I recently watched a response video to the widespread “2016 was the worst year ever” tantrum largely by people who’s view of history is shorter the time the iPhone has been in existence, where the content creator ended his video with the statement “No, 2016 is not the worst ever, your frame of reference is“. I had another post planned, but that statement is perhaps more profound than the creator intended when he recorded it.
Frame of reference can be argued as a synonym for “field of knowledge“, which is an expression that is used within academia and is of high importance when designing research projects. In order to avoid duplicating the research that has already been done within a field of knowledge (unless one is doing a verification of previous research), a literature search is conducted to build the foundation for the research. It also serves to anchor the research that is to be done within the field, and to support choices the researcher makes.
When the researcher then designs the methodology, the experiments, and the other parts of the full research project, the literature review acts both to inform and to control the research. In the same manner, a person who has a narrow frame of reference, will hold attitutes and make decisions different from someone with a wide frame of reference, a person with a deep frame will view the world different from a person with a shallow frame and so on.
In many ways this is the underlying principle of just about everything humans engage in, and a source of many conflicts. A researcher named Thomas Kuhn argued that as each person who evaluates evidence, brings their subjective field of knowledge and experience with them into the evaluation, science is somewhat of a relative discipline [6].
Some of this can be traced back to various forms of bias and incentives. A researcher who has invested his career into a theory will be reluctant to accept that it has been proven wrong and have clear incentives to interpret results in a manner that is positive to the theory. Likewise someone who is invested in an ideology will be reluctant to accept any evidence against the benefits he or she perceives that ideology as having.
This is where one gets the “Not real communism” from those who advocate communism when they are presented with the tragic history of the countries that have attempted to govern according to that ideology. Continue reading
I was reading an article earlier where the core theme was balance between duties and choices. For instance, a labor union can strike, however then they are not being paid, an a factory owner can refuse to give into the demands of the union but then he is not making any money. In this case, you have a carrot for both parties in that if they come to an agreement they can both get paid, and a stick in the form of that they are both losing money by not coming to an agreement. These types of checks and balances are what keeps every structure in working condition because they promote stability and moderation over instability and excess. Democratic countries are often built with “majority” clauses, and/or multiple branches of government, which does slow things down, but also ensures that there is wide support and that it does not devolve into majority tyranny. Take the draft in the United States of America, every man has to register for selective service within 6 months of turning 18, in exchange they get the right to vote. This means that every man who votes for hawkish and interventionist foreign policy knows that this means that he risks being sent off to war if there is a draft. This has the effect of somewhat limiting the willingness to go to war, and encourages voting for a policy that relies on both diplomacy and force, not pure force. In the same way, if I forgot to lock my door, the insurance company can refuse to pay if I get robbed, because through my actions I placed an unnecessary and excessive risk on them. 
Stoicism and Machiavellianism are both philosophies that are very much about power in their essence. When Nicollo Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” he wrote it as a gift to his lord, a gift of knowledge gleamed from observing history, and distilling patterns into essence. I do not really know what was Seneca’s motivation behind writing “Letters“, whether he did it for himself or for others. Perhaps it was as “Ethics” by Spinoza, a thinly clad rejection of religious oppression, perhaps like Paine’s “Common Sense” it was a call to action to the peasantry to rise up against their oppressors, or perhaps it was like quite a few of my writings 