Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

Supposing that autonomy is "a priori primary" (a tendentious claim, in my opinion, especially when we're dealing with declarative statements, or any kind of human language); I do not see why that automatically makes it more relevant or valuable to systems of ethics and economics than, for instance, communal responsibility.

EDIT: actually, I don't see the logic or sense in appealing to individual autonomy as a justification for anything at all. Ultimately, the presence of autonomy can only be judged socially, and that means between subjects. It can never be proven solely from the reasoning of a purportedly autonomous subject.

A subject, perhaps, experiences something like autonomy. This is fine; but there's absolutely no need for this subject to prove that she experiences autonomy to herself because she just experiences it. And besides, the proof would ultimately fall upon the experience itself, and would thus not be a "proof" at all.

If we want autonomy to matter in any real sense, then it must be judged socially, and this means within a group - a practice that actually precludes proof since it is impossible for me to prove to anyone else that I am autonomous. The very notion of idealizing autonomy as some preexisting energy or ability that grounds our experience is irrelevant, because any action falls back on belief.

 

[Dak]

Supposing that autonomy is "a priori primary" (a tendentious claim, in my opinion, especially when we're dealing with declarative statements, or any kind of human language); I do not see why that automatically makes it more relevant or valuable to systems of ethics and economics than, for instance, communal responsibility.

EDIT: actually, I don't see the logic or sense in appealing to individual autonomy as a justification for anything at all. Ultimately, the presence of autonomy can only be judged socially, and that means between subjects. It can never be proven solely from the reasoning of a purportedly autonomous subject.

My point is that you cannot coherently, in an ethical sense, do anything else. We can of course simply act, lacking any ethical coherency. But the actions not guided by a primacy of individual autonomy (of course by saying principle we are talking about a universalization) lack any coherency, and lacking coherency the actions would also lack even the beginnings to a claim of something we might call ethical or moral. Now you or other people might be willing to concede that ethics or morals are a fiction, but I doubt this would be a popular or practical view, whether true or not.

By lacking coherency I of course mean that to dismiss the autonomy of others I assert my own. This does not reject individual autonomy, it merely rejects that others are individual subjects, and therefore rejects that there is a group - thus nullifying a claim to an ethics, as ethics requires a group.

A subject, perhaps, experiences something like autonomy. This is fine; but there's absolutely no need for this subject to prove that she experiences autonomy to herself because she just experiences it. And besides, the proof would ultimately fall upon the experience itself, and would thus not be a "proof" at all.

Why the talk of proof or needing to prove that we all experience autonomy as a prerequisite?

If we want autonomy to matter in any real sense, then it must be judged socially, and this means within a group - a practice that actually precludes proof since it is impossible for me to prove to anyone else that I am autonomous. The very notion of idealizing autonomy as some preexisting energy or ability that grounds our experience is irrelevant, because any action falls back on belief.

It's also impossible for me to prove I exist materially either. "Feel me" is as pointless as "Look I am willing this". I don't see where this critique is going. You're jumping towards ideal, I'm not saying it's ideal. It's merely what we have to work with, and it's certainly alienable. I don't want to get into discussions of "rights" and whether or not there is free will. Autonomy is relative to heteronomy, and no discussion of the subject in this sense precludes the group(s).

 

[Einherjar86]

My point is that you cannot coherently, in an ethical sense, do anything else. We can of course simply act, lacking any ethical coherency. But the actions not guided by a primacy of individual autonomy (of course by saying principle we are talking about a universalization) lack any coherency, and lacking coherency the actions would also lack even the beginnings to a claim of something we might call ethical or moral. Now you or other people might be willing to concede that ethics or morals are a fiction, but I doubt this would be a popular or practical view, whether true or not.

It isn't true that "actions not guided by a primacy of individual autonomy lack any coherency."

The self doesn't cohere; as Ezra Pound wrote, "I cannot make it cohere."

Actions can be guided by a primacy of sociality. It's possible, in my opinion, that a philosophy or ethics of the social, the communal, may cohere far more successfully than an ethics of the individual.

By lacking coherency I of course mean that to dismiss the autonomy of others I assert my own. This does not reject individual autonomy, it merely rejects that others are individual subjects, and therefore rejects that there is a group - thus nullifying a claim to an ethics, as ethics requires a group.

Language doesn't testify to the intentions of a coherent subject.

Why the talk of proof or needing to prove that we all experience autonomy as a prerequisite?

If you're going to talk of a priori principles, then I want proof of them.

It's also impossible for me to prove I exist materially either. "Feel me" is as pointless as "Look I am willing this". I don't see where this critique is going. You're jumping towards ideal, I'm not saying it's ideal. It's merely what we have to work with, and it's certainly alienable. I don't want to get into discussions of "rights" and whether or not there is free will. Autonomy is relative to heteronomy, and no discussion of the subject in this sense precludes the group(s).

No, material existence is entirely different than proving interior intentions. That's where you're dead wrong.

Your body registers in a material sense in a way that your intentions (prior to acting on them) do not.

 

[Dak]

It isn't true that "actions not guided by a primacy of individual autonomy lack any coherency."

The self doesn't cohere; as Ezra Pound wrote, "I cannot make it cohere."

Actions can be guided by a primacy of sociality. It's possible, in my opinion, that a philosophy or ethics of the social, the communal, may cohere far more successfully than an ethics of the individual.

Any argument against the coherency of the individual also negates any coherency of the group. That route is a nonstarter.

Language doesn't testify to the intentions of a coherent subject.

If you're going to talk of a priori principles, then I want proof of them.

By making a choice I must affirm my own autonomy to do so. This is what Kant was suggesting validated the idea of free will. I'm not even trying to go that far.

No, material existence is entirely different than proving interior intentions. That's where you're dead wrong.

Your body registers in a material sense in a way that your intentions (prior to acting on them) do not.

Registers to who? To what? Those things which lack coherency?

 

[Einherjar86]

Any argument against the coherency of the individual also negates any coherency of the group. That route is a nonstarter.

Emergence, complexity, systems, etc. etc. etc. I don't need to bother trying to bring you up to speed from - well - the eighteenth century.

Bees and ants do not have agency or individual autonomy; and yet there is a coherency to them as a group. It's a nonstarter to claim that we need individual autonomy in order to talk about coherency at various levels of complexity.

I won't argue this with you any further because it's a waste of my time.

By making a choice I must affirm my own autonomy to do so. This is what Kant was suggesting validated the idea of free will. I'm not even trying to go that far.

Kant's not the authority in this case. Developments in cognitive philosophy and neuroscience seriously call that claim into doubt.

Language doesn't express the coherence or unity of a central self; language functionally divides the self, makes it inauthentic. If free will exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you. You have an image of a self - an illusion, a dream of being a person. Your body makes decisions without you, and tells you about it after the fact.

We need to begin seeing ourselves as parts of a system, not as precious little gems of self-contained genius and intention.

Registers to who? To what? Those things which lack coherency?

Step on a scale. Log your weight. Now step off.

Okay, now step back on the scale; but this time, think about some really heavy intention or interior thought you have.

Log your weight again, and tell me if it's higher.

 

[Dak]

Emergence, complexity, systems, etc. etc. etc. I don't need to bother trying to bring you up to speed from - well - the eighteenth century.

Bees and ants do not have agency or individual autonomy; and yet there is a coherency to them as a group. It's a nonstarter to claim that we need individual autonomy in order to talk about coherency at various levels of complexity.

I won't argue this with you any further because it's a waste of my time.

Kant's not the authority in this case. Developments in cognitive philosophy and neuroscience seriously call that claim into doubt.

Language doesn't express the coherence or unity of a central self; language functionally divides the self, makes it inauthentic. If free will exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you. You have an image of a self - an illusion, a dream of being a person. Your body makes decisions without you, and tells you about it after the fact.

We need to begin seeing ourselves as parts of a system, not as precious little gems of self-contained genius and intention.

Step on a scale. Log your weight. Now step off.

Okay, now step back on the scale; but this time, think about some really heavy intention or interior thought you have.

Log your weight again, and tell me if it's higher.

You're missing the point. Registering presupposes some sort of self (although not necessarily rational). Whether it's an ant or a person. Who or what is registering or logging the weight? What is a weight? You can say "well there's a mass independent of perception" which is fine. But it cannot be registered or logged by other masses.

In response to only being part of a group: Is there a group "self"? When I step onto a scale does my weight increase relative to the number of my social circle? How is a group denoted? A number of? Related how?

Don't appeal to science here, because there is a difference between the science and what to make of it - and scientists still can't make out consciousness yet, other than to say that some processes are not a part of it. There is, interestingly enough, a problem in psychology of social desirability affecting decisions - or at least justifications. So some behavioral studies which find behavior conflicting with supposed conscious reports may not be discovering actual discrepancies, or may not be discovering the discrepancies that are there. But regardless, behaviors and conflicting reports are all weightless in a literal sense.

I specifically did not make the move to free will. That is different from autonomy, which is relative to heteronomy. [My] normal function of breathing is not conscious, but can prevent someone else from doing so consciously or otherwise. Heteronomy vs autonomy.

 

[Einherjar86]

Registering might presuppose a self (maybe).

But you don't seem to understand that an individual can only "register" something to herself. On its own, this means nothing. Others cannot register her registering; she can only try to communicate this happening.

In other words, individuals needs others in order to acknowledge socially that registering (if that's the word we're using) takes place. Your quality as a self relies on the acknowledgment of others.

 

[Dak]

Registering might presuppose a self (maybe).

But you don't seem to understand that an individual can only "register" something to herself. On its own, this means nothing. Others cannot register her registering; she can only try to communicate this happening.

In other words, individuals needs others in order to acknowledge socially that registering (if that's the word we're using) takes place. Your quality as a self relies on the acknowledgment of others.

I'm acknowledging this in setting autonomy relative to heteronomy. There is no Crusoe here. But "others" also depends on a self (or more accurately a multiplicity of selves).

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm acknowledging this in setting autonomy relative to heteronomy. There is no Crusoe here. But "others" also depends on a self (or more accurately a multiplicity of selves).

Okay, but here's my problem with your claim that the self, or individual autonomy, is a priori:

When you say that an individual may have the experience of a self, you assume this experience is the same for all individuals; and this may even be the case. But there is no manner of logical argument that can reason its way back to the autonomous self, thus proving it for all individuals. All we have to go on is our word, so to speak; when I acknowledge your autonomy, I'm basically making a leap of faith.

When we view the system in its totality, we see that individual autonomy isn't a priori; it is always a posteriori, because it only appears in the aftermath of its acknowledgement. We seem to encounter a paradox here; for how can selfhood be acknowledged without a self to perform the acknowledging? As hard as it is to accept, we don't need to say that selfhood doesn't exist; we only need to say that selfhood doesn't matter. It doesn't enter into the equation.

I'm paraphrasing Wittgenstein here; but if we treat selfhood, or individual autonomy, as an effect of communications between bodies - that is, if our autonomy only appears upon being acknowledged by others - then it cannot hold any weight in and of itself: "if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and name', the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant."

Individual autonomy is retroactively constructed, not a priori given.

 

[Dak]

Ah, I think i understand your objection, but it's not quite my claim, or perhaps my claim is not properly or conveniently word. By a prior primacy I'm not stating that others autonomy is assertible a priori, only that to make a decision requires the "decisioners" a priori. This follows "To perceive requires a perceiver". However, as you assert, there must be acknowledgement (but which doesn't necessarily require rational acknowledgement. My mere existence is confirmed after a fashion when the birds flee my approach). But I can affirm my own autonomy without affirming autonomy of others, at least arguably in a Crusoe sense. However, ethics requires a universalization of the autonomy which I affirm in myself via decision making, whether conscious or sub/pre/unconscious. This is what I mean by stating that an ethics which dismisses the primacy of the autonomy of the individual is incoherent.

 

[Einherjar86]

Yes, birds will fly away from you if you run at them; this gets back to the difference between verifying material existence versus verifying interior thoughts or ideas. You could be sleepwalking through a flock of birds and they would still take off; but your interior thoughts have no purchase here. There are means of physical verification (and proof, I would say), but there are none for internal beliefs or thoughts.

Finally, I'm not sure I agree that ethics has to assume that individual autonomy is universal.

 

[Dak]

Finally, I'm not sure I agree that ethics has to assume that individual autonomy is universal.

I'm not really sure for now in what way I can further flesh out the point. It was sort of a flash of insight during classes the other day, will need more rumination.

 

[Einherjar86]

My conception of ethics is fundamentally deconstructive with regards to the self (I don't invoke deconstruction here in the Derridean sense, but in a more general sense: ethics deconstructs the subject).

The way we've been discussing it, ethics necessitates coherent subjects because only coherent subjects can formulate a system of ethics; ethics thereby relies upon the stable, coherent subject for its very existence.

The problem with this, for me, is that it seems to be an appeal to origins (or, if you prefer, a "genetic fallacy"). In other words, the argument goes like this: the subject must come before ethics, and the subject is necessary for ethics; therefore, any coherent ethics must preserve the unity and stability of the subject. Just because something gives rise to something else, however, doesn't mean that the earlier phase of the process is more important: temporal primacy doesn't constitute evaluative primacy. This privileges causality.

If ethics is, by definition, a social system of proper behavior, then it cannot arrive at a conclusion of what is best, absolutely and infinitely, for a single subject. A subject's behavior will always be contingent on social conditions. Now, an individual may possess autonomy - or, as I would prefer to call it, "automatony." However, an individual does not possess absolute autonomy, because this measures one's actions against an ideal of absolute freedom, which is simply not real. So, autonomy can only ever be measured against the autonomy of others; and, if this is the case, exercising one's autonomy will always limit another's autonomy. Justifying proper behavior in the name of individual autonomy is thus either redundant (if we're simply talking about actual, limited autonomy) or hypocritical (if we're talking about absolute autonomy).

If autonomy is limited, then we can only make ethical decisions on a case by case basis, and this precludes elevating individual autonomy as an ethical measuring rod; because in some cases, individual autonomy must be foregone. I prefer to see ethics as a system that splits the subject - makes her into a dividual. We can only come to ethical decisions when we realize ourselves as subject to others. Otherwise, we're not being ethical at all - only egotistical and solipsistic.

 

[Dak]

If the subject is necessary for ethics, how can ethics be preserved through destruction of the subject?

Autonomy has both material and social limits, but socially the limit is the autonomy of others. This isn't a new idea at all, but I want it divorced from impossible absolutism or vague ideal. Decisions are generally made on a case by case basis, but this doesn't preclude elevating autonomy as a primary guiding principle. I don't like "measuring rod" because that is absolutist talk. Intent, principle, and outcome go into the balance, but the heaviest weight lies with autonomy. There is a marked difference between jumping on a grenade to save 5 and throwing someone else on a grenade to save 5, even if the outcome in terms of raw numbers appears the same. But should morality even require either action? Or merely reward the the former....there are plenty who are happy to accept the latter as long as they are certain they will be in the place of the thrower and not throwee. This is simply not ethical.

 

[Einherjar86]

If the subject is necessary for ethics, how can ethics be preserved through destruction of the subject?

The subject was never real, though - not in any metaphysical sense. "Deconstruction" is different than "destruction." The subject is a social construct. The social construction of the subject allows us to arrive at complex ethics, but it doesn't mean we need to preserve the valorization of the subject. When I say "deconstruction of the subject," I mean that it undermines the subject as a guarantee of ethical action. It can't dissolve the illusion of the subject. We simply have to treat the matter from various perspectives, rather than privilege the subject as though it's absolute.

Autonomy has both material and social limits, but socially the limit is the autonomy of others. This isn't a new idea at all, but I want it divorced from impossible absolutism or vague ideal. Decisions are generally made on a case by case basis, but this doesn't preclude elevating autonomy as a primary guiding principle. I don't like "measuring rod" because that is absolutist talk. Intent, principle, and outcome go into the balance, but the heaviest weight lies with autonomy. There is a marked difference between jumping on a grenade to save 5 and throwing someone else on a grenade to save 5, even if the outcome in terms of raw numbers appears the same. But should morality even require either action? Or merely reward the the former....there are plenty who are happy to accept the latter as long as they are certain they will be in the place of the thrower and not throwee. This is simply not ethical.

As I see it, ethics doesn't necessarily note any difference between various actors throwing themselves on a grenade. There is obviously a difference regarding the various actors, their intentions, goals, etc. But there isn't necessarily a difference at various levels of social influence. Individual autonomy might play a role, but there's no reason that it overwhelmingly needs to demand our ethical attention.

EDIT:

Came across this article in the Journal of Philosophy that reinforces almost exactly some of the things I've said about conspiracy theories in the past; by Brian Keeley, titled "Of Conspiracy Theories":

The role of errant data in UCTs is critical. The typical logic of a UCT goes something like this: begin with errant facts, such as the observation that no BATF employees were injured in the Oklahoma City bombing and the early reports of prior warning. The official story all but ignores this data. What can explain the intransigence of the official story tellers in the face of this and other contravening evidence? Could they be so stupid and blind? Of course not; they must be intentionally ignoring it. The best explanation is some kind of conspiracy, an intentional attempt to hide the truth of the matter from the public eye.

By invoking a conspiracy hypothesis, large amounts of "evidence" are thrown into question. This is one of the most curious features of these theories: to my knowledge, conspiracy theories are the only theories for which evidence against them is actually construed as evidence in favor of them. The more evidence piled up by the authorities in favor of a given theory, the more the conspiracy theorist points to how badly "They" must want us to believe the official story. Let me note two things at this point. First, conspiracy theories are not alone in placing great emphasis on errant data. The history of science is replete with examples of theoretical innovation initiated by an investigation into data that did not fit the standard paradigm. It is a good pragmatic heuristic for scientific effort to be expended on chasing after errant data, in the hopes that these loose strings might lead to the unraveling of currently misguided theory. What conspiracy theories get wrong, however, is that the existence of errant data alone is not a significant problem with a theory. Given the imperfect nature of our human understanding of the world, we should expect that even the best possible theory would not explain all the available data. One's theory should not fit all the available data, because not all the available data are, in fact, true. Invariably, some of our measurements, some of our interpretations and other theories get something wrong about the nature of the world.

Second, the problematic of conspiracy theories goes beyond simple false data. If the only problem with UCTs was that they place too much emphasis on small sets of data at odds with an official account, then that would not make them a very interesting phenomenon. Conspiracy theories differ from most other theories in one very interesting way, however. Conspiracy theorists would rightly point out that they have one problem with which scientists are not faced. By hypothesis, the conspiracy theorist is struggling to explain phenomena that other, presumably powerful, agents are actively seeking to keep secret. Unlike the case of science, where nature is construed as a passive and uninterested party with respect to human-knowledge gathering activities, the conspiracy theorist is working in a domain where the investigated actively seeks to hamper the investigation. Imagine if neutrinos were not simply hard to detect, but actively sought to avoid detection! This is exactly the case with which conspiracy theorists contend we are confronted in the cases they seek to explain. This is why countervailing evidence and lack of evidence can and ought to be construed as supporting their theories.

This brings me to the most commonly voiced complaint about UCTs, namely, that they are simply unfalsifiable. The worry is that given a situation where all potentially falsifying evidence can be construed as supporting, or at worst as neutral evidence, then conspiracy theories are by definition unfalsifiable. In favor of conspiracy theorists, it should be noted that this unfalsifiability is not as ad hoc as it might initially seem, due to the active nature of the investigated, just
noted. It is not ad hoc to suppose that false and misleading data will be thrown your way when one supposes that there is somebody out there actively throwing that data at you. Just ask Kenneth Starr. As evidenced by any number of twentieth century, U. S. government sponsored activities (take your pick), we have reason to believe that there exist forces with both motive and capacity to carry out effective disinformation campaigns.

[...]

In the public sphere where conspiracy theories dwell, there are related mechanisms for generating warranted beliefs. There is the free press, made up of reporters, editors, and owners who compete to publish "the scoop" before others do. There are governmental agencies charged with investigating incidents, producing data, and publishing findings. And there are, of course, various "free agents" (including the conspiracy theorists themselves) who are members of the public. Inherent in the claim that alleged evidence against a theory should be construed as evidence for that theory is a pervasive skepticism about our public, fact-gathering institutions and the individuals working in them. Thus, as a conspiracy theory matures, attempt after attempt to falsify a conspiracy theory appears to succeed, and this apparent success must be explained as the nefarious work of the conspirators. As a result of this process, an initial claim that a small group of people is conspiring gives way to claims of larger conspiracies.

 

[Dak]

That article fails to address the repeated verifications of old conspiracy theories help bolster expectations of future validations. There is a pattern of governmental behavior which transcends any particular nationality or era (but includes the US), in the case of "false flag" behavior. The very name is taken from [accepted] maritime behavior. Even Nietzsche mentioned it.

Tonkin
Mukden
Lusitania
Reichstag Fire
Anthrax attacks
and on and on.

Those are all officially verified. Then you have the murkier ones epitomized by the USS Liberty "incident". My first question when I hear of an event on the news is "Cui Bono?" The MSM is bought and sold, you have to read a lot of sources and all between the lines. The what may or may not be correct and generally the why and who isn't what's offered.

BUT! Before you jump on human cognition too much, check this out:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/brains-make-decisions-way-alan-turing-cracked-codes-180954212/?no-ist

What actually happened was an accumulation of information in the brain, as the animal assessed the reliability of each shape and added them up to a running total. Shadlen monitored this buildup by painlessly inserting electrodes into the monkeys’ brains. High-probability clues triggered big leaps in brain activity, while weaker clues yielded smaller leaps. Decisions seemed to be made when activity in favor of either left or right crossed a certain threshold—much like the results from the Turing algorithm.

“We found that the brain reaches a decision in a way that would pass muster with a statistician,” says Shadlen, whose team will publish the results in an upcoming issue of the journal Neuron.

Jan Drugowitsch, a neuroscientist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, agrees. “This makes a very strong case that the brain really does try to follow the strategy outlined here,” he says. But can more complicated choices, such as where to go to college or whom to marry, be boiled down to simple statistical strategies?

“We don’t know that the challenges faced by the brain in solving big issues are exactly the same as the challenges in simpler decisions,” says Joshua Gold, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “Right now it’s pure conjecture that the mechanisms we study in the lab bear on higher-level decisions.”

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Hey, you're still bullish on silver right?

I found a chart tonight (https://www.silverinstitute.org/site/supply-demand/) and copied the data into a spreadsheet so I could identify trends and stuff:

I first got into silver back in 2010, thanks to you and all the alternative media hype. The 2011-13 data is helpful to see now, cause we've got inflection points in a few of the trends.

My favorite trend is the electronics demand. It slowed down when prices spiked, but I'm willing to assume it'll keep growing over time.

There's a few things I'm concerned about, though:
* mine production hasn't peaked, and even if it does, there can always be new discoveries
* I don't know where the scrap production comes from, and with the recent jump it's easy to assume it will keep going up like that whenever it becomes more cost-effective to recycle scrap
* coins & bars demand could easily be a temporary glut that returns to historic levels if the price of silver stabilizes

 

[Einherjar86]

That article fails to address the repeated verifications of old conspiracy theories help bolster expectations of future validations. There is a pattern of governmental behavior which transcends any particular nationality or era (but includes the US), in the case of "false flag" behavior. The very name is taken from [accepted] maritime behavior. Even Nietzsche mentioned it.

Tonkin
Mukden
Lusitania
Reichstag Fire
Anthrax attacks
and on and on.

Those are all officially verified. Then you have the murkier ones epitomized by the USS Liberty "incident". My first question when I hear of an event on the news is "Cui Bono?" The MSM is bought and sold, you have to read a lot of sources and all between the lines. The what may or may not be correct and generally the why and who isn't what's offered.

Well, I gave you the author/title information so you can go look it up yourself.

Because the author acknowledges that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. That isn't the point; the point is that a conspiracy theory can NEVER be proven false.

BUT! Before you jump on human cognition too much, check this out:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/brains-make-decisions-way-alan-turing-cracked-codes-180954212/?no-ist

I'm not sure I follow the segue. I'm apt to agree with that article.

 

[Dak]

I first got into silver back in 2010, thanks to you and all the alternative media hype. The 2011-13 data is helpful to see now, cause we've got inflection points in a few of the trends.

My favorite trend is the electronics demand. It slowed down when prices spiked, but I'm willing to assume it'll keep growing over time.

There's a few things I'm concerned about, though:
* mine production hasn't peaked, and even if it does, there can always be new discoveries
* I don't know where the scrap production comes from, and with the recent jump it's easy to assume it will keep going up like that whenever it becomes more cost-effective to recycle scrap
* coins & bars demand could easily be a temporary glut that returns to historic levels if the price of silver stabilizes

Well I'm bullish in the long term, but that's mostly based on pricing in national currencies as well as our increasingly electronica-based civilization. I don't see the coin and bar demand as a glut unless people run out of dollars/yen/etc they have or want to trade for them. That will happen either if people need every last dime for food or if the real economy improves, and the latter isn't happening before silver has its big day.

Mine production may not have peaked but you have to look at cost of extraction vs market value. There may be tons of silver somewhere under the arctic but even if it becomes accessible, at what price will it become economic to extract it? Possibly a price someone just looking to trade for profit wouldn't mind.

Scrap production is interesting to me, and I imagine some or maybe even a lot of it comes from cheating all the old people out of old rings and spoons and whatnot (We buy Gold And Silver!). I've been saying for years now that landfills are the mines of the future, and I see no reason to back off that prediction yet.

Well, I gave you the author/title information so you can go look it up yourself.

Because the author acknowledges that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. That isn't the point; the point is that a conspiracy theory can NEVER be proven false.

I'm not sure I follow the segue. I'm apt to agree with that article.

I'm sure for some people that any conspiracy theory is unfalsifiable, just as some people don't even register that some have turned out to be true.

He gives a lot of points for CTs, and uses the old fall back of "we have a free media and public fact finding institutions", and uses an also old justification for believing the confluence of data from these sources, namely, that to do otherwise asks for a conspiracy "too big to hide". My point was to that point. It's reasonable for conspiracy theorists to distrust the so called "free press" and "public fact finding institutions" because both have a pretty decent track record of covering things up when necessary. Sure, it's not hidden forever, just until it no longer "matters". Then the correction is "back page" news while the bs was front page news for days.

I think there's also a difference between being skeptical of the official story and embracing the Alien Lizard People explanation. The official story of the TT attacks is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory possible. May as well call the 19 hijackers ALPs. That doesn't mean I have to accept any particular theory while I wait for what more-or-less "really happened."

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I don't see the coin and bar demand as a glut unless people run out of dollars/yen/etc they have or want to trade for them. That will happen either if people need every last dime for food or if the real economy improves, and the latter isn't happening before silver has its big day.

The recent high demand is largely a result of the extraordinary panic generated by the 2008 crisis. If we don't have a crisis of similar magnitude in the next few years, I don't see any reason to assume the present coins/bars demand will stay as high as it is - especially if supply keeps rising like it has been, and putting downward pressure on the price of silver.

Mine production may not have peaked but you have to look at cost of extraction vs market value. There may be tons of silver somewhere under the arctic but even if it becomes accessible, at what price will it become economic to extract it? Possibly a price someone just looking to trade for profit wouldn't mind.

Well that's part of my concern about the future direction of mine production - the higher the price of silver goes, the more cost-effective it becomes to find & extract new reserves. The market has a built-in mechanism to balance supply and demand.

Scrap production is interesting to me, and I imagine some or maybe even a lot of it comes from cheating all the old people out of old rings and spoons and whatnot (We buy Gold And Silver!). I've been saying for years now that landfills are the mines of the future, and I see no reason to back off that prediction yet.

So you think scrap production could meaningfully decrease as the public becomes better informed about the real market price & price history of silver? It's possible, but I personally wouldn't assume that will translate to a long-term tapering off of this supply source. I think it's more likely another supply/demand balancing mechanism like I described with mine production, where supply rises as cost-effective reserves rise.