Quick Hit (AKA Hat tip to Kevin)

Let us turn to the book of Engineers. Chapter the first, lesson the first, aphorism the first: First you get the theory. Then you get practical.

Brainstorm time.

Platonic fungibility is an important concept as is deconstructing meaning to its basic roots, or what I’d call deconstructionism – that “it” “is” what it is. This means that not only can anything mean anything it also means that if something can mean something of value it can be exchanged, somehow, someway for anything else. Value exists independently of meaning and exists relative only to the observer or the individual. In other words, don’t trust me, make up your own damn mind. What things mean to you is what they mean to you and no more and no less. Whether your opinion matters to someone else can only be considered from their own perspective – of which you have control over. If anything can be considered fungible or tradable, then so can ideas. We can exchange ideas (or opinions) for something or nothing at all giving you some measure of control or regulation over those actions beyond your direct, physical control. Say good-bye to anarchy. We’ve just established the rudimentary basics of a social contract ground in a mutual understand of decency and respect. Yet which exists regardless of the current trust matrix valuation. Sorry to rush ahead but at this point I’m racing toward an agalmic society where objects of null or nuetral value can be exchanged for neglible personal effect but immense societal benefit. Immense from the perspect of a single node in the grid of our social network, perhaps, but neglible on a societal level. Yet, neglible is not the same thing as null or nothing. And so, trading objects or commodities of seemingly little value – as we presently understand the term – will have a net benefit when taking together in numbers on a societal scale. Do you know how many people there are in the world? If each of us gets just a little better then everyone gets a lot better. And if you’ll excuse me, I really need a few years on this because if you give me…oh, sixteen months of deep, deep thinking I really think I can rewrite, say, the United States Constitution from the ground up to accomidate a system where everyeone is free to do what they want yet are somehow regulated by ties to one another with no one individual or institution being able to exert more than indirect control. A system based in tolerance, and understand, and a mutual arrangement to disagree civilly. And it’s going to take me sixteen months because by then I might be able to do it….without changing a single word. After all if everything is fungible, then it’s the words in the Constitution that have meaning not the paper or the ink. Because those words are a method of exchanging meaning, the most basic of information commodities and, well, they’ve been around for a while so they have to have some intrinsic value. They sell, in other words, it’s just we have to adjust them to our current understanding of things or adjust our current understanding to them.

Anyways, I got sidetracked but if everything can be considered something you can shift and move between various stacks of resources then, well, so can time. If time can said to be fungible then its just about the only cost you can’t recover. Unless you’ve somehow managed to transverse the imaginary 4th dimensional space we call time (In which case…let’s talk) then the only way you can go is forward. You cannot recover lost time. And the lost cost fallacy says that resources spent and unretrievable cannot logically be considered at your current nexus in space-time. In other words, if blew your budget then your budget’s blown and you can only consider what you actually have in your wallet (or bank account) at this precise moment. Therefore, time is the only resource you should spend freely. Because there’s no way of recouping that investment, it’s as if it doesn’t matter, at some level (There’s efficiency or the conservation of the time resource to consider among others but, gah, sixteen months!) and time spent in the past has no bearing on time you spend in the future. Pick things up, put them down, go forward, go upside down, and come back to the start. Everything else is somehow recoverable so you have no need to worry if your time’s been wasted but, rather, if your time continues to be wasted. Past mistakes have no meaning. Only future ones.

Eh, I'd buy that for a dollar.

Face front, true believer.

Hallelujah.