Source: Samuel Augustus Mitchell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Writing out my thoughts regarding my personal course-correction two days ago has proven to be a major mental and ‘spiritual’ boost. I now feel that I have much more purpose and direction with my writing.
Exploring deep ideas relating to epistemology and logical paradoxes yesterday was very illuminating, but I’m very cautious about spreading myself too thin. Like many people who are interested in ideas in today’s world — where new developments, both positive and negative, are happening in every field and across the globe — I’m simply interested in everything. However, creative productivity requires discipline and focus.
In that earlier post I wrote that my provisional aim was to connect various philosophical ideas I’m interested in to my more specific interests, in particular, history and technology.
Doing some focused thinking today on my actual goals made clear to me that I need to start being more philosophically rigorous. I need to stop dabbling with every idea that I find interesting, and actually focus on constructing a rigorous case for the philosophical ideas that I do believe, and investigating their application to more specific subjects.
“Starting small” doesn’t necessarily mean focusing entirely on some minute subject — though many creative minds advocate doing just this, “seeing the universe in a glass of water” and so on. In my case, focusing on one specific period in history, through the lens of one or two fields of human activity, looks like a solid direction to travel in.
Throughout the course of writing this ‘stack, the idea of reflexivity has occurred in many forms. Reflexivity, very simply, is the “hall of mirrors” effect that arises when people’s perspectives, or their perspectives on other’s perspectives, lead to changes in their actions — as can be witnessed during interpersonal conflicts, economic bubbles, culture wars, actual wars, and a whole range of other social phenomena that are easy to describe but diabolically difficult to explain, for reasons that I will discuss below.
Reflexivity can be examined on a mathematical or logical level — through the investigation of self-reference or logical paradoxes — it can be examined on a personal, psychological level — through the investigation of one’s own life and evolving goals as one moves through a rapidly-changing world — and it can be examined on a historical or sociological level — through the investigation of cultural products and their situation within larger cultural developments.
Reflexivity has been applied to economics, with notable success, though this thread has been surprisingly under-explored by economists and investors, perhaps owing to the analytical difficulties the concept throws up.
One very important — and technically significant — application of reflexivity is the observation that analytical frameworks or theories are themselves factors that frequently change the situations they analyse. When investors — whether personal, institutional or otherwise — publish their analyses of market activities, such as stock price changes, these analyses modify the behaviour of other actors in the markets in question. When strategic forecasters publish analyses of geopolitical trends — such as preparations for future conflicts in a given region — these analyses modify the behaviour of geopolitical actors present in the region in question. And so on.
As I noted above, these phenomena have been frequently remarked upon, but very rarely studied in depth. Over the last few weeks (and over the last few years, in the form of personal notes and deep reading) I’ve explored various aspects of reflexivity. To understand this concept in more depth I’m considering exploring how it could be applied more systematically to particular periods in history.
I have a shortlist of ideas for historical periods to focus on, and I’m looking primarily at periods where rapid social and cultural changes occurred alongside complex game-of-thrones style political manoeuvrings. At any time when multiple power centres — diverse, unbalanced and asymmetric — square off against each other, reflexive dynamics are sure to be found. During such periods, every actor involved must attempt to navigate a fractal tangle of shifting alliances, deliberate misinformation, and chaotic power shifts — and at the same time carefully track the beliefs, goals and intentions of every other actor — who are themselves attempting to gain their own view of the ever-changing tangled fractal. Interesting times, indeed.
To narrow things down further, once I’ve decided on a period to study, I will likely focus on the interfaces and interactions between two or three areas of human activity — most probably culture, technology, and politics. No doubt this plan will evolve as I continue, but I’m feeling energised to finally begin work on more serious research and more focused writing.