Doubt: Difference between revisions

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Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! <br>  

There are logical, psychological, commercial and philosophical grounds to protect it. Bear with me. Let us start at the top and work our way down to the [[elephants and turtles]].

At the heart of the commerce is ''[[trust]]'' and ''[[credit]]'': the expectation that one will ''[[be a good egg]]''. This is the ravishing beauty of [[laissez-faire]]: almost alone among polities, it gets the alignment of [[Conflict of interest|interests]] right. It need not hope that actors are saints, or even that they will act out of public-spiritedness; indeed, it presumes they will not. The operating assumption of a market system is, “everyone for oneself.” ''There are no [[ally|allies]]''.  

If you have to go to your contract to save your relationship, you’ve already lost it.

[[Certainty]] is appropriate to a [[simple]] system. It is the stuff of [[algorithm]]; of formal logic, of if-''this''-then-''that'' statements; of an equation to be solved. Where you are ''certain'' you can deploy [[playbook]]s and [[runbook]]s, your machines run on autopilot, your people are scarce and your contract is little more than a [[service level agreement|schedule of works]].  

To aspire to certainty is wish for finality; completeness; the limits of our commitment to each other, and the arbitrary end of affairs we would be better served by continuing. If a relationship is productive now, why end it? If a relationship is not, why prolong it? If it is not satisfactory, why not change it?<ref>For an excellent argument along these lines see {{Author|David Graeber}}, {{br|Debt: The First 5,000 Years}}</ref>

And so we get down to philosophical nuts and bolts. Truth, free will, knowledge. May we take [[Descartes]] as read? The philosophy gets more interesting a little later on. Let me tell you my dirty little secret, folks: ''I’m a relativist''.