“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, law, self-worth and our models of reality. But that’s a pretty shabby basis if you ask me.

  • infinite_ass@leminal.spaceOP
    1·
    9 days ago

    Excellent. An opportunity to elaborate my thingy.

    By impress I mean that the thing looks big. People are impressed by big strong stuff.

    Stuff that has big value is worth a lot of money. Thus money is based on people being impressed.

    For good and ill, one’s self-worth is generally based on how much attention you get and how much nice things people say about you. Thus self-worth is based on people being impressed.

    Law is based on impressive arguments, impressive authorities, impressive force, impressive majorities.

    Models of reality are likewise. Arguments, axioms, authorities, experiments, observations.Somebody is impressed and the hypothesis gets promoted to theory or whatever.

    That’s where I’m going with that. People are being impressed. Majorities are getting impressed. Impressive people are being impressed.

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
      1·
      8 days ago

      I’m not sure if “impressed” is the right word for what you’re trying to describe. I’m just going to address the first example to try and figure out what you mean.

      Stuff that has big value is worth a lot of money. Thus money is based on people being impressed.

      This sounds tautological. Is “big value” not synonymous with “worth lots of money”? I’m reading this as saying “Something that is worth a lot of money is worth a lot of money, and people are impressed by things that are worth a lot of money, so if people are impressed by something, it will be worth more money.”