The program turned out to be a vanguard of postmodernism and mysticism, and clashed with my disinterest in mysticism, especially mixing mysticism with the domain I had paid the school to learn, which was system theory. One bright spot in the academic experience was an assignment in Advanced Systems class. I made high marks thoughout my tenure in the program, but this class and this assignment meant the most to me.
We had been working with a language game using propositional statements and taking some phrase or single term out of the propositional statement and unpack it with a propositional statement. Example: Schools are good for {educating}. Then you write something saying what "educating" is. And if you write "Learn how to work with others", then you would write another line saying what "working with others" is. This would become important if, for example, you did this as a group exercise and discovered a few of in the group didn't see "working with others" as a goal in "educating".
Our instructor in Advanced Systems complimented me at length on my work for this assignment. She had provided the initial "puzzle" statement, and said after my work was turned in that mine was the first correct answer to the puzzle question she had ever encountered. This was more than a single assignment success. The semantic content of the assignment shows a philosophic fissure going on between the school's mystical slant and my desire to figure out objective reality using systemic thinking.
Puzzle: A number of wise people have observed that, given
the choice between being happy and being right, most people
will choose being right. Why is this to be expected?
P: Humans are {organisms}.
(an assembly of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole and have properties of life.)
P: Organisms have {performance boundaries}.
(temperature, weight loads)
P: The {environment surrounding an organism} presents space that offers conditions within and without the organism's performance boundaries.
(molten rock, alpine meadow, climate controlled hotel room, international space station sleeping quarters, sauna)
P: Environments within the organism's performance boundaries are synonymous with {safe}.
(environment: average tropical temperature, organism: humans)
P: Environments outside the organism's performance boundaries are synonymous with {unsafe}.
(environment: molten lava rock, organism: humans)
P: Humans have an {internal representation} of outside environment.
( propositional language )
P-1: When propositional language evaluates the environment surrounding an organism as within its performance boundaries and the actual environment is outside the organism's performance boundaries the propositional language statement itself is evaluated as false.
P-2: When propositional language evaluates the environment surrounding an organism as outside its performance boundaries and the actual environment is within the organism's performance boundaries the propositional language statement itself is evaluated as false.
P: P-1 statement on this page is synonymous with unsafe.
P: Unsafe propositional language and unsafe environment are not both physically immediate forms of unsafe.
P: Unsafe propositional language is safe if used and unsafe if implemented.
P: Humans have an internal representation of the caveats of language evaluation in which survival is associated with safe propositional statements.
P: Humans know that being right is an important safety concern with internal representation.
P: One could be happy and also not be using internal representation to find environments that are truly safe.
P: Happiness in the above case is associated with not surviving.
P: Being right is associated with surviving in the above case.
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