Atlas

"a theory of logic, language and the limits of meaning which revealed, Wittgenstein argued, that traditional philosophical problems were based on linguistic confusion"
"Wittgenstein’s project was himself – self-creation and self-maintenance in a form that he would be able to bear"
"maintaining his self-possession through “distance from everything that happens”. That became the core of his spiritual ambition, and it is inseparable from his philosophical ambition."
"there is no connection between the left- and right-hand pages for most of the first two notebooks, in the course of the third, a correspondence appears"
"Wittgenstein held that a statement is meaningful only if it could be either true or false, depending on how the world is. That excludes not only tautologies, which cannot be false, and contradictions, which cannot be true, but other things people seem to want to talk about besides the contingent state of the world – such as philosophy and religion."

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over 1 year ago

Could also be called "Against Facts" - makes a strong argument that the "metaphor of facts" in a social-psychological context is a force for harm, not good.
Doesn't directly reference Wittgenstein. Doesn't mention that facts are made up of words and words can symbolize material or non-material things. Also doesn't touch on scale. Would have been good to preface both but maybe beside the point of the article.
Quotes
- All Facts require observation, context omission, and trust.
- To establish a Fact, someone must decide what context is relevant to include, and what to exclude.
- Problems with facts: 1. They don't actually persuade, 2. The idea is anti-science (all knowledge is tentative and uncertain), 3. They're incompatible with freedom of speech ("Ultimately we must decide what’s more important — freedom of speech, or the metaphor of Facts.").
100% agree with the argument against the idea that blockchainification of facts will solve any meaningful problems. Balaji talks about this a lot and I think it's nonsense.