How Facts Emerge: Subject, Self-fulfllment and Stability

NOTICE

• NEVER, NEVER and NEVER TRUST THE FOLLOWING

Subject

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. *1

• There is a basic distinction of objective versus subjective values
• In economics: exchange value versus use value (market price versus individual utility)
• Use value of consumer goods is hedonic utility, use value of capital might be net outcome of investment
• Exchange values are guess (with or without theoretical reasoning and statistical assumption)
• Some theory-based measurements are still guess but reliable guess (with stable measurements and sound statistical assumption)
• We define "subjectivity" as "reliance to sense data", or ratio of energy loss
• Subjective observation might be called "consumption" and objective guess relies on assumptions
• More subjective measurement is more disturbing (causing more state changes)
• Less subjective measurement has weakness to heterogeneity (surface effect), singularity and noise
• Experts in various disciplines often talk about their versions of degree of subjectivity (hence, residual degree of guessing)
• In electronics: input impedance, high or low
• In engineering: (non-)destructive inspections
• In medicine: invasive or not (for operations and inspections)
• In QM: observables on the lattice of projections, having true "wave function" as its ideal
• In other words: Subjective measurement is recovering whole spectrum from IR eigenvalues and less subjective measurement is recovering from UV eigenvalues
• Sometimes, objective values, or guesses, might be far from being precise, when we guess with wrong theoretical foundation or wrong statistical assumption

Self-fulfillment

• Some philosophers talk about "speech act", "performative utterance" etc. Naming ships is an example of "speech act", which effect through mere announcement. (cf. Austin(1962))
• Some sociologists talk about "self-fulfillment" (cf. Merton(1949))
• Some financiers, managing hedge funds or central banks, may fail to make reliable forecast on future balance of their accounts (e.g. bankruptcy of Long-Term Capital Management) *2
• In various situations, announcement of authorities matters or does not matter. What makes difference of success and failure of prophecy/forecast?
• Some statement classified "self-fulfilling prophecy" might be regarded as "energy-collectors" or "recyclers of social wealth" in certain bosonic field

Stability

• Correct forecast might be on stable (and even self-stabilizing) phenomena
• Stable phenomena (excitement) have certain amount of energy which can not be easily dissipated
• Stable phenomena allow more observations (i.e. numerous dephasings and substantive energy losses) than unstable phenomena
• Even most stable phenomena can break under excessive observations (classical intervention)
• Vulnerability to observation may depend on "effective surface" and sureness depend on "volume"
• If certain type of "phenomenological" argument works, it might be stable

Observation of excitement in group of cells in clinical contexts

• In early stage, low volume cancer might be actually superposition of low probability cancer and high probability non-cancer, and fortunately, almost all of such "quantum cancer" *3 soon disappear, but some evolve to "classical cancer"
• Is unnoticed subclinical cancer exist? (Berkeley's argument)
• Inflammation is observation over itself *4 : how about just suppressing it?
• Some refusals of inspections and denials of symptoms might be indeed therapeutic (but I do not know how to design refutable experiments on such hypotheses)

Generally, whether wishful thinking works or not

• Some sorts of wishful thinking are just against stability, just ignoring substantial energy and may fail
• In certain critical situations, it might be fundamentally unclear ante post

Footnotes

1. Mao Zedong, On Practice
2. Robert C. Merton, an LTCM board, is the son of Robert K. Merton
3. Japanese anesthetist Makoto Kondo writes about "gan-modoki", which translates literally "pseudo-cancer" in English. It is a pun on "gammodoki", which is Japanese tofu pudding fritter
4. Neil Gaiman(1990): "Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity". These words originate from Oscar Wilde's talk in 1883, "If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity" (remember his infamous popularity). I do not know who first derived the "hauptsatz" of viral advertisement stating that "notoriety is more valuable than obscurity". Corresponding Japanese phrase "aku-mei ha mu-mei ni masaru" is a popular proverb