rgw@icdattcwsm:~/Blog$ cat 2024-10-26-On-Values.md

Merely having values is far less important than your hierarchy of values.

If Personality were a class in Object-Oriented Programming architecture, it would, at any given point in time, have its constants, variables, and methods. The constants would be the physical and cultural narratives we do not dispute at any given point in time, the variables would be buckets of thought where we reach conclusions pursuant to persuasion or critical thinking, and the methods would be the information processing patterns we use to make sense of the world around us.

Personality is a script, a blueprint. It may evolve, or it may not.

In programming architecture, the way to add value to a class is more or less settled.

One, do not walk with your hands. You make sure that the class and only that class performs its designated function. Eat with your hands, walk on your feet.

Two, if there is overlap between services provided by two classes, there MUST be a strong architectural justification for that overlap. Our hands, as well as our feet, have skin, bones, nails, hair, and blood—here, repetition is NOT an anomaly.

Three, strive for maximum elegance in class design. While the utility of our little toe may warrant scrutiny, there is abundant scientific literature to support the view that our hands and feet are remarkably elegant in every aspect of their design.

Values, by themselves, are mere bricks. It is the manner in which we assemble and structure our values that creates Personality.

Thus, my earlier hypothesis of Personality being a class of certain traits and mannerisms to deal with information might be insufficient. A better hypothesis would be that Personality is the class that creates the class described in my earlier hypothesis.

And unless we accept the idea of intelligent design, we'd end up concluding the recursion that Personality creates Personality.

Intelligent design is precisely what guides us to structure our values. Murder is bad. But killing in the context of self-defense is okay. Slow API response times are bad. But mild speed inefficiencies are still better than illegible codebases.

An enterprise can exist without its key personalities, but it cannot inherently exist without its value structures—also known as its First Principles.

The utilitarian role of First Principles is simple. It is to protect against the post-modern, hedonistic, and nihilistic tendencies of creating 'manufactured truths' pursuant to 'context switching'.

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