its constituent parts to analyze its validity.  

There are concepts that are simple (like 'tree'), and concepts that are complex (like 'education'), there are also differing levels of importance between certain concepts.  Some concepts are vital to building up only one or two larger concepts before contributing to a larger belief/argument while other concepts are so important to the web of concepts and beliefs that it provides a core base to potentially hundreds of concepts and beliefs.  An example of one of these core concepts is 'computation' along with all of its supporting scientific knowledge and facts.  Computing is absolutely essential to things like 'research', 'satellite technology', 'the stock market' etc. (its important to make the distinction from computation and simply owning a computer which is the ability to access and to prevent access instead of what it is).  The computer is probably the best example of how, whenever someone makes a much larger argument that you disagree with and includes legitimate scientific information having to do with the capabilities of a computer, that it would be completely reasonable for someone to assess the individual points that build up the argument and be willing to adopt and promote those points that legitimately say something about computers and not feel obligated to endorse the nonsense.  

This last point seems to be the underlying assumption with most of scientific progress in academia (though might not be as rigorous as some would like), but is lost on the larger mainstream media outlets like fox news ;-) and since I am now adding my own form of media to the world of the interwebs I suppose it would make a good example about the importance of concepts.  Dreaming about what it would be like if the news wasn't sexified or used as a tool to indoctrinate is something I do from time to time though then there's always this voice in the back of my head saying that if the mainstream wasn't what it was then the those outlets wouldn't have nearly the amount of followers that they do which would mean they wouldn't exert the level of influence that they exert which would mean that those outlets wouldn't be called the mainstream anymore, but then some of the other independent outlets would be implementing their own indoctrination tactics since everybody seems to be trying to gain this 'competitive advantage' and then by defacto becoming the new mainstream making the dream previously thought possible incoherent.  It seems that in order to be 'competitive' in the media world, you need to indoctrinate your audience to the point where they stop asking certain questions that might challenge their level of influence including protecting those who hold power.  

My devils advocate now jumps in and says of course there is a huge incentive for those who do not have power to try to corrupt the image of those who do have power so maybe the truth of the situation is that I have been the one who is indoctrinated to believe that the mainstream is indoctrinating people into a web of manipulations when in fact they are the true proponents of truth, that I really don't know one way or the other and what is really happening is group selection as opposed to pattern recognition...  (Sorta the problem with an information war)

Those individuals who are either able to notice and calculate all of the different fallacies and manipulations propagated by the mainstream either don't need the explanation of how unhealthy it is or have decided to cut off already, or maybe they have decided to analyze the manipulations as a sort of exercise of their own defenses and to gain a first hand understanding of what is being propagated as opposed to being completely cut off and having others tell you whats going on.  I would love to get the thoughts of someone who has their own independent outlet as far as their 'activism' or someone who knows how the independent effort works, because it seems those who constantly attack the mainstream don't seem to be taking into account a typical persons 'defenses' or the concept of the 'competitive advantage'.  Instead what might be most pragmatic is to COMPLETELY ignore the mainstream in your own media and to work on the differing concepts such as 'logical fallacies', 'Humes Guillotine', 'devils advocates' or anything else that might have an effect on the sort of tactics used.  Making blanket statements like 'all mainstream media is just garbage' (which I have heard from many different outlets) doesn't seem to help your cause unless of course you are trying to create your own indoctrinated audience which is not something I value.  

My devils advocate is popping up again saying that I wouldn't be making the argument to focus on those specific concepts and that the point about completely ignoring the mainstream if it were not for all the complainers pointing out how unreliable CNN is.  Is my position really the effect of all those efforts?  Could you really make a point by point causal chain showing the effect or is it really just a type of faith that what your doing is paying off, and if you can't show that you are making any direct effect why would you continue?  

Anyways, one thing that I am absolutely sure of is that this particular topic is not over by a long shot and that there will be many people who have their own opinions on the subject which I more than welcome.  I would like to have the concepts of the mainstreams 'competitive advantage', 'indoctrination tactics', 'protection of the powerful', 'information war', 'group selection' and what it would mean to legitimately recognize 'patterns' be discussed either one at a time or all at once as well as the arguments presented by my Devils Advocate, IF people desire to engage in this topic :-)