The Binary Logic Scam

Mathematical reasoning, as it is taught in school, is an important part of the State brainwashing campaign.

Mathematics trains you to think correctly. Binary logic is perfectly acceptable when studying Mathematics. In Mathematics, a calculation or proof is either correct or it is wrong.

When dealing with real-world applications, using binary logic is an incredible handicap. People are brainwashed to believe that any statement is definitively true or false, with no middle ground. This is a problem if you assign a statement the wrong truth value. This is a really serious problem if your core assumptions and axioms are wrong.

If you believe "Taxation is not theft" is absolutely definitely true, then it's very hard to change your position to "Taxation is theft". Making this logical transition requires flipping the truth value of too many statements. If you change your belief from "Taxation is not theft" to "Taxation is theft", that invalidates almost all mainstream discourse of politics and economics.

That's part of the State brainwashing campaign. People are conditioned to analyze real-world problems exclusively using binary logic. Binary logic fails. If you restrict yourself to binary logic, then it can become impossible to detect false beliefs.

For example, a few hundred years ago, the church said "Everything the church says is absolutely true. The earth is the center of the universe." Some scientists discovered that it's easier to calculate planetary orbits if you assume the sun is the center and the earth moves. However, everyone is using binary logic. If you're allowed to believe "The earth is not the center of the universe", then you should also believe "Some things the church says are false."

In this way, binary logic prevents scientific progress.

As another example, the FDA declares "Anti-psychotic drugs are safe and effective!" I say "Anti-psychotic drugs are harmful and usually unnecessary!" These viewpoints are incompatible. Either I am wrong, or a multi-billion dollar industry is based on fraud.

An employee at the FDA is not allowed to say "We should consider the possibility that anti-psychotic drugs are not beneficial in some cases." That employee would be lynched. Once you prove that the earth is the center of the universe, you may not change your mind. Once you prove that anti-psychotic drugs are beneficial, you may not change your mind. At this point, publicly admitting the truth would be tantamount to admitting a massive fraud.

As another example, suppose you are the victim in a criminal trial. You are accused of a "victimless crime", such as tax evasion or possession of marijuana. The jury has only two options, "guilty" and "not guilty". If they vote "guilty", you go to jail for an extended period of time. If they vote "not guilty", then you go free, but don't recover the expenses associated with the trial. The jury does not have the option to vote "guilty, but he only deserves to go to jail for 3 months", or "guilty, but the stress and expense of a trial was sufficient punishment".

Defense attorneys are usually barred from telling the jury how long the victim will go to jail if convicted. When you see someone indicted on 30 separate charges and the jury says "30/30 guilty", did the jurors really believe that they were effectively giving a life sentence? A 2 year prison term times 30 is a 60 year prison term. I read a story where someone refused to withhold taxes from his employees' salaries, and was convicted on separate 30 counts of tax evasion. This made his punishment life in prison instead of 1-2 years.

A better way to think about real-world issues is known as Bayesian Reasoning.

Via Bayesian reasoning, all statements are assigned a truth value between 0 and 1 inclusive. Determining the truth value of a statement is an exercise in conditional probability based on all available evidence.

In order to do proper Bayesian reasoning, you should *NEVER* assign a truth value of 0 or 1 to any statement. If you do this, you are stuck in an inescapable hole if you make a mistake.

If you believe "Taxation is not theft" has a truth value exactly equal to 1.0, then no amount of evidence can ever make you change your mind. If you believe "Taxation is not theft" has a truth value of 0.999999, then progress is possible. I can point out "Taxes are used to pay for war", and maybe you'll adjust the truth value to 0.9999. I can point out "Taxes are used to pay for corporate welfare" and "Taxes prevent people from boycotting the Federal Reserve" and maybe you'll adjust your estimate of the truth value to 0.99. If you add up all the arguments, it's very convincing that "Taxation is not theft" is probably false.

I don't absolutely definitively believe "Taxation is theft!", but I'd assign a truth value of 0.9999999999 to that statement, based on my observations. I can't communicate at all with someone who assigns a truth value of exactly zero to that statement. For this reason, it's pointless debating pro-State trolls.

As the Incompleteness Theorem illustrated, it's impossible to determine if the axioms of arithmetic are consistent. I can't definitively say "It's impossible to prove 2+2=5." All I can say is "2+2=5 has a truth value of epsilon", where epsilon is the smallest positive number anybody has ever explicitly named. I can never be definitively sure, unless I check all possible Mathematical proofs forever. (Even then, how can be sure that the rules of arithmetic don't change over time? Weird things might happen, if you wait long enough.)

For some Mathematical statements, you still can't assign an answer. If you say "The Axiom of Choice holds in the physical universe", that has a unknown truth value. I don't have the ability to manipulate an infinite collection of sets, so I can never verify if it's actually true. I can directly verify ordinary arithmetic for small numbers, but the Axiom of Choice is logically independent of the axioms of ordinary arithmetic. It could be true or false, and I'll probably never know.

If it's impossible to be definitely sure of a statement like "2+2 is not equal to 5", then how can you be definitively sure of anything?

To do proper Bayesian reasoning, you should assign both a truth value and uncertainty estimate to each statement. For example, I assign "Fluoride is Beneficial" a high uncertainty range, and a truth value of 0.5. I have no idea if that is true or not, and I don't know of any studies conducted by scientists I trust. For "Taxation is theft!", I assign a very low uncertainty range to my truth estimate of 0.9999999999. For "God exists!", I assign an unknown truth value and an infinite uncertainty range.

More accurately, you should assign both a truth probability distribution and uncertainty estimate. I call this "extended Bayesian reasoning".

To do proper Bayesian reasoning, you should write down everything you believe is true. You should assign a truth value and uncertainty estimate. If you do this, make sure you don't assign a truth value of 0 or 1 to any statement. I've performed this exercise intuitively, but not explicitly. The really tricky part is writing down all your hidden assumptions. To do it properly, you have to write down things you always believed to be true but never questioned.