...you shouldn’t attempt to (re)create hermeneutic truths/traditions from first principals. You won’t be able to create a system that will work in practice, but might falsely convince yourself that you have.
I didn’t see any mentions of examples in Szabo’s paper of traditions that have a high instrumental value but can’t be derived from first principles, although he does seem to be saying that they exist. The best example that comes to mind is Jews and Moslems not eating pork, but I eat pork and my family has on both sides for multiple generations, and we haven’t curled up and died yet, so the present instrumental value of that tradition is unclear to me. Do you have any examples in mind?
I can see that the wellbeing of the population that obeys the tradition would contribute to it doing well in cultural evolution, but it’s not at all clear to me that it’s a large enough factor that we’re unlikely to come out ahead by discarding the tradition and designing a new one.
I suppose the claim that a tradition is one of these truths that one cannot usefully rederive from first principles is testable. Go form an intentional community that, say, has an 8 day week, and if they’re still doing well physically and financially in a generation or two, then the 7 day week apparently wasn’t such a tradition.
Well Szabo’s main examples, which he briefly alludes to in this essay, are legal, economic and political systems. He discusses them at length in his otherwritings.
I didn’t see any mentions of examples in Szabo’s paper of traditions that have a high instrumental value but can’t be derived from first principles, although he does seem to be saying that they exist. The best example that comes to mind is Jews and Moslems not eating pork, but I eat pork and my family has on both sides for multiple generations, and we haven’t curled up and died yet, so the present instrumental value of that tradition is unclear to me. Do you have any examples in mind?
I can see that the wellbeing of the population that obeys the tradition would contribute to it doing well in cultural evolution, but it’s not at all clear to me that it’s a large enough factor that we’re unlikely to come out ahead by discarding the tradition and designing a new one.
I suppose the claim that a tradition is one of these truths that one cannot usefully rederive from first principles is testable. Go form an intentional community that, say, has an 8 day week, and if they’re still doing well physically and financially in a generation or two, then the 7 day week apparently wasn’t such a tradition.
ETA: I suppose the organizational structure of a church is such a tradition.
Well Szabo’s main examples, which he briefly alludes to in this essay, are legal, economic and political systems. He discusses them at length in his other writings.