Besides (a) using British empiricism as a foundation for Austrian economics, (b) using that British-empiricist Austrian economics as a model for how to do logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics, and then (c) using mathematics as a model for how to put the insights that I come up with in those fields into notation à la The Laws of Thought, George Boole (1854), I want to:

1. Explain how the natural order of civilization uses wheat, rice, milk, tea, coffee, tobacco, and other psychoactives—yes, wheat, rice, and milk are psychoactives, albeit difficult to introspect as such—in order to adapt the mind, which evolved for the pre-civilizational world, to civilization. If you (a) fast periodically, (b) eat, say, only meat, only fruit, or only meat and fruit, and (c) get a lot of exercise outside in the sun, especially in a socially meaningful way, then you’ll be healthy. The problem, though, is that your mind (and indeed your body too) will no longer be adapted to civilization.
2. More generally, found a new kind of field about health: a field that’s not only about the above (i.e., the natural order of psychoactives) but also about the natural order of the body and its signals to the mind.
3. Explain male sexual psychology, female sexual psychology, and how the natural order adapts those psychologies to civilization.
4. More generally, work on the most controversial psychological and sociological questions: the questions of sex, race, and other unchoosable identities.
5. Explain why there used to be more people like me, people with an interest in the foundational questions of logic, mathematics, etc. And in doing so, tell my story: the story of somebody out of place.
6. Tell the story of “my people,” whoever they are—that’s one of the questions that I want to answer—especially the story of the World Wars and their aftermath. The World Wars were a catastrophe for the West.

Some of my goals:

1. I not only want to contribute to logic and linguistics but also answer the question of what the relationship is between logic and linguistics.
2. I want to answer the question of what the relationship is between mathematical notation and natural language (especially arithmetical and algebraic notation).
3. I want to (a) integrate Austrian economics, especially Misesian-Hayekian economics, with British empiricism, and then (b) found a field of logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics which is epistemologically the same as British-empiricist Austrian economics. That is, I want to do logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics in the spirit of Misesian-Hayekian-Humean economics.
4. I want to design a certain kind of artificial language and in doing so, abstract out the logical substructure of natural language. (If you understand my artificial language, then you’ll also understand my insights in logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics.)

In testing whether my insights in logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics are right (including the British-empiricist-Austrian-economics-like epistemology of those fields), I’ll use those insights not only for (a) designing the artificial language—if the artificial language doesn’t work, then I’m wrong—but also (b) studying Japanese, German, etc. That is, the rubber will hit the road in at least two places.

The software would:

1. Be a better way to learn languages (which would be the direct goal).
2. (Indirectly) teach the user how to abstract out the logical substructure of natural language (in practice).
3. (Indirectly) teach the user the skeleton for an artificial language.
4. With enough users, (indirectly) flesh out the skeleton of the artificial language.

Imagine that you’re studying Japanese with flashcard software (e.g., Anki), with the front of each flashcard being the Japanese (whether spoken, written, or both) and the back of each flashcard being the English translation (again whether spoken, written, or both). My software would also be flashcard software, the difference being:

1. The software would guess what it should test you on. Its guesses would get better over time, and eventually it would be able to guess how much vocabulary you know, how much grammar you know, how good your ear is, etc. (That would be motivating because the software would show your language-learning progress in real time. The more you immerse and the more you study the flashcards, the faster you see your vocabulary growing etc.)
2. The back of each flashcard wouldn’t be an English translation but a translation into the artificial language.

On #2: Imagine again that you’re studying Japanese. You try to understand the Japanese on the front of the flashcard, and then you check the back in order to check whether you were right. By default, the software would show you only the translation into the 1-dimensional modality of the artificial language. You’d have various options:

1. Generate the 2-dimensional-modality artificial-language transliteration.
2. Hover your cursor over anything in the Japanese on the front of the card or the artificial-language translation/transliteration on the back of the card, which would show you which chunks, whether bigger or smaller, in the Japanese, correspond to which chunks, again whether bigger or smaller, in either the 1-dimensional translation or the corresponding 2-dimensional transliteration.
3. Click any of those chunks, whether a word, phrase, or sentence, in order to AI-generate a visualization of a prototypical example. Click again in order to generate another visualization. Gradually, the visualizations would go from more prototypical to less.

Besides letting the user study flashcards, the software would also let users input the 1-dimensional and 2-dimensional modalities of the artificial language themselves in order to write either to themselves or other users. Most importantly, they could message other users in artificial language (not to mention English, Japanese, or any other natural language popular enough to be easy to include). With enough users who (indirectly) know the artificial language, an international Republic of Letters could come about. If, say, a monolingual Japanese person learns English with the software and a monolingual Korean person learns German, then they have no shared natural language. The artificial language would be the easiest way to communicate, which could naturally make the artificial language into their lingua franca.

The artificial language could also just end up being (like arithmetical, algebraic, and other mathematical notation) a useful supplement to natural language: an international notational system (for laying bare the logical substructure of natural language). (Another possibility: It could also just end up being a tool for formalizing logic, linguistics, and the relationship between logic and linguistics.)

But how would I make the artificial language more natural? The software would let the users add new symbols to the open-class vocabulary, which would let them naturally change the artificial language in practice.

My most significant early influences were David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1940). The former author and book are part of the school of thought called “British empiricism,” and the latter author and book are part of the school of thought called “Austrian economics.” Nothing has influenced me more than (a) reading Hume in my late teens, (b) reading Mises at the same time, and then (c) realizing that I could use Humean phenomenalism as a foundation for Misesian economics.

Interestingly, though, it wasn’t that I wanted to use Hume’s insights in order to put Misesian economics on a stronger foundation for the sake of economics. It was that I was working on an artificial language, a language natural-language-like in some aspects but not others, and nothing had been more helpful to me in that endeavor than putting Hume and Mises together.

Ultimately, I decided to:

1. Put Misesian economics on a foundation of Humean phenomenalism. That is, integrate Austrian economics with British empiricism.
2. Use that Humean-Misesian phenomenalism-economics synthesis as a model science. Build a science analogous to that model science except for linguistics.
3. Use that new kind of linguistics in order to better build the artificial language.

The different subjective propositions “he saw the mailman ring the doorbell” and “she heard the mailman ring the doorbell” both reduce to the same objective proposition “the mailman rang the doorbell.” Subjective propositions specify the agent (e.g., “he,” “she”) and the sensory modality (e.g., “saw,” “heard”). Objective propositions, by contrast, specify neither the agent nor the sensory modality.

One of my goals for the notational system that I’m working on is to distinguish between subjective and objective propositions. Subjective propositions, which will be marked as such, will take:

1. One or more agents (e.g., “he,” “she,” “John”)
2. One or more sensory modalities per agent (e.g., his visual modality, her auditory modality)

From the subjective to the objective:

1. More subjective. I both believe that I saw and believe that I heard the mailman ring the doorbell.
2. Less subjective. Thus, I believe that the mailman rang the doorbell.
3. More subjective. You both believe that you saw and believe that you heard the mailman ring the doorbell.
4. Less subjective. Thus, you believe that the mailman rang the doorbell.
5. Objective. Thus, the mailman rang the doorbell.

For example, it’s possible for me to hear footsteps behind me and then imagine, vividly enough such that I believe what I’m imagining, that I’m seeing somebody walking behind me. That is, it’s possible for (a) my auditory sense, which is one of my sensory modalities, to pick up on what’s happening directly, (b) my visual sense to not pick up on what’s happening directly, and (c) my mind to use the auditory information, directly given in the present hypothetical example, in order to fill in the missing visual information. Ultimately, I associate certain auditory information so strongly with certain visual information that getting the auditory information is enough to assume the visual information.

The different sensory modalities (e.g., the auditory sense, the visual sense, the tactile sense) are different ways of learning about the same world. Whether I hear a burglar break into my house (without seeing him) and then I call the police or I see the burglar break into my house (without hearing him) and then I call the police, what (purportedly) happened in the world is the same: A burglar broke into my house, and then I called the police. The subjective experience of hearing something without seeing it is different than the subjective experience of seeing something without hearing it, but what’s objective is the same. That is, the mental experience is different, but what’s physical is the same.

Imagine that you hear something surprising without seeing it. What would you do? You’d probably try to corroborate the surprising auditory information with visual information, tactile information, etc. You’d also probably try to get other people to corroborate what you heard etc.

That’s a lot of redundant information: my visual sense, another person’s visual sense, my auditory sense, another person’s auditory sense, etc.

Physics, being the study of the physical world, is a radically corroborative system. There are deaf people, blind people, people who are both deaf and blind, men (who usually have a worse sense of smell), women (who usually have a better sense of smell), etc. Physics doesn’t study the different ways of learning about the world. It studies the world. Whether you’re deaf, blind, both deaf and blind, somebody with a bad sense of smell, or somebody with a good sense of smell, physics tells you about the same world. In that way, physics is one of the most radically universalistic systems. In fact, physicalism (which is the metaphysical position of a lot of people with a background in physics, understandably) is in effect a kind of universalism.

Physics studies not only “visible” but also “invisible” light, not only “audible” but also “inaudible” sound. The electromagnetic spectrum, for instance, which is a model in physics that I’ll take on faith for now—I haven’t looked into the relevant physics myself yet—is a lot wider than what we as humans can sense without technology. We use technology in order to “see” X rays, FM radio waves, AM radio waves, etc.

Even an illiterate farmer a thousand years ago, though, would take the first small step toward physics when thinking to himself that his bloodhound has a much better sense of smell than he does.

If wheat really does make people better at mentalizing, and if wheat really does go hand in glove with Christianity for that reason, then consider how cultural evolution would work here. Christianity, being a powerful tool for big-scale cooperation, is “selected for” because big-scale cooperation wins against small-scale cooperation, and thus wheat, being something that makes it easier for people to believe in God, be Christian, and thus fit into that big-scale cooperation system, is “selected for.” The groups that didn’t emphasize wheat in their diet as much wouldn’t have had as much conviction about, say, the Christian “contingent afterlife”—they wouldn’t have been as “schizophrenically sure” of that unseeable, unknowable “fact”—which would have made them less likely to follow the big-scale-cooperation-related Christian rules.

It’s important to take into account, though, the dosage. It’s not only possible for the people in a group to change how much wheat they eat, which would change the dosage. It’s also possible to change the wheat itself. That’s where artificial selection comes in. As long as better mentalizing (for the sake of Christianity) was being (naturally) “selected for” on the group level, the groups that stumbled onto wheat artificial-selection patterns that changed wheat in order to make it even better at making people better at mentalizing would have been (naturally) “selected for.” Artificial selection is powerful—just look at dogs, for instance—and thus it’s clear that Christian civilization’s wheat may well be very different than whatever wheat was originally.

The argument generalizes: A group’s diet is likely to fit hand in glove with the group’s culture (in how the diet affects psychology), especially if the group is successful. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors (at least when they had the luxury of plenty of food to go around) were able to choose whether or not to eat, say, meat, but they weren’t able to change the meat iself. In civilization, though, because of the agricultural revolution, there’s artificial selection. Groups are able to artificially select domesticated animals, and the artificial-selection patterns are themselves (naturally) “selected for.” Same for domesticated plants.

(Besides wheat, dairy is another example of a strongly psychoactive food, having opioids too, and civilization has strongly artificially selected cows. That artificial selection probably has not only economic but also psychological import.)

By analogy, consider that whether it’s light or dark, hot or cold, affects psychology. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had less control over that, but in civilization, we have more control. Cafes, for instance, are dark and cold (relatively speaking), because that’s conducive to studiousness. In the same way, food affects psychology, especially strongly psychoactive foods like wheat, rice, and dairy, and civilization has taken control.

Most people are followers, not leaders. But even the leaders are followers in most ways. For example, most people, being followers, don’t come up with any of their own concepts. They mix and match the concepts of society without coming up with any new concepts themselves. But even the people who come up with their own concepts usually don’t come up with their own notation for those concepts. Somebody invented +. Somebody invented -. Etc. Who invents new notation nowadays?

Physics, mathematics, and mathematical physics being some of the most important achievements of the intellectual world, and the social sciences being so weak in comparison to the natural sciences, a lot of people think to themselves: “If only we could make the social sciences, which are at present the soft sciences, excellent like physics and mathematics, like the hard sciences!” But most of those people are cargo cultists. They don’t understand how the original physicists and mathematicians came up with their insights. They believe, wrongly, that what’s so scientific and hard-science-like about physics and mathematics is the quantification, the notation. That’s why modern mainstream economics is so number-heavy despite the prose-heavy Austrian tradition being so much better. The modern mainstream economists, unlike the Austrian economists, are obsessed with the trappings of hard science. That’s what makes them scientistic.

David Hume’s goal was to do for social science what Isaac Newton did for natural science. Where was the quantification, the notation, then? It wasn’t there because he wasn’t obsessed with the trappings. He understood what he was doing.

Alfred Whitehead is an example of somebody who understood what mathematics is. What makes the mathematics isn’t the quantification. It’s something else. He explained in his book An Introduction to Mathematics.

One of my goals is to make something like mathematical notation except for the social sciences. Am I obsessed with the trappings too? No. Notation is important. The problem is that most people haven’t understood how to invent new notation. They ape arithmetic, algebra, etc. The modern mainstream economists believe that they’re scientific because they use numbers. The solution, which I’m working on, is to make new notation from the ground up, new notation that’s made specifically for the social sciences and doesn’t ape arithmetic etc. In his book A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume used introspection in order to figure out some of the fundamentals of how the mind works. I’m working on notation for those fundamentals.