Recognizing, Counteracting, and Overcoming Human Shortcomings for Life Improvement and Improvement of Culture
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Resumé
If the reader has been exposed to the topics of logical and cognitive fallacies, and illusions, they might also be somewhat irked and irritated by the lack of education on these topics to slowly rid of them. After learning about fallacies, one sees again and again, in politics, in social life, in business, and at home, that people make the same mistakes again and again. One hopes that one can influence others to not make these mistakes further for their benefit and the benefit of others, but one realizes that this is not possible without an improved educational system that teaches these with seriousness and does not simply teach them in passing. One wants a fallacy free, illusion free, scientific society that understands truth and ficitons. One wants all to be well in their thinking, and that some would not devolve substantially, to be those who have minds filled with erroneous thinking strategy, delusions, which if go too far uncorrected, result in actual psychiatric conditions. Instead, what is wanted by readers of this type, those who know something about the human shortcomings related to the propensities to fallacies and illusions, is that all would simply know about them, and know about them wherever they happen to exist. Some are conflicted, and worrisome, that one may have cognitivie fallacies and illusions that they are not at all aware of, and were never able to understand, see, or correct. The result of that of course is that some aspect of life has become forever erroneous without correction. The study of human shortcomings then, is to enable people to be aware comprehensively of all the shortcomings that exist, and not a few, and to be able to work on them as one strives to achieve greater personal excellence and virtue.
Human shortcomings demarcate strengths of human behavior. As people, communities, and cultures strive to improve themselves, they are not always aware that even their strengths are limited, and this results in improper teachings about the extent to which people individually can develop, and the extent to which cultures can develop in the time they have for that development. One thing that has been missing from human teachings for quite a while, especially in marketing related to education, and the education of children, is that life does not have unlimited development in a span of time. So children are taught that they can be famous, that they can achieve impossible feats, that they can and should plan to be greater than they could be. This greatly decreases the reasonability of life, and contributes to the feeling that dreams are dashed, and objectives are thwarted. A reasonable approach leads one to understand and enjoy that one strives for self alteration and improvement to a limit which is nowable. That limit involves all sorts of limits as one considers the diverse areas of human shortcomings. Having a complete understanding of human shortcomings makes it possible for one to live more satisfied knowing in advance what the boundaries of possibility and impossibility happen to be.
This book, therefore, should be seen as something totally vital for the betterment of individuals and humanity. We should not be complacent about the delusions and illusions of humankind, letting people eternally remain in a state of ignorance about it. Of course, people do engage in good quality thinking, and are to an extent able to dodge illusions; but we know that the state of understanding on this topic is not very great, and this means that none have had the education to be in a state where we’d like them to be! This implies that we are actually in a serious condition, because we wish to believe we are more modern than we are, and that humanity is in a pinnacle situation at the moment, that we are as good as the final humans, as good as humans could ever be. But a simple study of this topic reveals we are future ancients. This should not come as a surprise, however, because what were the ancients but future ancients!
This topic give us as a species quite a lot to look forward to. What would it be like, if someone was entirely truth understanding, and extremely aware of all shortcomings, and extremely already adept at overcoming what can be overcome. People who have been adapted through proper education to eliminate fallacies and illusions of various kinds really have permanently overcome them in a tremendous amount of ways. Again the reader who understands fallacies well, detects them, corrects them rapidly, until they seem to no longer arise in the mind, has really overcome them. How far can this be taken in an individuals life now, being realistic? What does that mean for future children and their lives. They will be much greater than people are at present, and that’s amazing. Contributing to this effort by being more aware, and making children aware will improve lives dramaticall. I hope thath is a result of the efforts of this book, if it has a good amount of influence. I would like that it improves the ability of individuals to improve themselves and teach it to others. If we look accross the culture, people are spending much of their time advising others, because they want to be seen as good exemplars, and want to teach others to be able to make similar improvements. I’ve made many personal improvements by focusing my mental efforts on this large task and hope that the reader learns something, and is able to take it to others to help humanity on an individual basis and collectively.
This book and disseration concerns the slow eradiction of human shorcomings through correction and human improvement as human life evolves into the future. An approach is recommended, for self-improvement, that allows one to improve one’s own life, and the life of others, by recognizing a finite set of human shortcomings, becoming aware of them all, and gradually eliminating and self correcting. A thesis of this paper is that human experience is bounded by a non-infinite set of limitations that separate what is impossible to human life, and what is possible, but that what is possible has not yet been clearly conceived or written by another author. A methodology is recommended for coming to a more complete, if not entirely complete, understanding of what those boundaries consist of, and what modifications to human thinking and behavior is possible, for growth. The thesis explains that the human trajectory is bounded by such limitations, that it’s direction can be understood by this knowledge, and that the methodology, if used in education, will allow to re-orient human progress on individual human development, and cultural development. It is discussed that techology can only partly improve human experience, because some of the primary human limitations are technical limiations. The primary object of analysis, while interested in collective human progress, is the individual and it’s progress or stasis. It is explained that the progress of individuals is what comprises the progress of aggregates of individuals, and that is understood as culture. Cultural progress is made to be dependent on individual progress, and it is already understood, that even largescale advancements depend on individual improvements to come into existence. Individual advancements related to the boundaries of possibility relating to human shortcomings involve the ever-interesting and important topic of making life better. Improving the minds and excellences of individuals is a moral matter, and moral processes that culminate in the overcoming of personal obstacles and the improvement of individual minds and behavior involves what all people care most about. It is argued that without a clear full awareness of the complete set of human shortcomings and ways to address them makes it impossible for people to find adequate focus on next steps and strategies for life direction. Instead people natively and reactively choose what happens to be next for improvement on the basis of more short-sighted recognitions about what improvements would immediately result in a better life. But this omits a more comprehensive direction. Education itself is largely for the overcoming obstacles, and education can be measured by the extent to which its teachings has reduced, and lessened the effects of certain life circumstances which include these obstacles. The method recommended is comprehensive and can be used to guide curriculum to make what is learned more obviously instrumental to what all children would want to learn. It creates better direction for one to determine the course of one’s education later, in private thinking, and for forming goals for the future. Goals for the future are always connected with what one believes to be progressions, and these progressions relate to the decreasing of problems in life, and for the increasing of excellences by decreasing miscellaneous shortcomings. It is explained that self-improvement can be framed in terms of decreasing of shortcomings, and this can be connected well with the theory of evolution that humans are to be increasingly adaptive to life circumstances which includes elminating problems and decreasing shortcomings that exist. The advancement of strengths is a key area for the decreasing of shortcomings, so the book and dissertation should not be thought of as a non-positive advancement of goals. Additional subjects for study include expanding the typology and classification of human shorcomings to include more details within the framework. More shortcomings can be added and others can be refined. The methodology can be extended to directly address changes in the typology which should map together.
The current text was originally envisioned in the early 2000s, around approximately 2002, while a student of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. At that time, as an undergrad student, I was learning in both disciplines, areas in which humans had thinking flaws which had to be known about in order to advance in important ways. Without a knowledge of these flaws, and ways to overcome, thought would be riddled and filled with errors. The errors, being numerous and scattered accross thought, results in people of lower quality. People who act and behave in ways that appear to be less educated. While education works to eradicate some of the issues, does so in an unsystematic way, with lessons only appearing separately, in different areas of human inquiry. Those who do not learn psychology, or logic, are notably less able to recognize their own limitations and the limitations of others. Knowing this to be a serious problem, more serious than these statements would convey, I wanted to write and think initially about this as a larger subject, for self improvement and training, and later so I could write a book, to offer to the public for general education.
A book about Human Shortcomings is indispensible for a study of morality and ethics, where human errors of behavior and thought are to be reduced. Such a reduction, is not possible, without knowing what the shortcomings are. This book is a preliminary study, in the Book and Journal of Mattanaw, which treats of a new system of ethics and morality, that is much more advanced than what has hitherto existed. Since schools and colleges have not offered a systematic and general treatment of human shortcomings, this text presents something that civilization itself has been needing. The miscellaneous world religions, and insitutions of learning, have not succeeded, apparently, in knowing, that such a work would even be needed, and if any did, worked insufficiently to produce a similar text. It is not an understatement, to say that a serious religion or ethical system needs a comprehensive study of human shortcomings, and not having one, really did not succeed well at their objectives, of fixing people, transforming them in the ways they need to transform, and providing a clear listing of what humans really “suffer from” regarding the errors likely to exist amongst members the human species. This is the “human” part of human shortcomings: the shortcomings are species related, and are due to the animal type that humans are. Human shortcomings are not the same as shortcomings of other animals. Animals have other shortcomings, and they do actively work, although without education, at overcoming some of those, particularly where they are psychological and risks are existing. Humans for example, need to take precautions sometimes, to see behind them, whereas animals with eyes on the sides of their neads, need fewer precautions for that. The biology of humans and other animals defines teh constraints that are existing in their experiences, and these are the causes of “limitations or shortcomings” that have to be learned about, overcome, or have compensatory training regarding, in order to live more effectively and to be living in less error. If one learns effectively how to use one’s vision in such a way to mitigate risks that exist in crossing roadways, one has arrived at an ethical heuristic that would increase personal safety. This is a very simple but clear example of how simple human shortcomings require education and training in order to ensure that serious dangers are mitigated or eliminated with rules of conduct.
While this example is a good one, this text is more concerned about correction of errors relating to thinking in language and visuals, and for having a correct mental model or way of seeing the world that is more truthful and honest, and more actionable towards the goals of self-fulfillment, self-realization, and personal contentment and safety. Also for the benefit of one’s associates. One wants to have a better idea of what “true reality consists of” to have a true ethic and personal morality. What are the goals that are worthwhile? How can I overcome procrastination towards those goals? How do I work with my various predeterminations to become and maintain a version of myself that is more excellent? These questions are more answerable with an understanding of human shortcomings, so one is realistic, one is aware that such shortcomings exist to make changes and corrections, and one is able to arrive at more logical and honest thinking that improves personal effectiveness.
It has been several decades now since my first thoughts about this text, and since that time, I have made considerable personal advancements, to embody the objectives originally imagined. This work has been put into action for more than twenty years, and has influenced many of the other books appearing in the Book and Journal. Because of its central importance in the study of ethics, it appears in the preliminary texts, which prepare the way, for more advanced discussions about ethics and morality. The contents of this book amount to assumptions existing in the other writings, that will be occasionally repeated, but without as much attention. For example, after discussing logical fallacies, this text will simply be referenced in later texts, so one can revisit what was discussed. Identification and correction of logical fallacies will be assumed to be necessary, and when the subject arises it will be covered only briefly and then the reader will be referred back to this text. In a way, this is like a study of mathematics. Arithmetic, once learned, is not explained again and again later; but when the subject arises, in number theory, or in real analysis, or in other mathematical topics, the basics of arithmetic are not covered again, instead they are assumed and the reader is considered unprepared for the text without the knowledge appearing in preliminary locations (like basic education, or simple text on mathematics, or the history of math).
This book is structured in essay format, with independent standalone essays existing for reading without a need to proceed in any particular order. Each essay covers an important aspect of human shortcomings, and all together are intended to provide a comprehensive coverage of the subject matter and a framework for additional advancement. In my writings, I enjoy using different moods and attitudes as I write, which creates different styles and types of discussion, so one can expect inconsistencies in the writing “voice” of each essay. To some editors, this would seem something to correct, by in my view, a person who is really talking with another, really does undergo mental changes, and these changes are what makes the discussions “human”, and to eliminate this completely, makes books a bit more artificial, than real life conversation. A part of an academics desire in writing is not only to persuade a reader about a point of view, but to actually communicate their mind, so that they are understood by others, and if the writer is too often editing and controlling their voice, so as to have a “single way of talking” then one is definitely lost largely in the editing process. I think humor, ridicule, anger, aggressiveness, softness, lovingkindness, and so on should appear in my works. If they do not appear in my works, then there is seriously something amiss about how I am communicating “myself” to others. The Book and Journal does not think this type of thinking is not compatible with academic and professional writing products. A work of ethics and moral philosophy is supposed to convey something of real life as it is lived and thought, or it can be objected that it hasn’t been done right. This Book and Journal makes sure to include human thinking multidimensionally into texts to convey more of what a human can think. This is why also there is the appearance of art, photography, video, musical score, and other methods of communicating. An artwork can depict the screams of an individual in a work. The same screams can be incorporated into the writing. How bizarre is it, that arts get employed for such things, while one cannot use emotion in the actual talking?
This work is one that cannot be really completed as will be made clear later in the main book sections. Human advancement and self improvement is always utilizing error correction. Morality and ethics can even be defined by the attempt to reduce errors and increase knowledge about errors that exist, into the minutia, if one benefits from that. There isn’t any progressive human activity that isn’t working to identify and respond to errors. It is a huge subject, so a framework approach is needed. This book is one such framework, and the book will grow as I am able to add material. The intitial text, is still a comprehensive text, and as a comprehensive framework, provides some direction, for others to add their own personal information and approaches. This work can be thought of as an early but usable mathematics. An early and usable mathematics does do most of the work, but will not stop from progressing, and will require changes and improvements as time goes on, along with many new additions for increasingly rare or harder to solve situations.
To conclude the preface, this book is useful to read entirely in advance of reading the other materials, but it is understood and expected that human attention will not allow for that often. Since that is the case, I would suggest that one just read what appears interesting if one can, and know that the text exists, if something is required of it later, for understanding the other more advanced books. It is true, that simply understanding that this work exists, that it has the approach it has, and that it covers contents that are needed, can give one the mental preparation needed, to proceed on the later works, with a decent readiness to understand. I am not sure which books I needed to understand later ones, and I don’t know if there was ever a time, that a complete reading of one text, was ever needed, to know the next text. So familiarity with this one, rather than complete reading, is probably good enough for many readers to advance along independently.
This work has been developed from the early 2000s with the goal of creating a collection, later well organized, of human shortcomings which create fixed limits for our species, and also those that imply training needs for overcoming errors. It also provides areas in which humans could self improve via biological engineering, or various ways of being combined with technology.
Within the field of philosophy logic and logical fallacies and various errors were taught so as to avoid errors in argumentation, so that we are better able at arriving at truths from basic facts we think are reliable. This goes much further to includes all human shortcomings, or those that are worth recalling, referencing, classifying, or further studying, including biological and psychological limitations. In my training in Psychology I became aware additionally of cognitive limitations, illusions of perception, and various constraints of the brain and nervous system, and learning. Various biological limitations around our being bodily animals with definite boundaries and ranges of abilities implies incapacities, which obviously exist in other animals, but might exist if we were something different than we are. I go further to include various types of limitations which might be thought more abstract or mathematical, or related to physics. I think many more limitations can be added in addition to those I’ve thought of or have collected, but what I offer here is uniquely comprehensive and honest concerning our limitations.
By emphasizing human shortcomings here I don’t want to take out of view, or remove from the total system on moral guidance, strengths and advantages, that are scoped within our limits. This section is not intended to not be positively constructing a truthful and accurate understanding of humans and ourselves, despite being primarily interested in limitations and capacities. It is very important to know what we are not able to do, and where we introduce errors, to know how to correct those errors, work within our limitations, and use or strengths and good qualities for what they can do for us, and not pretend they can do more.
I have found in my observations and thoughts about people and their religions and somewhat primitive attempts at morality (all attempts have been primitive attempts), that they are really expect too much concerning what is achievable with the resources they have as people, and their existing cultures. Some think they can take naturalistic actions that they do not even know are naturalistic, and have supernatural results. This is the among the worst of the errors, not realizing human shortcomings like those here. Others simply miss psychology, with the result that principles are created and practiced without any satisfying result; oftentimes, the result simply cannot extend from the morals created. Illogic also results in an inability to know certain sentences are false, and being false, cannot be good for guiding behavior. This is also a very unfortunate mistake. Consider how often a faux-moral dictate or maxim, that really has a source in a short quote starts with “Always” or “Never”, and does not include any psychological knowledge about cyclical behavior, or data about how often anyone has observed any such formulation. These shortcomings combine creating issues that are more complex and harder for most regular people to see, with errors too numerous to point them all out.
This work on human shortcomings falls into the preparatory materials in this work of mine, but could also appear in the section that might be called “Theoretical” or “General” because it is widely applicable, and not merely preparatory. But I add it here as preparatory material, because I cannot be understood at all unless my own background on thinking about errors and logic, and psychology, and good thinking is not appreciated before moving on to other material. Logic is a basic course in philosophy because much that comes later uses it actively; in this way, Philosophy is like science, and science teaches proper methodology before sharing works that make use of those methods. This work also includes scientific limitations even though I have not noted that above, so this comment is directly relevant. Likewise early mathematics comes before later mathematics. Similarly, and probably more fundamentally, this work is intended to prepare with similar basics for thinking through the material that actively makes use of and depends on such thoughts.
At this moment, as I write this, I feel mildly saddened that I could not share this work with others earlier. Over the years I have not been well understood, because material such as this figured into so much of my thinking, going into my communication, with the effect that my offerings to others were either 1) underestimated in terms of the degree of thinking and preparation and therefore the quality, and 2) inability to interpret or comprehend, because the thinker would have used other mental resources instead to interpret. When communicating with others, I like to rely on paraphrasing, and reiteration of the statements of others, to confirm for them, that I have understood, or to give them rare opportunity to correct me, for failing to understand. I’ve noticed others do not do the same, and when they do try, they usually do not understand or understand only partly. Otherwise I don’t know, and it appears their memories later indicate they have not understood, because they are unable to develop off the same conversations which have already happened, yet admittedly, rely on the same earlier thinking, which implies that all future conversation would be ineffective until preparations have been provided.
This work should provide readers an extremely good idea about what high quality philosophical thinking and high quality science demands, and I think the reader will be better equipped for naturally thinking critically about various topics covered later, but in general all through life as well. If one studies logic, one gets something valuable, but more narrow than what is shared here. However, acquiring good logical thinking allows one to really understand most that one does better than one did before, if one takes it seriously enough to train it into most thought.
With the advent and progress of artifiical intelligence, it will been and felt that, even though improvements keep arising, errors are never eliminated. We have artificial intelligences that started, arguably, as not artificial intelligence, to rudimentary intelligence, to ever improving intelligences, that cannot ever be “completed”. There is no finished AI. This is because AIs, and the species of artificial intelligences, have shortcomings. All that can be done by AI and AI designers is to identify shortcomings, identify errors, look for system improvements or ways for the AI to self learn, to result at improved, but ever unfininshed, “new AIs”.
This is a very apt analogy for human self-improvement. You own an evolving AI in your own biological person, of the human type. The human type of AI has shortcomings that are not completely eradicated, and after one has fixed some, one discovers others. Like with AIs too, one must *learn about and be aware of the shortcomings to make improvements at all! Without a study like this one, one could not develop humans well. We may be arriving at a time in which, advancement in AI reveals what is lacking in human advancement, a stuck point due to religious teachings, that did not do a sufficient job at providing a systematic way, to learn about constraints of the human species, and ways to improve given those constraints.
This text is an exploration of the entire range of human shortcomings and an initial framework approach for doing what is needed to self advance without an expectation of having a finish point. Notice with the advancements of AI, we can see there are systems that are so good, that we simply think of them as excellent. That is what humans really should strive for: basic excellences. Basic excellence is more easily attained than might be realized. It is very self satisfying and beneficial to find and fix the various human shortcomings that exist, and while there is no completion state, the excellence milestone is a true culmination of human behavior, after which not much else is really necessary. One has plenty to do to enjoy more learning and self-improvement, but after some attainment, not much else is truly necessary. It is hoped that this book helps enable some to find avenues for self progress, to reach such an important milestone, that is a permanent achievement, after which nothing much more is needed or can be reasonably expected.
Having a set of life categories along with a set of topics that relate to morality, where morality is considered to be a covering of life and thought, one will already have really good coverage regarding the synthesis of thinking and knowledge that is required for good action and decision making.
However, one will not have anough. Having experience in a variety of sciences and studies that are related mutually to different topics of thought and action will be required to have a more full development of thinking.
The existing framework I have for covering the life categories and approaching personal morality is already extensive and really does provide a good framework for ensuring there are few major omissions to thinking. But this needs to be combined with a framework for inclusding the various sciences as they are applicable. At present, I happen to be aware of many scientific topics and areas of research that are applicable to thoughts and actions, but admitedly I do not yet have a knowledge framework yet that corresponds in completeness and finality to the life categories I have developed. I will need to develop such a framework.
Together, these constitute in a way a simple list of what knowledge happens to relate to any thought or action. I don’t think it will be too hard to make a list that is good eough forfrom a framework perspective. The framework would simply be expanded to include subfields and subcategories, and refinements of the major categories. LIke the animal taxonomical system.
This sounds advanced, but making it more simple and practical, it is just a large list. Imagine if one was about to make a decision, and one had a list of all that must be considered in order to decide well. Now imagine that one has advanced in experience and maturity, one would need a new list, that is longer and perhaps has modifications, if the first list was well done. Now imagine that on ehas become incredibly experienced across the full offerings of knowledge of humanity in its diverse fields. One still just has a list. The list can be organized and reorganized for what is most important, and can be tailored to different scenarios that one finds oneself in.
Now imagining that humans have evolved quite a bit, the list grows. It is still just a list! Even if there were some computing or application mechanisms to organize and read out the list or guide, it would still be known that there is a list mapping. It is still just a list. It may be that forever it is just a list.
Since forever it is just a list very likely, then there is a point in the list improvement in which returns on development are lessened. This means some state of development already does most of the work with the list it has created and uses.
So what is wanted is a framework, a list, that is near that threshold. And, one wants to use that list to blend it with one’s thinking such that one scan recall without the list. Tehen the thinker and the actor has a powerful tool that is known to be correct, that is consistent with the list, at the threshold of power in advancement of civilization.
After that threshold level, developments can still be made, so it willl keep going as knowledge grwos and as people evolve in complexity. But after that time, it will have to be forever admitted that those who had the framework earlier were already powerful, and nearly as powerful as those with the newest list.
Also, people in history would then have potentially had sometimes greater ability to implement. Since there is a scale in sophistication of living peopple.
This is very diffferent than today. Today we look back in time, at the ancients, and know well, that they were too limited, and that any particular individual would be greatly inferior in many ways because their culture did not have the tools for them to adapt to for betterment.
Some few in history of course would be better than people today, but their numbers would be few. The number of people today who would be better than the people who existed before would be very grate.
So in the future, it may be that they don’t look at the ancients as ancient as much. They are just seen as advanced moderns, with less, but with the key tool being as powerful as any that they could have.
Any organism, including human organisms, are identifiable by their constraints; and constraints, have as their counterpart, the affirmative description, that is used to say, what organisms are. This is described in detail in Constraint and Determinism. What something is, and what it is not, sets for us the boundaries of existence (Mattanaw, 2026). We use this to see and separate what a human can be and cannot be. The total of what a human cannot be, involves the impossibilities and insurmountable human shortcomings, that are forever outside of the possibilities of all existing human animals at a given time. This provides for us, and our analysis in this text, a broad scope, to understand human limitations. It is helpful to us, to be really clear, on what a human cannot be, to ensure we are focused on what is possible for us and not what is impossible. Knowing what is impossible makes us sane regarding our personal endeavors, and historically, humans have included the impossible as what “could be achieved” insanely. Achieving an afterlife, and personal perfection for example. Knowing the boundaries clearly, one can simply not think of the impossibilities again, focusing more pragmatically permanently, directing thoughts and efforts to the personally achievable. In the current state of society and civilization, this is a differentiator. To be able to do this, one is more efficient and realist, and more likely to really progress, and to remain a more honest and truthful person, about one’s abilities. Unfortunately there is a disease that is rampant among human animals, to spend too much time thinking that one is and can be, much more than any human can ever be.
Fascinatingly, such a knowledge of the actual clear limitations of a human animal makes it possible to see more clearly that other animals do not have such limitations oftentimes. This makes other animals more incredible than might be ordinarily recognized. Our species, self absorbed, does not always notice, that the other animal earthlings, have evolved to have very powerful skills. These skill enable them to do things, and think things, forever outside of the capabilities of living humans.
Human shortcomings, it is important to recognize, are animal shortcomings. Every animal, has its very specific constraints, which make it identifiably what it is. Humans as a species too, have specific constraints, making it possible to identify that they are what they are. Individual animals, and individual humans, have even more specific constraints, relating to their individual animality, which is understood in terms of their actual traits, coming from their actual genetics, and interplay with their environments. Every individual has hard boundaries between what is impossible and possible for them, and I consider it to be basic learning to know what one’s constraints are. It really is necessary for a more global education of individuals to know what their absolute constraints really are, to have better self knowledge, and to have realistic goals about their futures.
This perspective is definitively opposed to a religious or moral perspective that incorporates impossibilities. As animals, humans do not have supernatural powers, and are not differentiable from other animals, in their being unable, to call upon supernatural forces. This is because they do not exist for any animal. That humans are animals is an assumption of this text, and is further considered in the book “Humans Are Animals”, also in the Book and Journal. Humans, having a propensity to enjoy fictions that are “larger than life”, start to entertain that the fictions, are really true and real. This is a shortcoming of humans, in that they are credulous, sometimes gullible, and would like to have more interesting lives than they think they have. These limitations will be discussed in this text further, and here it is assumed, that these are in fact limitations, and being limitations, have to be overcome. Some humans have these shortcomings to a greater degree than others. Uniformly, for all humans, credulity and gullibility is a shortcoming that manifests, and even the smartest most rational people can be fooled, to believe that some false things is true. However, falsity is demarcated from truth. Fictions are forever fictions. Being such, they are in the realm of impossiblity for humans.
Supernaturalisms exist in large numbers in human cultures, and these are due to human weaknesses and various shortcomings to be discussed. This text, along with the text “Truth and Honesty” and “Lists”, which compiles a large number of supernaturalisms to simply be discarded, treats these as easily falsifable and untrue. Being untrue, they are outside the barrier of possibility for humans, in clear impossibility, and like everything else that is impossible for a human, like being able to fly with wings, live forever, or travel to other galaxies, they are “fenced offlimits” to human life and reasonable life planning.
Considering what is possible and impossible for humans starts to give us an indication of who might be permanently or occasionally insane. Thinking that one is not an animal, or not constrained to what a human can do, is a mark of insanity. One’s decisions and plans and thinking will be filled with excess delusion. One can make it less likely that a young child will become insane later, by teaching them that they are precisely what they are, human animals, constrained to what is possible. Then they will not believe themselves to have special powers, ability to conjure alternative futures with prayer, or to make things happen telepathically. They can bundle up all that is easily known to be false and fictional, and all together declare them false and impossible. This forever makes it more likely that they will be more sane people, free of the major delusions that humans are at risk of having, for having the shortcomings of gullibility, credulity, desire for self-greatness, and desire to have a more important or more interesting life than they can have.
We can determine in more detail what a particular individual’s shortcomings are, if we want to, from considering first, what a things is most generally, then moving to what they are most specifically. We started to do this by thinking about humans as humans, before moving to considering humans as individuals, with their more specific abilities and limitations. But we can be more general than this. What about humans as being composed of atoms? We can think of humans as collections of physical substance. Also, we can think of them as astronomical entities. Humans are collections or aggregates of chemicals on space rocks, or globs, in solar systems. In some ways they are indistinguishable from such systems, being blended with them, and from elsewhere, an alien could think (I’m not supposing they exist, but to illustrate) they are simply Earth and not more. Likewise, from a very great distance, an Earth is a sun. Being so close and in the same system, from far enough away, the sun is seen prominently, with a spec of its debris nearby. Humans really are part of these things, and thinking about humans this way, does reveal interesting human shortcomings, which helps us further identify, what our total shortcomings are. Without using this style of thought, we may not realy know what our total shortcomings are.
I do not form a gas. And as a part of my solar system, I must have certain traits, involving the composition of my system, that is not other systems. Our solar system has ingredients! Earth has its ingredients from our solar system. Without looking at anything else but the solar system’s ingredients as a whole though, you can’t have ingredients, that are not in the system! What is outside the solar system then involves impossibilities for humans. Comparing solar systems, and possibile entities contained, master alien physisicts, can know what can and can’t exist, given possible aggregations of ingredients. They can look quickly at systems, and declare, that such-and-such cannot exist, because the recipes for those things, require ingredients that are someplace else and not there. If the ingredients exist elsewhere, there are not the same shortcomings in that elsewhere! The recipes can result in things that cannot exist in this solar system.
Humans are aggregate composites of atoms and molecules of a solar system containing an Earth debris, that itself has physical limitations, that impose more limitations on humans. Humans have an incredible amount of limitations, since they even inherit, all of the limitations of their planet, solar system, and of course, the universe too. They cannot have compositions that cannot exist for their system, they cannot have been on another development pathway, than the development pathway of their system (read, “Evolution on Earth”). These larger constraints of humans are relevant to human life, where human thinkers need to be honest about what their possibilities are. Many people are believing with their ancient traditions, that their planet and the nature around them began with anthropomorphic origins in the form of myths. Once it is known that the solar system cannot hvae such a beginning, these origin stories are immediately falsified, and at the largest scale, such that no further consideration is needed, at smaller scales, in the smaller details of life. Proponents of tribal religions will think they can utilize these ideas about their prehistories in their actual lives too, and when confronted by those who are convinced these religions are false, they would want to argue at too many layers of discussion from the minutia of everday human experience all the way to ancient history and cosmology; but what I’m saying here, is that no thinking apart from the largest level is required to quickly falsify it, so further discussion is not needed, since it is thoroughly falsified already. This is a benefit of using the larger context in which humans are existing to know larger and more basic human shortcomings that are existing that are inherited by everything else in the system too. Tribal people try to tell you that animals have a history, that involves mythical behavior of primitive human ancestors or that are “larger than ordinary humans and very important and directly involved in creation”, but obviously the history of the solar system is inherited by all animals, and of course, if animals could enter the discussion, could use the same inherited limitations to argue against the veracity of the mythology. Everyone and everythign within the system inherits the same limitations, so everyone and everything shares large shortcomings, which once known at the larger level, apply to all. Larger shortcomings of the system are more widely applicable than to humans, but involve shortcomings that apply to huamns too.
Constraints relating to the system of origin and the pathway of life’s development are related to the morality of the decision making around space travel and goals of travel to other planets. Humans along with the other animals, inherit a very large set of limitations relating to their living on Earth under a certain pressure, with a certain gravity, a quanity of light from the sun, a quantity of darkness, gas levels in the atmosphere including oxygen, and so on and so forth. The Earth’s composition and movement along with its relation to the sun, create a context of constraints upon everything on the planet. A human is a sort of goo within a skin, gliding along the surface supported by a skeleton, that only functions well on Earthly conditions. A human is a strange entity in a way, peculiar to earth’s conditions, and has certain strangenesses similar to primate ancestors especially, and other oddities related to other animals of the same lineage. Entities of different lineages share the same earth, and properties of unrelated species still have shortcomings that apply to them as they apply to humans, and all together, all the life on earth, has Earthling weirdness. The subject of all the ways that humans are weird and are limited because of their position as Earthlings amongst other Earthlings, in a galaxy that has its strange conditions, is very massive, and it is not well understood in total by those working on space travel. Here we can get a sense of the hugeness of the study of human shortcomings, and not its smallness. We really are interested in all the constraints and not some, so we can try to live someplace very far away potentially, in another part of the universe, if that happens to be possible. The subject is of interest, for finding ways to live better in space more near earth too, on space craft and in space stations, and potentially on Mars. For our purposes, we will more often look at shortcomings that are more detailed, and more close to human life on earth, within controlled conditions that seldom change. But occasionally, we will use this larger context, to set aright ways of thinking, to combat shortcomings related to irrational thinking, belief, and personal and societal planning. Especially when the corrections are fast and easy, like insisting that humans were too gullible in adopting tribal religion, and of supporting it in the modern context, knowing clearly, that the larger solar system, for itself and for everything within it, was not formed by any existing human, and that such a consideration is related to a childishness of the immaturity of human civilization, at the time such ideas arose.
Humans along with the animals, have a particular form. To be a human, one has to be constrained to have human genetics, and to have a human form, which is roughly consistent accross the species. Two arms, a head upon a neck, two legs, a tendency to walk bipedally, to have eyes pointing forward and the like. The anatomical traits a human has are large in number and all involve limitatioins, and this is to be expected, because there is no trait a person can have, and no organ of any kind, that only does what it does, and not everything else. The constraints define what each of the organs are, more than what everything could be determines it. A human is a composite of atoms and molecules, and as a system, of a collection of organs so composed. The total human system is an organ system. The organ systems components are all pretty consistently within a feature range that is recognizably human: human hearts, livers, brains, eyes, and so on, all are pretty similar. One is constrained to not be a whale or elephant. While people don’t typically think of human shortcomings and limitations to this degree, I do and find it to be very important. Humans are extremely constrained down to the details of their anatomy and to the genetics of each and every organ, which is only allowed by nature to be what it is, and not anything else. These postively reduce the quantity of freedom a human has: a human has to be only what a human can be, and what it is, in terms of organs, can only be, what its organs allow. This creates medically a very large number of limitations and not a small amount, and this presents in human life at the time that health concerns arise, or as one is planning how to become more fit or more excellent athletically and physically. How to be more healthy.
The organ system comprising a human allows movement in fixed ways with some level of freedom, entirely constrained to be human movement. The human organs formed and were grown as a result of the digestive system function, which dictates definitively the range a foods a human can eat, separating all that is usable for building a human and all that is not. Human nutrition is well understood, and an expert can list the molecules and atoms a human requires, and also understands that nothing more than those molecules and atoms are needed. Humans are constrained in a very detailed way by their genetic expectations on digestion of foods and on metabolism and growth of tissues. Understanding the shortcomings of humans regarding their digestion results in the actual knowledge of their digestion and their related systemic predeterminations. These are all Earth and species level limitations, so much of these limitations apply to other animals as well as to humans, but the specifics of the human diet will not align exactly with those of any other animal. Once again, a human is defined by constraints, what is is specifically versus what it is not, and these shortcomings help us to make decisions about what a human ethically should or should not be doing regarding their health behaviors.
Outside of the planning of human movement and diet, relating to early human learning and development, as children, is the desire to improve general planning and thinking through education. In education, we are taught to have strategies and ways of thinking that are expected to provide us a better chance at living well. This amounts to rudimentary ethics concerning thought using a human brain, given all conditions of human life, particularly the conditions in which learning individuals are likely to be in themselves. Earth level and human level shortcomings are taught to people without their knowing that is the subject matter. A focus of the teaching, is to overcome obstacles and adversities, relating to limitations around being human, in an environment that can sometimes be harmful because of these shortcomings. If a human did not have shortcomings related to certain adverse conditions, teachings are less needed. If a person was not somewhat frail, or likely to break bones, or be injured, early teachings about how to remain physically safe, away from dangers of fast moving things, impacts, people who are dangerous, and weapons and so on, would be unimportant. They increase in importance for children who are more in danger for having more shortcomings, seeming less hardy and strong, and able to ignore risks. Susceptibilities to injury and affects of environments are differential accross the population meaning human shortcomings vary. If the dangers are low enough, for a person who does not have the shortcomings in question, then education to overcome those obstacles becomes meaningless. We can imagine easily a superhero or a superhuman who simply can get hit by cars, or jump off buildings, and get shot and live, and what such a person is showing, is a lack of specific human shortcomings that otherwise exist, causing a need for ethics to exist, to find ways around those conditions or self-protect. To help others who living at risk and to help themselves however they are at risk too.
General learning of humans happens after they are mostly known to be viable members of the species. Other non-viable members died earlier, or are at more risk (less viable), and require teachings that diverge from the norm. The remainder of the more normal children, who still exhibit diversity, learn what is needed, first, at a basic level, to live safely and have foundational knowledge to grow education later, to increasingly address human shortcomings experienced. Human education is consistently about teaching what is not in the brain. The information to go into the brain, is held by the recipient of the learning, to self-guide, to avoid obstacles and increase chances of success in life. There is a preoccupation with avoiding dangers and increasing one’s resilience in education. One is trying to achieve a level of prosperity that is increasingly immune to risks and dangers, to live well in luxury, potentially with healthy families, also immune to dangers, all having good genetics and good information. Typically, there is a wellness advancement pathway, such that rich individuals are displaying to others better ease and prosperity, and lack of serious worry. The other individuals who are less educated, and less able to adopt living strategies that trend towards avoidance of dangers, with knowledge of their own properties, which is knowledge of their huan shortcomings, are going to be those who face far more risks, are more likely to be less healthy, more likely to choose injurious or risky environments, and have friends and associates who present dangers to their well being. Avoidance of human predators who try to take advantage of weaknesses and special humans shortcomings people have is important.
Education is especially related to life ethics. I have defined life ethics and morality in such a way to include all behavior and decision making, which means it also engulfs education. One can then start to think, as I do too, that “ethics” is not a necessary name for the subject, and one can simply think of it as education, or as learning, with the same aims as ethical aims, which admittedly, are already an objective of the two. But given the history of humanity, explaining that education and learning are really that much in alignment with ethics, or are the same as ethics, makes it clear which mental switches have to happen, to have the more complete and clear view, of what one needs to do. Education, learning, and life ethics, are very largely about overcoming human obstacles, related to human shortcomings, gradually over time, starting with what is most basic and important to health first, later moving on to more advanced topics, until one is a thoroughly excellent human. Attaining excellence, at a basic level, for humans is a very laudable and happy completion. It is also somewhat easy. What was missing in history was having the right approach, and since we come from more basic human animal life without culture and education, and only more recently have industry and technology, and writing, and more advanced learning, we are still pretty primordial. Other humans have a long future ahead, and we will fade in time to appear more animal than we would expect. In some ways, we are the animals living with tools and objects and entertainment, without having yet advanced in crucial ways mentally. We lack a correct ethics and religion today. This work is to make it possible for people now, and later, to attain excellence easily, with simple corrections to ethical thinking.
Most of the human shortcomings of this text relate to ethics specifically, in the overcoming of shortcomings, via learning and education. This means, learning about illusions, fallacies of thinking, common mistakes of the human brain, and errors relating to indoctrination from traditions, so that correct thinking is more possible, to have correct moral and ethical plans for the future. Learning and education are the means of making the changes, along with self training, and hopefully training using technology and updated education in the future. Given two separate people, if one has a poor education and poor ethic, they will seem extremely different from one who has a good ethic and good education and behavior, and the correction is not going to be to the solar system or to the earth, but a correction to their brain, if possible. The goal is to make more people like the ethical and good thinking one, and less like the other. Being future oriented, the idea is to update education to include ethics that are more likely to make people of a better type, using correct logic, improved planning, better self awareness of psychogoical limitations and illusions, and more skilled to overcome miscellaneous human shortcomings. The concentration on reducing human limitations is on human thinking and behavior, although in many ways still, problems are intractable. In particular because there are limitations relating to genetic propensities to bad behavior, excess bad traits, greed and envy, and low intelligence. To avoid those, learning about what humans to produce later is needed. For those who have kinder and better qualities of thinking, updates to education is needed, to ensure they are more honest and truthful, in their reasonings. There are shortcomings that exist that cause smart and kind people to be largely delusional or to have false thinking and viewpoints, and some smart people have become victims of large cults and religions.
What are the specific limitations that one has, the human and personal shortcomings that exist, that have to be considered, in order to advance thinking, to arrive at a higher quality personal ethics, to more reliably become excellent? That is the main subject matter of this text. Knowing the total constraints of the human animal supports this goal although the transition of interest will be to human thinking itself. That’s because the knowledge of all the human shortcomings too must remain in awareness in order to have a comprehensive understanding of all the shortcomigns one has. One is less aware about one’s own personal traits as a human that matter if one did not consider the entire range of human shortcomings that exist, at the largest scale. In this text we are most interested in the smaller scale of the immediate human sitaution, although thinking about one’s immediate situation will sometimes be influenced by conclusions about the larger human shortcomings. One might not be too amazing at an interstellar level, if as a human, one is confined to be a gel in a skin, with a skeleton, breathing air, with a smallish brain! With this information we can quickly advocate against delusions that humans are prone to in their thinking, that is exhibited often, in their immediate religious context.
Most people believe themselves to have a much greater capacity for self change and for action than they really do, and within the illusion, come to believe, falsey, that they had greater actions than they really had. It seems to be a nearly universal human shortcoming, in the present age, that one can accomplish far more than one really can, and that all generally overstate the levels of control over behavior, level of changes of behavior, and overall level of growth that can be achieved in a lifetime.
Most on reflection, can see that most people attain some level of personal growth that is not on par with what they were taught was possible. While young, people are lead to believe, that they can all achieve greateness, that they can all have monumental effects, if they have certain ways of acting, and that they can have lives of hugeness and fame. Fame is not something young people are informed often to be something that is impossible for them or unlikely. Fame, when achieved, is seldom considered to still be low growth. Here, in this article, it is argued that the human capacity for growth and change is low compared to what is believed to be possible, and that ourelders have been affected by illusions and delusions, that they have passed onto the new generations, through their parenting, in the education system, and messaging on television and entertainment.
The viewpoints about what is possible for a human child were informed without any perspective on what human growth metrics would actually show. Questions like “What are the deltas of my nervous system’s development over a lifespan?” were not considedred. Asking such a question, in our society, seems strange, and yet that is a basic and simple prerequisite, to an understanding of what is possible through education and personal improvement of any kind. “How does the nervous sytem change, and how fast?” In total ignorance, one is taught, in education, that one should work hard towards a growth level that is undefined, but a level that is vastly overestimated due to ignorance about what real growth consistns of.
In families, children seldom believe their parents to exhibit greatness, whoever they are. They will humble their parents we are told routinely. Children do not believe their parents to have had any development that is markedly superior to the development of others, and will criticise quite harshly any claims their parents have about being masterful, complete, or superior. The child and teen are both very able at finding flaws and contradictions. Quickly they present to their parents their errors, and comparing their parents with other parents, they do not find anything that makes them awestruck as to their growth and maturity. Within the culture, there are even claims of equlaity. Under the view of equality, there is a belief that there is no possiblity of growth that makes oen person greater than another, and makes it questionable if progress can happen. A parent is even seen to be stagnated, and reversable. In age, they decline. They have high points in life, that are predictably related to what they cannot control: age. Children, teens and everyone else can see this very clearly.
Nevertheless, people do universally believe that people do still exhibit growth, even if that viewpoing contradicts with equalitarianism. They think they can improve through education, and they think that if they work hard, they can attain eminence, nevermind the rarity of having rare prominence in the population. Some growth is clearly possible. But that growth is definitely less than people would like to pretend. Self-deification is nonsensical, growth shows primate related trends, with human level limitations pre-set, and one is typically going to feel average in a caste.
Growth cannot also be in all directions. Usually there are foci and concentrations of growth. Famous people, have spouses and children, that think they are skewed and limited. The athlete parent is later seen to be intellectually limited, havign growth in strong areas. They are seen to have had many limitations. Education was not on all subjects. Their weaker areas showed litte to no growth. Intellectuals, sometimes appear sickly. The best looking people, didn’t grow any further, they stayed strong where strong. Sometimes the most excellent simply stayed naturally gifted.
Where do we see growth? We see growth where growth happens. Bodily improvement through physical fitness is an area in which a persons actions result in obvious results. But the natural bodybuilder and pro natural athlete demarcates human possibility at a level that really is much lower than one wants as a human sometimes. No superhumaning is possible. Results are people who still appear characteristically human, but still more excellent by comparison with others. I have argued elsewhere, there is a diminishing return on fitness. Fitness is harder the further one goes. Those who did less fitness often got more for the effort. This shows also, that little growth is happening, because one has most of what one can have, at the beginning. More effort results in less.
The brain also develops as we know. Growth capacity is nervous system dependent. Some grow faster than others. The more intelligent cause jealousy and envy beacuse they grow faster. All learn fairly well, however, and some very satisfying personal improvements happen in most people with practice and effort. It ishow much one gets from effort, and typcially the smartest have more experience from less effort and faster gains. The gains though are ultimately human gains. The human intellectual still appears much like a normal person. Typically they have not self-taught to float, or make money appear. While they do have powers oftentimes in society that are greater than others, there still is nothing their families can perceive that deifies them. Once again, families focus on flaws, and flaws are found easily.
Where does one grow outside of body and mind? There isn’t really anyplace else to theink of, and while that might not seem interesting, it is important. A human doesn’t have many growth directions. Get physically fit, clean up a bit, and learn. What else can be done? Not much of anything. So one grows only in a couple ways really. The ways one grows in these directions is very limited. One cannot grow to be an elephant’s size, and one cannot have octopus legs. Considered this way, the human shortcoming of growth shows significant human definition, and is greatly constrainted. Asking about “how much one can grow in these limited ways” is somewhat funny. Can one really grow meaningfully? That is a quesiton that comes to mind. Of course, in human interests, growth where it can be had is what we are caring about. But to understand human shortcomings, we don’t really know what they are unless we have this kind of conversation. one is highly interested, based on this, in growing a little, to the extent that is human defined, with a diminishing return typically, and in the really narrow ways a species can grow. It can slightly make its body “better”, and it can learn.
Based on this, we have isolated our metrics believe it or not. We have bodily growth metrics with and without performance enchancing drugs, hormones, food quantity, and various activities, and we have nervous system growth, improvement of neural networks, brain size and density, relating somewhat to deliberate personal activity, but less than one would like.If one is a smart person, smart growth happens.
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Forthcoming.
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Forthcoming.
Linguistic illusions is a subject that I have not yet encountered in my interactions with others, and have seen no example of an existing writing in academica within the fields of psychology and philosophy, where you would expect detailed discussion to be present. In these fields, cognitive and logical fallacies are discussed respectively, but the special topic of language related illusions does not appear to have received sufficient attention. If it is not something I have encountered in my academic training and studies, and in my career, and in my extensive social interactions with others, including those in the high intelligence communities, it is clear, that one must seek the information as an independent researcher, or think about it afresh, in order to develop one’s thinking about it. In order to remedy this, I have included it here within the larger subject of human shortcomings, and it is an incredibly important subject to include, because we spend so much time talking using language, and in my view, most of our language use involves active illusions in the people speaking, talking and writing. In other words, if you or someone else is talking to me, I belive you are involved in a large number of illusions even while you probably think you are talking with truth, trust, and honesty. If this claim happens to be true, then the reader can readily see that, this is a very important human shortcoming to know about and to try to overcome.
When one uses words, one expects that the words correspond to actual entities. Oftentimes, in my view, they do not, and if that is the case, there is a linguistic illusion concerning the existence of what is discussed. This exists for words that relate to objects, but relates also to situations. For example, a woman may create a situation that is entirely fabricated, in order to make something happen that is desirable to her. As you listen, you believe that what is said concerning the situation really corresponds to real occurrances, while none of those occurances were actual. Sometimes words are used to represent complexes which are situational, which also involve falsification, so that a manipulator can have people believe, something is happening that is not or cannot happen. Simple words like “Democracy” to my mind, involve unreal situations. Use of words such as this one, allows manipulators to achieve ends that are made possible by having listeners believe that such situations are true and have certain implications, and require certain actions or abstentions from them. Here, people may be interested in having more examples of situational and object related phrases to exhibit further what is meant by this section, but I will propose that the reader just needs to be smart enough to think about it for a while. A catalogue, complete, of real world exmaples of this, would be massive and would reveal that humans are liars and are stuck in illusions. I think that is really needed to be made. I may try at some point to create such a writing, but for now, have to discuss some of the linguistic illusions quickly before moving on, to cover all the types that exist, not just one deadly type, that people have not been able to see or try to eradicate. The section on operational validity, also covers this, because it discuses the need in science for any concept, or collection of words representing anything, to actually measurably relate to real thigns; else there is a risk that scientific work is about nothing or is amiss. This subject is coverd more in that section.
The above limitation of language is important beccause language has the role of representing reality for us in a way that allows us to self commuicate and communicate to others. The point of the above is that language must actually correspond to real things and unfortunately many times, it does not, and it is true that dictionary words often also do not correspond to actual entities or situations. To give an example, one can say that there are “oligarchies”, but it may be true there never was one even once. That is a point I will not elaborate trusting the intelligence of the reader to find their way out of the illusion perhaps as an exercise.
Later we may discus the human shortcoming of “I need examples that never lead me to the abstract generalization”. This is the situation of just giving peole examples so they only know those and not what you are trying to teach that has extensive general application.
The automated language illusion is another one encountered everday, and applies to all people, excepting perhaps the most alien of mindfully deliberate talkers. It’s that one just starts saying things, and keeps saying them, believing that what they say, really reflects what they believe, what they would commit to, what they “really think”, “how they really feel”, and so on. There is within psychology a shortcoming called the “availability heuristic”, a mental rule which causes one to think that whatever is available to their mind, is what is true or real. So one wakes up in the morning, and thinks things like “I need a shower”, but one doesn’t, or “I am hungry” but one isn’t hungry, or “I am tired and need more sleep”, but one isn’t needing more sleep. Over and over, one repeatedly thinks that one is accurate regarding one’s state of mind and biology, but one is chronically false about these things. Around lunchtime, one thinks one “needs lunch”, or some specific meal type, and that one also “requires a coffee”. If one is observant about what one thinks, and has the hobby of self-correction to be more truthful, one will find that one has an incredible amount of correction to do. You observe others, and think they have feelings and emotions they don’t have, and you think about famouspeople automatically as if any of your thinking has truth. People who talk about sports, seem to automatically only lie without knowing it. The mind is streaming false language automatically and this includes false information about one’s intimate and personal details, and one gets one’s own state wrong repeatedly and endlessly without being aware of it.
This was a lesson in creating awareness about it. Being aware obout it is helpful, and being corrective with a striving towards accuracy is important too. This one is a challenging one, and one has to gradually know more about social programming and conditioning, psychology, and medical sciences including pharmacology, to advance very far. Sometimes I’m aware I’m wrong about my thinking, because I don’t know what my brain is really doing.
So people are often in illusions that their language is representing things when the language is not, and they are automatically in sequence for all of life often thinking what must be false about self and others, because of excess complexity and because the automatic thoughts are those that are “socially programmed bad explanations and phrases”. The automatic thinking is using language that is common language, and so the bad thinking does come from cultural transmission. These are important and create a difficult situation for humanity but we will move on to include more that is difficult and really needed to be known about, to have a more inclusive understanding of what linguistic illusions are exixting in totality.
All the errors of logic fit into this category, although we will discuss logical fallacies elsewhere. For now, we need to be aware that this serious problem, of getting logic right, is also a part of this same subject matter of illusions and problems of langauge. As educated people know, when they have learned logic and logical fallacies and science and statistics, and actually have used them for self improvement, the thinking of others is error ridden without their knowing their logic has any problems. Furthermore, it appears they don’t know that logic has any value. Simple listening reveals that they really do not have good trains of deductive or inductive reasoning, and they fail to make good analgoies, or know what analogies really are. They are unaware of what a “logical argument is” and sometimes what a civil debate really should be like from an academic perspective. Instead they tink it consists of combats, and that arguments involve personal losses, wins, concessions, and so on, rather than strivings towards collaborative truth. Strivings towards collaborative truth using rules of logic involving finding truthful propositions and sentences and forming the correct chains of reasonsing is what it is about. Even the academically trained, I have noticed, routinely and uniformly, depart from the practice of correct debate and reasoning, and fall into the normal combativness of the uneducated. Like screeching or greedy animals, sometimes thinking a discussion is supposed to result in “winning because it is their turn”. Taking turns to be right, and agreeing to make things seem harmonious, are horrendously problematic social issues, resulting from language problems taught socially, that result in severe linguistic behavioral shortcomings. If one is illogical, one is not thinking true things, and not thinking as honestly.
Humorously, given the above illusion about concepts, people will have in their arguments, non-existing entities and situations, and incorrect logic about it. So they think they can have logical discourse about gods and angels for example. The minds of people who are thinking this way, are as false as can exist. The objects they hold to be important do not exist, cannot be in real situations, and then they try to use both combined with poor logic, to make inferences about what else would exist, or what people should or shouldn’t do. They think people can have inferences about their behavior relating to things that don’t exist from incorrect logic. This means they will think they and others must behave in ways that are insane, not only incorect or illusory.If too far within linguistic illusions, one atains another kind of achievement, of pscyhosis, hallucination, delusion, insanity, and a brain made of wrong representation in its structure. This is the importance of trying to overcome language’s illusions. If one does not, one’s brain has the wrong organization extensively, and it keeps thinking language that is incorrect. Notice the insane and the most delusional, are those who are most often exhibiting, extensive erroneous thinking. An insane person, or a highly religious Christian, who uses it, can be expected to speak much more completely incorrect thoughts. This is because their brain organization has become incorrect. If too incorrect, the person is not really fixable. We are aware of this- and it is why education is so imporant from an early age. At a certain age, it is too late. One is a devout hallicator to the end.
We have conveniently wrapped or enveloped the subject matter to develop in more full detail. Whether or not concepts or words, and phrases and sentences, represent actual things, and whether or not they confuse and create illusions or delusions, covers everything that can be talked about. From a single word to the longest book. Logic constitutes the ways in which the words, and sentences, together would or would not be jointly representative, which also includes all that can be thought or written verbally. With automatic falsity of logical thinking, we have all thinking too, although initially, it would seem to include only those thoughts which had less awareness or care. In fact all thoughts are included. Practiced thinking and social-communicative-language programming is what results in automatic thought. The less aware thought is the result of the more aware thought, but the more aware thought, is still automatic, but more deliberate. We are automatic thinkers creating less reflective automatic thought. Automatic error, becomes our key problem. As self correctors of human shortcomings, we find that we are combating existing habits of thought and are tyring to avoid creating new bad habits. The objective is not to make non-automatic thoughts, but to make automatic correct thougts, over time working to eliminate errors we often and routinely make. We cannot pefect this, and the title of this book “human shortcomings” explains why: the shortcomings are species related too. We can improve considerably but we cannot expect our linguistic thinking, or any of our thinking, to be entirely free of illusion and error. It is possible however, to make very great advancements, such that one can see that remining problems are tolerable, while the intolerable problems are mostly removed.
The extent in which language would be an omission also presents an illusion regarding the expansiveness and completeness of one’s knowledge and of the maturity of one’s culture. Some people tend to be resistant of acquiring new vocabulary, yet behave as if their knowledge is sufficient and complete as it is. Some people who are like this, are in leaderhsip positions, and refuse to hear what would alter their viewpoints or perspectives. Cultures tend to think that they are quite modern, representing something important and significant by comparison to others and to what has existed, and has difficulty comparing with others, or comparing with wht the future will be, and think instead that they too are complete and expansive in knowledge. People in cultures tend to be reistant to change and alteration by outsiders or alternative positions partly because they do think themselves to be complete and “modern” and that no changes are needed and oftentimes they cannot hear alternative points of view.
Reflecting on my personal history, and times learning about and using the dictionary, by myself and others, I think it is not a common vision to have, that there might be a much larger dictionary, a dictionary replacing dictionary that is better, or that there really can be a tremendously larger body of knowledge in the vocabulary of other cultures. While learning, the “biggest dictionary” one’s culture has, seems a real standard, and while one is aware there are lesser dictionaries that can be used that are less expensive, smaller, and more convenient, there exists still, a “master dictionary” that has all the knowledge. One does not imagine that this dictionary is a mini dictionary, or that the dictionary of another culture is much better.
There was a similar experience with the encyclopedia, where one could obtain “encyclopedic” knowledge, which was thought to be “universal knowledge”. Using such language, it is clear that people living during my childhood and earlier, thought that one would attain some completeness or omniscience of sorts, if one could only recall an entire dictionary. People worked on this actively, reading through dictionaries to have more extensive knowledge. It’s a very enjoyable way of reading, to read through the encyclopedia, but this supreme goal of having al the knowledge is not possible with such efforts. I commented a longtime ago, that the encyclopedia shows that the user experience and interface development of the internet and web encyclopedias is not as good as with encyclopedias, and that the joy of trying to read an encyclopdia is largely lost, being unable to see how much of the encyclopedia exists at once, to survey contents quickly, and to read through it knowing how much of it one has completed, that one would like to read. Wikipedia has replaced encyclopedias of course, and this does not have the books “read through experience” that print encyclopedias had.
Wikipedia, and online encyclopdias, had boundaries that were not easily known, like with print books. One could compute how many volumes of wikipedia would or could exist, but computations would be required and the mental vivdness would not exist about the “wilderness of knowldege” to be explored. The size of the territory is unknown, but was known with print encyclopedias. I think for a period there may have been a similar effect with Wikipedia, that the information it had was still encyclopedic, having universal informtion, and that one could not well conceive of all that is outside this knowledge space, or the wikipedia prime set in the set of total information that would exist.
At the moment of writing this, wikipedia seems artificially something of interest. Artificial intelligence online chat services can easily provide all that is in wikipedia, and the experience could be nearly identical to the online encyclopedia experience. If one wanted to read an entire encyclopedic article on a subject and have it link to other subjects, just like normal wikipedia articles, and to a lesser extent, print encyclopedia articles, artificial intelligence can do it. It has not yet completely superseded wikipedia, however, because AI companies do not yet seem to want to provide this value of use. It can be easily seen when using an online AI, that it can provide much more than it does, and it can serve whatever a search engine could find before, so in addition to providing more, it can simply provide the encyclopedia as its responses.
The artificial intelligence system provides again, some boundary condition for human knowledge, and it is hard for people to imagine, that an alt-artificial intelligence could exist, completely replacing langauge with new languages, using a total storage of information vastly huger than an encyclopeida online or in print, and that in the future, this will be what it is.
This conversation as it unfolds is not so different from conversations one would have had with people who would have tried to persuade that human thinkign is small, and that one can only know a little of what can be known. Anyone who used the print encyclopedia, and “Print Libraries”, who was intelligent enough, could notice that there was a lot to read that one would not have time for. This really did always imply there was vast information that one could not learn. Notice though, there is an important difference in mindset. I think many if not most thinkers who were seeing that there was so much to know that could not be known to an individual were still looking at a cultural repository as the example of what knowledge could be had. That libraries, and encyclopedias and so on provided “far much more than anyone can read” and therefore, “people can’t know all that was available”.
There is a bigger barrier though, and its just about what your language and learning omits or not. Smaller cultures may have a special problem with this, not understanding really, that a larger culture provides a way of thinking that is much huger than a small culure or tribal culture could have. In our lifetimes, we are still witnessing the end points of cultures that have not yet realized they are surely coming to an end. Islander cultures, tribal Indian cultures, and maybe small country cultures, who since larger, with actual national boundaries, still believe, they will not soon be eliminated.
If a culture finally understands they were omitting mind that was existing in other much larger cultures, because they were clinging to their own older traditions and viewpoints, that could not understand that their lexicons and encyclopedias of knowledge emphatically did not include all that they could want at the time or in the future.
To make those who may be aligned with these cultures feel a bit better, (to manipulate them the way they want, which is a shortcoming), there isn’t any culture that survives compared to the future, and this essay is concerned about the omission of information of the largest cultures and not the smaller one’s. Also, of the size of what can be known of sources of knowledge, to individual minds, which are much more limited, and have to watch culture expand extremely, as they see the all the growth is where individual learning cannot be had mostly.
The boundary of the lexicon is espeically important because it tells about what concepts exist in the total knowledge. I think we will soon see a failure of dictionaries to keep up with the pace of knowledge too. But we can imagine a dictionary of concepts is quite large, but we can clearly see it fits in a book. While the words of the dictionary are very suffient for many of life’s tasks, using a wisely selectd subset of what exists, that it is a growing text, and that it is as small as it appears in its largest form, does imply that what it omits is tremendous.
People tend to find locations in which words are not existing, and want to make new terms themselves. Word creation is something people have long wanted to contribute to, but instead of being permitted to add them to formal dictionaries, have to feel satisfied using new words informally as slang for example, or within talkings and writings of their own. That words need to be created, also indicates an occasional awareness, that the words that exist are not collectively satisfactory and complete to discuss experience. In the sciences words are more frequently created, and I have noticed that these words are often not included in large standard dictionaries. This is why I wanted to use an illustration of a larger dictionary that contains all the words the culture offers, including what might be in the sciences, and recognizing the dictionary would still be smallish. If we combine reference dictionaries of specific fields with the standard dictionary, and remove repeated entries, preserving only unique words, we would see the dictionary is smaller than the encyclopedia was. In this expanded dictionary, including the dictionaries of specialized fields, we’d see the many words that have been created, since earlier versions of the dictionary, and the greatest extent of the contribution, would come the sciences.
Can we expect that this growth would not continue? I think it is clear, that the dictionary growth would increase greatly in the future, as new words are needed to represent really anything anyone could care about. Elsewhere, I have written about a Verbalsphere, which is the word representation of reality. If we had a verbalsphere, we’d have words for everything. Another word I used was “verbalverse” which is the language equivalent of the universe. To be able to speak of the universe exactingly, one will have to have something approaching the verbalverse in complexity to do it.
Let us contrast an experience: that of realizing that a new word is needed, seeing that there is a specific omission in the language, and feeling the same about having to add more than our language has in it presently. There is a psychological difference, that I don’t think gets noticed, and I think I also have a shortcomign, of feeling these two things the same way. The feeling that one’s language is limited is vaguer than the feeling that a specific word is needed. While it is more vague, it is more a total shortcoming on the human brain and all animal existence.
Knowing that words are needed in the various places does not commonly lead to an insight that language itself is primitive! A simple comparison of the dictionary from one hundred years ago, with what exists now, shows that we are on the eddge of the very beginning of language’s growth and development. I once purchased a copy of the Merk Manual, which is a medical dictionary and encyclopedia, and I bought an anniversary edition that included a copy of the very first edition. The first edition is not much larger than a pamphlet! The modern edition is extremely dense with high quality medical information. It is as if 150 years ago medicine did not exist! Given the change, adn the growth of culture, it appears soon the edition I purchased too will seem like a mere pamphlet, and I think in some ways it will become too out of date to consider for use. I think the entire dictionary is in a similar situation.
However, the current human vocabulary is “organically grown” as some say, meaning it did not have a systematic plan in advance, but instead grew like all the other languages, as an animal outcome, resulting from normal behavior of the human species. The verbal behavior of early human animals, including us, contributed to this early lexicon. The means of contribution is not anything anyone understands to be a system, or to have a procedure or method. Instead, people have sporadically felt the need to speak and record new words. When words were originally only spoken, the quantity of existing words, was only in the repositories of the best minds, those who could hold the most vocabulary. They were representative of others too, who also contributed (everyone contributed), but most people can’t hold as many words. Later, dictionaries were built off of the writings of authors, and lists that could be compiled by dictionary makers, using the various written works as tools. The written language, also grew the language asystematically largely, as authors independently, as they wanted or needed to, contributed new words. Common culture, and the artifacts created, showed popular changes in language, which provided the commonality needed in writing, for dictionary makers to include the words. Popularity in written books, and incultural recordings, allowed for a huge expansion of the dictionaries. But this was still all asystematic. Many words were not detected for updating dictionaries, and clearly, many people create new words, that dont’ get popular enough, for attention of dictionary makers. Even popular pop cultural words get rejected for inclusion in dictionaries.
Dictionary makers, while they have a way to choose words to include, like a business, do not provide to the culture, a clear and methodical systemmatic approach for people to create new words, that would end up in the dictionary. Today, the lack of an open system, to develop the words of language, is a reason why dictionaries can’t really be expected to keep up anymore. There is too much writing that comes into existence for dictionaries to be aware of them, and as I said, they typically do not include many of the words in the sciences and this is really clear if one compares, say, the Oxford English Dictionary, with a medical dictioanry. Doing such a comparison, it seems the dictionary ignores what is happening in medicine largely. One finds medical words in the dictionary, but very few by proportion to what is created in the field.
Since there is no clear systematic approach to growing the concepts of langauge, what we have includes more sloppy concepts than would be normally recognized. Other portions of this text on shortcomings of langauge cover this, but I will suggest that, eventually science will want to discard many normal everyday words for more precise ones. I would argue, that humans today, have a mental imprecision, and feeling of linguistic ambiguity, because langauge is sloppy. The cause of this sloppiness is for reasons realted to the organic or non-systematic growth of the language. It is interesting to note that all languages include the same kinds of errors as a result of growing separately, as speaking human animals.
The languages appear to need considerable replacement if not complete replacement, and in any case, the words that will exist in the future, will reduce the quantity that exist now, to a very small quantity.
There is a functional power of the limited vocabulary we have now, but I will have to discuss that elsewhere.
Seeing that one’s concepts are of a more unplanned type, and that one’s concepts are few in number, creates a vague sense that we are “in the dark” about most concepts that will come to exist, which also means our minds are very primitive in many ways, by comparison to what will exist later. However, I still feel I sense this very vaguely! It is very clear given the above points, but not as clear still, as the specific experience, of noticing there is a gap in the words we have, and a need for another word.
There appears to be a shortcoming concerning the vividness of experience of acknowledging one’s mind’s size as compared to what is possible. This explains partly why less intelligent people cannot admit easily that more intelligent people exist. There appears to be an analagous shortcoming, concerning an inability to fully acknowledge, that one’s language omits as much as it does.
There is an explanation: that comparing oneself to what appears as nothingness is not really feasible. When I think of the distant future, and a culture of minds with a much vaster linguistic ability, it appears I have little in my imagination. It appears I’m trying to compare myself, and my culture, to a vague nothingness, with a very superficial general observation, somewhat mathematical, and abstract, that there can be such things. Failing to have a concrete comparison, I cannot see any clear and definite difference, or size of the difference.
This inability to compare does seem like it is involved in the observed lack of concern or awareness of this point in the social world. Additionally, since most do not think very abstractly, any such agreement as to the above points, probably would be vaguer still than my experience. There is also a cognitive bias related to an inability to estimate one’s abilities to compare correctly with others, which is called the “Dunning Kruger effect”. It would be true, that people would be hard to be convinced that they do really make omissions linguistically, and that their language really is mostly an omission.
It appears a true shortcoming here is identified, that conceptually, humans have trouble being aware of the extent of their conceptual inadequacies and what would be required to get out of the situation. Notice one never hears that a “language overhaul” would be required, and that future concepts would reveal clearly, that existing concepts are sloppy and few, and that these are what we think with. If there was such an awareness, there might be a desire, akin to space travel or alleviation of some major social ill, to improve human language, so that its concepts are less sloppy, and so there is a systematic, and not an asystematic, for including the new concepts that we lack presently. That requires awareness that there is such a lack.
The purpose of this text is very largely to convince others that such human shortcomings exist, so as to popularize the need for overcoming them now or making plans for overcoming them in the future. It happens to be a plan of mine to work on some core issues with language including selecting what is best, but I think that effort is too great to complete in my lifetime very likely, and I have to reduce my efforts to focus more on what is relevant immediately for an improved ethical system and life. Improving ethical concepts and methods, the logic of langauge, the language of mathematics, and making new concepts is all a part of my work. The work of arriving at a systematic growth model for language, to improve it generally and for all, in a way that most would agree to, will have to come from others, who I want to influence, with writings such as this one.
Forthcoming.
Forthcoming.
Within the sciences, among the separate tests of validity is the test of “operationalization of a concept”. An operational concept is one that is supposed to actually correspond to an entity, such that the concept being used, is operationally functional in the scientific experiment or study. Operational validity is a requirement that extends into ordinary discourse, and test of this validity is not passed, one is correct that the non-operational word does not have good reference to an existing thing in reality, or does not have the specificity needed, to lead to successful metrical scientific understanding.
This relates to both the usability of the concept relating to its degree of ambiguity, and its applicability to reality as an actual corresponding verbalism to existing entities. Historically, my interest has been on concepts that fail tests of operationalization more severely, when there are very great ambiguities or concepts do not match existing things at all, but within the sciences there are more technical approaches for finding the usability of concepts to further technical inquiry. For this particular discussion, related to human shortcomings, it is first needed to be known that such an idea is a real test of validity accepted in a number of sciences, and secondly, that it exists because lay people and scientists both employ concepts that do turn out to be not very usable, once they finally do use tests of operationalization. In other words, we already do assume that the tests of operational validity are needed, because conceptual failures are common, and that we expect people inside and outside of the sciences to use concepts invalidly, and that such concepts require correction. This means that for concept creation and use, there is a definite human shortcoming related to language in general, that in the human lexicon, too many concepts really do not refer to anything, and too many are too ambiguous to use with much precision.
This is a claim that is much more challenging to human life, than other claims about language leading to lack of clarity and disagreement, which is something I discuss elsewhere in the text.This states that people are thinking and talking words that do not represent any existence, which is similar to seeing things that are not existing, or drawing pictures or illustrations for people about things that do not have appearances. It is a claim that people are sometimes insane when they speak, that they are delusional that their language is clear, or that it really is about anything! Beyond specific issues with individual thinking, the entire language is supplying to people’s minds, what scientists are needing to test for operational validity, meaning they expect much that exists in language, simply does not refer to anything, or is too ambiguous. Tests of operational validity are tests of dictionaries, the usability of what dictionaries contain, the extent to which the words contained are about real things, and the extent that they contribute to delusional or insane minds.
Suppose there is a religion that one has not adopted. Typically, if one has not adopted a particular religion, it is because one finds many flaws with it, or does not find it useful, or one disagrees with its honesty. Typically, people who adopt one religion, are hostile in opinion to other relgions, although there are some who with great self-contradiction, think they can accept them simultaneously. Demographics of the present day, assume each individual has accepted a single religion or none at all, and there is an assumptionn that by choosing this way, the others are rejected. Assuming that one has not adopted a relgion, that is more absurd than others seem to be, one is rejecting something that has a lot of existing language and communication talking about it. That langauge and communication, employs words that appear in dictionaries. Dictionaries, therefore, are expected to have words that others reject, or do not accept. Dictionaries, being inclusive of religious language that is rejected by others, also includes language of other religions, mutually rejected by proponents of any of the other religions. It follows that all or much of the religious language that exists, from any of the religions, is rejected bymost other people, being people who fall outside those religions, and that these religions use their own communication and words, that appear in dictionaries, and that these words therefore, are rejected by most who live.
From this we can see that language is not something people typically just adopt anyways. One has to agree, for example, that many are not willing to just agree, with Christians, that there is an entity called a “soul” or another entity called a “conscience”. As someone who is non-Christian myself, I reject these concepts, as would many other naturalists or atheists. Likewise, proponents of other religions that are not Christian in the current day, and people who lived in prehistory, may also have not been willing to accept such words, using words of their own, like “brain”, and “dislike of a thought or behavior”. Religious language does not have universal agreement, and people of one religion tend to prefer their own concepts to those used by people of other religions.
The rejection of these words and language would be due partly to test for representative validity, or simply testing for existence, or excess ambiguity. This is really the same as the more formal test of operational validity. Scientists, using the formal test of operational validity, would conclude that words like “soul” and “conscience” are not usable, are too vague, and would not relate to real existences. For the word “soul” one would notice, this is more clearly true, than for the word “conscience”. A conscience though is too vague, has too little of mutual agreement about it, and does not point to a unitary entity that is different from a pattern of thinking that underlies it and explains it easily without the term. “Conscience” is not a good scientific word, and humorously, it is homophonous to “Con Science”. Outside of science, and before science, we already knew some words were about things that did not exist, and that some words were not very useful for communicating because of vaguenesses. Within science, the formalization of the test of operational validity, makes it more clear, that as we go into details of testing, conceptual clarity becomes more important, and levels of vagueness are encountered requiring techniques to solve conceptual problems, and also that some older concepts from history, had to be eradicated totally. Scientists swap older ways of speaking with newer clearer ways of talking, and this is partly because of knowledge about this test of operational validity, and partly because they knew before becoming scientists that there are too many words that do not mean anything or are too problematic for clear conversation and use. In my view, the test of operational validity is somewhat a roundabout or circumventing approach to finally having a new way to discuss ridding the world of unusable terms, while people are less aware that there is such a trend, because “this doesn’t pass the test of operational validity” is less provocative than “your concept doesn’t make sense and doesn’t refer to anything”. Quietly, the concept of a “soul” is replaced with neuroscientific concepts instead.
That people and scientists were expecting though, that there would be tests of existence for words, for the ambiguity and representativeness of words, and so on, means they really did think, dictionaries and language itself was filled with too much that was not real. The dictionaries needed to eradicate words, and replace older words with newer versions. Science is an undertaking to replace in many ways older more basic langauge with newer language that is more precise and less filled with dishonesties, untruths, and silly traditions.
Knowing that the language is scattered and filled with words that do not correspond to realities, or are too vague to think clearly or communicate with, we can pair this human shortcoming with the shortcoming of the inability to self-train accross the brain, the limits of action and behavior, and of self correction, to see that if people did learn that some new words required update, they wouldn’t be able to change it accross their brains typically, even if there were new better words to use instead. There is also a limitation on intelligence that relates. One is simply unable to learn an entirely new version of the same language, or make extensive changes to one’s own thinking, particularly if one is less adept at doing so, because one is not intelligent enough. If one is intelligent enough to do much, with this including myself, then a lot of work can be done, but the work that would be done, would resemble greatly, my own effort on this Book and Journal! This Book and Journal does not appear to be an undertaking that anyone would typically take on, and in my conversations and observations of others, there are hardly any people who show any indications that they do similarly. It is true, however, that as people get educated, they do learn of new terms, and they do make some headway into self-training in different portions of the brain, but in my experience, there is only limited success, even among those who are smarter, and use the newer concepts, but use them in isolated conversations. An example in which this can be clearly shown to be true, is with the failure of the scientists, mathematicians, and experts, to update their use of “equality” as it is used in the social world, to promote social justice. Equalitarianism, in my work Abandoning Equality is shown to be an especially good example, of an especially central and important concept, not being employed correctly outside the scientific and mathematical domain, while being well employed within those domains, with horrible consequences. With this one concept, it is shown, that scientists and mathematicians, did not self update in other places in their brains, as a result of their eductations. They stuck with being indoctrinated instead of making the changes to their brains needed to correct the operational validity issues that would aid in supporting social justice, instead preferring to use a failed version of the concept of “equality”.
If any group of people is going to provide the exemplars of those who did make some language changes in their own language to fix thinking using tests of operational validity, it would be the people who are more educated about it. Especially those who were educated about it, care that their language is true and honest, and are the type to do self-work to extensively change. My view is very pessimistic regarding this, however, and I think it is mostly likely, that people make some small number of changes to the way they speak using a very small number of concepts, in a very small number of isolated subject areas, that would correspond to isolated brain regions. Some people are able to make extensive self-changes regarding conceptual thinking, but I will not repeat that conversation here, preferring instead, to focus on the smallness of this group of people, to make it clear most are not making the changes needed to overcome the shortcomings.
What would be needed, to more fully overcome it, at an individual level, appears to be correction at the cultural level, in the dictionaries and langauges themsevles, so we don’t receive error filled lanaguage to begin with. Some, such as myself, endeavor to have an independent way of thinking and talking, that increases quality of language, and is langauge substituting to an extent, but these efforts have side effects of decreased communication instrumentality (others can’t understand what you say as well sometimes), and loss of some time making the changes. This is why it definitely requires higher intelligence, since only the highly intelligent can work on it fast enough, or enjoy the process as I do. Either way, work in this direction by individuals is an attempt at fixing culture without there being a way to propagate the changes, so that my Book and Journal, will appear later, like a separate culture or lifestyle of sorts, without anyone knowing about it. Instead what is needed is everyone to know about it, or what the scientists jointly come up with, to replace existing linguistic problems. Largely, unfortunately, at the present time, independent effort is needed for people to increase their own honestyusing the test of operational validity or other similar tests, while all wait for everyone’s independent efforts to combine and coalesce into the future culture with a new lexicon and langauge that has replaced what we have now.
Much of what is stated here applies to many of the other human shortcomings, however. They cannot be completely fixed typically, and instead we work correctively, to find ways to be more truthful and honest, and to have better quality of thinking, for the lives we are living as we live them. Knowing about this text on human shortcomings, preferrably at a young age, would allow for children to work slowly into adulthood, to be higher quality thinkers, using a reasonable amount of effort (also an important part of this text), who can still easily attain human excellences that are relatively easy to have. The independent work towards these excellences is fun and satisfying too. I enjoy refusal to use words that are simply not referring to existing things, using instead concepts that are actual worthwhile. This involves a learning process too, and some enjoyment at comparing what one becomes with what one would be if one thought often using fautly traditional concepts. People who undergrow this type of growth do seem to have fun with the mature sarcasm and sense of humor that it brings. Importantly though, one feels a tremendous improvement completely rejecting concepts that are lower in quality, and partly rejecting and bypassing concepts of poorer quality, becomes one feels closer to truth, and can feel the improvement of one’s own abilities towards excellences.
Moral and ethical thinking does require that one use concepts that are not fictions. There is the difficult subject that one cannot become as ethical or moral as one would like potentially, but conceptually one can become more accurate and improve tremendously. As one grows, one differentiates from the insane and delusional people, who do continue to employ words like “spirit”, “ghost”, “alien” (as really representing something), “sasquatch”, “paranormal” (for whatever they believe is really paranormal), anything “supernatural” (for anything they think is out of nature), along with any other concepts whatsoever, that are about nothing or hardly anything. These people will continue to live alongside us who make changes, making it very conspicuous, just how immoral it is to adopt fictions and false concepts as real ones, to use and teach to others, and to act upon. Some who are religious, would see such things as “evil” depending on their viewpoints. Believing that “satan” or “demons” exist, and that the concepts are real, some really do think they are “fighting them” or “joining them”, like insane psychotics, who are really spending their time believign they are really interracting with invisible things. Some believe they are invisible things!
Thinking in these ways is not just unfortunate, it is an exhibition of some of the least ethical and excellent ways of behaving. Being a “satanist” or someone who thinks they “reside with angels”, insanely and unethically plan their conduct, and are unfit in their appraisals of others. They are not trustworthy teaching, partenting, or being around children. They are not trustworthy as friends or advisors to other adults. They are really unworthy to be near, reaching untouchable status in a way; because whoever does actually work towards living a life more free of error and with more virtues, one will not want to be near the influence of these people, or the dangers they create, because such people also are often criminal or are misbehaved.
If one does enjoy the effort at self alteration, using repeatedly tests of operational validity, will allow one to clean one’s vocabulary, to be increasingly distant from this type of people, and to live without visibility of them. In my time, I do not think of these people, and remain separate from them, keeping distances from anything dangerous. For this subject, see my book “Higher Order Attention”, or “Imagination and Filtration”, among others, which involves the ethics of right attention. Reading concepts that are false or fictional, employing them, thinking with them, teaching them, planning action with them and so on, is poor and damaging use of attention. If one hears someone using the more absurd concepts it is a sign that they are delusional, insane, or psychotic, and that they are a risk, and knowing they take them seriously, is enough to cut relations or create distance.
If someone tells you they believe in ghosts, and they are not easily convinced otherwise, it is smart to disconnect and keep a safe distance.
In a way, you use operational validity tests to choose relationships too. Does the person’s head, largely pass the test, or fail horribly? If it fails horribly, that is a poor relationship to have. By not failing, you are more ethical, and become a better relationship to have. More than this, you become a desirable person, to have as a mentor, friend, or acquaintance. Notice mentors in education (real education), and workplaces that are well known, do not typically invoke failed concepts in conversation. If they did, one would wonder if one is in the right place, or if it is safe.
In order to benefit from the conceptual updates one really just has to be dilligently making repetitive changes as one detects that the concepts are false and non-representative, or too vague and ambiguous. There isn’t anything incredibly special about the process, except the discipline of doing it, and the efficiency of perceiving it and seeing required changes. Higher intelligence means making more changes faster, especially if paired with discipline, but anyone doing it with discipline benefits.
Citizens, or cult members, of the various nationalistic groups, also religious oftentimes, comprise the normal population. This population, receiving viewpoints from messaging of their respective systems, arrive at social and media related thinking, that is directly caused by the messaging. We know this to be true, because if it were not, there would be no way that a country would have a collection of people accross a large geography, exhibiting similar behaviors and points of view. Having the same teachings, and the same collection of media messages being presented to them, they do not have the others of the other nations, which means that all within their group, has what the others have, and not anything different. While the amount of messaging and teaching happening within the nation is larger than any individual can be exposed to, collectively, all are constrained to be exposed to what they are exposed to, with a good amount of overlap between individuals, regarding what they’ve seen and heard. The result is a population that does exhibit diversity, but despite this diversity, there is a large amount of commonality, that clearly makes them seem different in mindset and communication, from those of other nations.
What is taught socially in school and in media messaging, where it is indoctrinating a nationalistic perspective all are supposed to share, includes fallacies, fictions, myths, and untruths. The effect of these are opinions amongst the population that are the result of very poor thinking, and this poor thinking results in an incompatibility of many thoughts in each individual, such that their minds are self-contradictory. The self-contradictoriness of any individual of a nation is very easy to show, and the extent in which they are contradictory is shocking. Once it is seen how contradictory their thinking is, one cannot trust an entire person quite as much as before, knowing that one part of their mind may think with some truth, while the other contradicts it so as to make clear their holistic insanity.
In this essay, we have really a collection of human shortcomings of interest in interplay. One is the readiness of a person to absorb nationalistic propaganda in school and through the media; another is to be willing to maintain such propaganda despite experiencing contradictions with other views where one has more veracity; another is the human shortcoming of being unable to revisit thinking to make changes, so the propaganda’s effects are likely to remain and be resistive to efforts in self-training to alter one’s mindset; and another is the shortcoming of being unintelligent enough to not know contradictions are existing, and being unable to know the extent of these errors in their minds. Also to add to this group are fallacies, poor traditional assumptions, and other issues which combine to create minds that widely inconsistent. It is important that thinking alone, people do tend to find truths and consistencies, but when they rely on traditional information, nationalistic teachings, and social propaganda, they incorporate into their minds, too many untruths, that they are unable to remedy as their lives continue.
Equalitarianism is an incorrect view inculcated in populations by schools, national propaganda,entertainment, and media wherever it exists. The result of equalitarianism, is an inability of individuals to make sense out of anything of importance where individuals and groups exhibit diversities and changes of various kinds. An equalitarian nation, will claim that “all people are equal” even if there is diversity in the population, and that this equalitarianism extends from people to different cultures and groups. Equalitarian espousing nations will claim that their diverse inhabitants, being people of different sexes, genders, races, ethnic groups, linguistic stocks, and immigrants of other nations, are somehow still equal. This amounts to believing that obvious differences are not anything that amount to differences that matter really, and that these things should be ignored, in the appraisal of value, of people and actions. An obviously foolish assumption that no high quality intellect can accept, the population becomes a group of imbeciles, talking politically about samenesses and equalities, while trying to grapple with the effects of actual differences. Meanwhile, nations are thought to be “capitalists in competition”, and even competing in evolution in a “survival context”, and this competition is really about everything, from sports to business and politics, where everyone is vying for advancement and dominion, while saying too frequently, they believe themselves to be humble and basic equals. An intelligent mind, observing this, thinking it stupid incomprehensible almost, being raised in the viewpoint, that education results in advancement of the population and clear thinking; and what is witnessed, viewing these people, contradicting their own brain tissues too often, is a population that has been lead by religio-nationalistic groups, to cultism, believing both that equality is true, and that it is not. Unable to correct this due to the extensiveness of the problem in their brains, they cannot be expected to fix it. So the intelligent figure must live amongst the very unintelligent, who cannot and will not self improve, and in their non-self improvement, will claim equality, to the thoroughly improved and educated.
Equalitarianism has been discussed in the book “Abandoning Equality” where it is proven that the social view is erroneous. It will not be proven again here, as that work is a preliminary, to be read in advance of this work. Instead, fun will be had, showing other ways in which this contributes to the study of human shortcomings, by showing how others exhibit their poor growth, in the infertile soil of their nations. It’s fun because it is an absurdity one lives in, and because, the knowledge does have very important ramifications. One extremely prefers that others are corrected and educated out of this predicament they live in, but knowing this cannot happen, one can laugh instead a bit.
Equalitarians are ready immediately with reactionary zeal and speed to war with a nation that its population is supposed to think is equal to their own! They are expected via propaganda, to very quickly, support force, resulting in deaths, of potential family members of their own immigrant population, or genetic similars to earlier inhabitants of their nation. The United States, was engaged in war in Europe, with Germany, Italy, Japan, and others, while having large populations of people from these nations in their own country. Instead of thinking, their own family members and genetically related groups to be equal enough to not kill, they instead joined in to go to the nations, to kill them themselves! In history, these military personnel were referred to as the “lemmings” of mankind, but they predominate and have much support, such that all are lemmings even if they are not the ones directly shooting and killing. The lemming-people, before, during, and after the war, were still expected to be, and were Equalitiarians! They just were horribly contradictory in their own minds, with the equalitarian portion of the thinking happening in these places, and the killing parts thinking in these other places, such that they were safely impossible to combine into moral deliberation. Thus the equalitarian in one moment claims their racially and ethnically different neighbors are their equals, while they plan to kill their own families and the families of their neighbors in other countries, themselves, or through their politics. They will send their own children to die to kill these enemies in the other nations while thinking their kids are equal to themselves too, which they fail to understand, is a contradiction also, and that what they are doing is, sending the easily persuaded less valuable to die instead of doing it themselves.
These actions we are told by elders are unforgiveable type actions.
Respect for the aged members of society doing the trickery is expected in the ageist prejudice also exhisting alongside Equalitarianism. The baby is equal to the child, is equal to the teen, is equal to the thirty year old, is equal to the seventy year old, but then the youngest is “most important for protection”, and then the “youngest is most important for defense overseas”. It is not an exaggeration to say, that here in the United States, as in other nations which have been persuaded about western lifestyles and democratic government, all are this stupid, and all cannot see that they need correction, or the extent of the learning required.
While failing their religions entering into combat, they forget their own religions, and re-entertain, that their religion is superior to the others, and that the others, are inferior enough for forever in hell, and not only a little time there. Instead of thinking the other religious groups as equals, they think of them as infinite unequals, while on the subject of religion, and that they should be infinitely punished. They are unable to remember Equalitarianism while they zealously hate those in other religions.
Equalitarianism has not influenced desire for serious religious learnings of other nations, to become an incompatible collectivist of incompatible religious viewpoints, or any blend where combining is sensical. One traditionally, as one is taught, “chooses a religion”, that one thinks “is true”, and in such a choice, one is able to become much more important, and have more value, while those who choose the other religions are damned or are otherwise in falsity. Equalitarians really do believe this without knowing that this is incompatible with equalitarianism. They can advance themselves to eternal bliss in heaven, while all others, numbering in the billions, all those equals, descend into hell forever, or are just not a part of the heaven they get to have.
Education is supposed to improve people, but equalitarianism says they cannot advance. Education even teaches all are equal while trying to make them competitive and give them ways to win over the rest of the people they are with. It teaches that they are all equal, and that some are more and others are less, and that some will become much more while others much less. Absurdly, education is conveying true information about the realities of social competition and diversity while also teaching what is required by the nation, without recalling or seeming aware that this is requried, or that there is any problem. Little kids are all equal but if they do not get educated, later they will be fools who have less merits, who shouldn’t survive as easily, as those deserving more, for taking the education seriously. Education is also aware of different competencies, and teaches equality, where some children are showing very great superiorities over others, in all ways that superiorities can exist natrually between people. They have the sample of people to study, in the education science experiment, comparing all existing children, and the comparison yields, obviously, diversity, which is why comparison would be something to do. The diversity shows scientific inequalities. So it is very clear, that the population is aware about differences, inferiorities and superiorities, being children and students for a prolonged period, even if they were not educators. How is it possible then, that they could come to almost universally believe, that there could be any equality?
If one examines all the ways in which Equalitarianism relates to social and individual subjects, one can see that many regions of the brain are impacted adversely by the subject. Anytime the subject of diversity comes up, one will get the wrong answers using Equalitarianism! Equalitarianism is a kind of wrong-answer generator, that becomes people who keep thinking the wrong answers!
The range of teachings of a nation in education and propaganda, includes a wider assortment of absurdities than teachings about Equalitarianism, but for each, a large quantity of brain is impacted:
Resume.
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The last writing on human shortcomings were from well over a decade ago. Here I continue that writing with a list of human shortcomings, more recently noticed or of recent interest. Earlier categories of human shortcomings and some various specific shortcomings were listed and written in longhand. These will be scanned an included here also, in the near future.
In this sitting I have written a list of various shortcomings related to togetherness, or social-group situations in which people are seated together, standing together, or variously spatially commingled. This can be during parties, gatherings, social meetings, work meetings, larger gatherings, sporting events, religious events, school lectures, entertainment events, and many others in which people arrange to be together, or find themselves together. There are many errors concerning what people believe such events achieve, what they commit people to in terms of moral obligations, what they imply as far as communication, and so on.
Here is a list of shortcomings, errors, or mistakes, related to this spatial standing or sitting near each other, and what false inferences relate:
[More to be added soon]
Human errors can sometimes be thought of together in a complex collection of errors interrelated, making for a taxonomy of errors and unknowns. This system of mistakes identifies what is systematic about human mistake making, what kinds of mistakes they will make again and again, what is permanent or impermanent about mistake making, regardless of level of development, and what can and cannot be done by an individual and organizations to correct for mistakes, to eliminate them, or to live with them more effectively.
Forthcoming
There has been for a long time, an idea, that a human animal can be a rational one, and historically, some have considered a person to be a “reasoning animal”. However, from my periodic noticings that people do not seem to be competent animals at reasoning, or in being consistently rational, I think I have noticed enough, to see that while some really are reasoning animals, most are really not, or do it so poorly so often, that they lack competence. Here I suggest that there is a threshold of competence at reasoning that we should acknowledge to be highly exclusive in humankind, such that the majority of people, including some in the gifted range, and nearly everyone beneath, is incompetently rational, or we might say irrational, or pervasively irrational. The threshold of competence, as I see it, again based on routine observations, noticing patterns within experiences all have had, is that this threshold of competence demarcates people very distincly, and might be what could be considered a noticeable hard boundry, a little above some minimal level of rationality. There is a minimal level of quality in rationality happening before it is clearly noticeable and once it is clearly noticeable I think it demarcates and sets a boundary in humankind such that those who are rational are qualitatively different than the rest, and the rest really do seem to be incompetents, at an existential and functional level.
The incompetence is already felt within the population that likes to remain separate from those who are more mentally deficient, the mentally handicapped. We are aware that, among those in a more average range, there is a high frequency of criticism of one another, and name calling, and teasing, about others being “stupid” or “retarded” and that by such behavior, they make it as clear as can be possibly made, that being actually mentally deficient, or actually stupid, or actually noticeably low in IQ is something universally unwanted. What is omitted is that they also call each other these words, and mean it, because they can see in each other, some of the same incompetencies dimly, that I can see in all of them very clearly, particularly when their behavior is observable in a range of situations. They see that they are also incompetents, and already disliking each other enough oftentimes to liken them to functionally incompetent retards, they are seeing what happens to be true sometimes, and in such behavior, they have trouble seeing that their behavior is illogical, oftentimes cruel, and indicative of what they are criticizing about. We have all seen stupid people together show their stupidities in the way they argue with one another.
Given these behaviors we shouldn’t feel as inhibited about admitting what happens to be true, that people generally are incompetent in reasoning, and have not reached a threshold level of rationality, that once had creates a noticeable difference between types of living people.
While many readers would think I am inviting the audience to believe that they are in the rational group, I immediately using probabilistic expectation think it the reverse, that probably the reader is an incompetent, and probably one that believes themselves to be competent, while they are not. Part of the point of this book, is to enable some who might be competent with training to become competent, and to improve those who are already rational, but are furthering themselves in the direction of self-improvement to overcome human shortcomings and to separate further from the rest. Additionally, all the remaining people who are incompetent and less reasonable and rational will benefit from knowing that most are untrustworthy and this is partly why they think they must worship something greater than themselves and their peers; they alredy think that they are not very good thinkers, and that the people around them are dangerous compared to what is more trustworthy within religion, and that they are incompetent as religion states, which is the cause of their needing it. These people would benefit from learning about those who are more rational and what rationality might be like, and what it might be like to really strive for it, given the large list of human shortcomings this book describes. Given what this book has stated, it ought to be obvious to the reader, that none except the writer, and some few like the writer, have ever even thought of this subject, and certainly has never worked on overcoming these problems. Not knowing these problems ensures it was not worked on, known, or overcome! Which implies the reader and peers of incompetents, are forever never knowing. Moreover, without help, the population will remain problematic irrationals for millenia, because it isn’t only learning based to overcome these problems, but intelligence based, and honesty based, to understand that what is said here is true, and what is said here others cannot understand! People will need to have updated biology and thinking to reach an average population close in intelligence to the author of this text and other rational people to finally comprise a humanity which together collectively functions at an above threshold level.
While the above is intuitively obvious to me, and clear based on experience, I do think it worthwhile for my own interests and the interests of others, to have a collection of evidence, in the form of common experiences, that make it abundantly clear, that almost all humans are irrational, but some small percentage.
The following is an initial list under development:
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Mattanaw. (2024). Book and Journal of Mattanaw http://www.mattanaw.com
Mattanaw. (2024). Abandoning Equality http://www.mattanaw.com
Mattanaw. (2024). Procrastination http://www.mattanaw.com
Mattanaw. (2024). Humans are Animals http://www.mattanaw.com
Mattanaw. (2024). The Velocity of Significance and Ideation. Retrieved from: http://www.mattanaw.com/thoughtstream.html
Mattanaw. (2024). Higher Order Attention. Retrieved from: http://www.mattanaw.com/thoughtstream.html
Mattanaw. (2024). A Framework for Minimizing Omissions in Thinking. http://mattanaw.com/thoughtstream.html#a-framework-for-minimizing-omissions-in-thinking
Mattanaw. (2014). ThoughtStream. Retrieved from: http://www.mattanaw.com/thoughtstream.html
Cavanaugh, C. (2014). Black Notebook Two. http://www.mattanaw.com/olive-notebook-mattanaw-31032004-mid2016.pdf
Cavanaugh, C. (2007). Black Notebook One. http://www.mattanaw.com/olive-notebook-mattanaw-31032004-mid2016.pdf
Cavanaugh, C. (2005). Beige Notebook. http://www.mattanaw.com/olive-notebook-mattanaw-31032004-mid2016.pdf
Cavanaugh, C. (2005). Olive Notebook. http://www.mattanaw.com/olive-notebook-mattanaw-31032004-mid2016.pdf
Cavanaugh, C. (2004). Sand Notebook. http://www.mattanaw.com/olive-notebook-mattanaw-31032004-mid2016.pdf
Cavanaugh, C. (2003). Rational Times. http://www.mattanaw.com/rational-times.html

I am a retired executive, software architect, and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of Moral Philosophy and Ethics, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and more recently, Economics. I am a Pandisciplinarian, and Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.
Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2024. Topics touch on all of life's categories, and blend them with logical rationality and my own particular system of ethics. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my incipient theory of ethics, two decades in preparation. This Book and Journal is the gradual unfolding of that ethic, and my living autobiography, in a collection of individual books that fit into groups of book collections.
This Book and Journal is already one of the largest private websites and writings ever prepared, at nearly 1 million words, greater than 50,000 images and videos, and nearly one terabyte of space utilized. The entire software architecture is of my creation. Issues of the book for sale can be found under featured. These texts are handmade by myself, and are of excellent quality, and constitute the normal issues of my journal that can also be subscribed to. The entire work is a transparent work in progress. Not all is complete, and it will remain in an incomplete state until death.
I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.