Summary of Vangelov et al 2026 paper on fentanyl

The prompt was asking for a summary of this paper. The prompt contained the full text, hence it is not included to avoid infringement.

Here’s the paper’s core argument and evidence, in a detailed, “what did they do + what did they find + what does it mean” way.

What question they’re trying to answer

US fentanyl overdose deaths rose for ~15 years, then unexpectedly started dropping sharply in mid-2023. The authors ask: could a fentanyl supply shock (a major disruption in supply) explain a substantial part of that decline? They argue this is hard to prove directly because trafficking networks are secretive, so they triangulate from multiple indirect indicators.

The headline pattern they’re explaining

• US synthetic-opioid overdose deaths (driven mostly by fentanyl) peaked at ~76,000 in 2023.
• The trend reversed in mid-2023 and by end-2024 the annualized rate was down by over a third (their cited CDC reporting).
• They claim the timing and cross-indicator consistency fits a major market disruption rather than only gradual improvements in treatment/harm reduction.

Why “supply shocks” are plausible in principle

They frame fentanyl as part of a broader history where big supply changes have caused big harm changes:

• Upward shocks: prescription opioid overavailability (late 1990s), fentanyl’s entry into illicit supply (~2014).
• Downward shocks: Australia’s “heroin drought” (2001) followed by ~60% drop in opioid overdose mortality.
• Targeted scheduling: China’s control of carfentanil (2017) preceded drops in seizures/deaths where it was common.
• Precursor controls: pseudoephedrine restrictions briefly constrained meth availability/harm.

So, the “market can swing fast” premise is established.

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Evidence stream 1: “Conventional” supply indicators in the US

1) Purity data (DEA)

They use DEA’s monthly estimates (2019–Oct 2024) for average purity of seized fentanyl, split into powder vs pills, and compare it with monthly overdose death rates.

Key patterns they highlight:

• Powder purity: rose sharply in 2022; peaked around ~25% by weight (Mar–Jul 2023); then fell by more than half, reaching about ~11% by end-2024.
• Pill purity: also declined, but later and less—down by about one-third to roughly ~1.5%.

Interpretation they push:

• Dealers often respond to scarcity not mainly by raising prices, but by diluting product (“shrinkflation”), which can reduce overdose risk if users end up exposed to less fentanyl per use.

They also report correlations across the full monthly series (Jan 2019–Oct 2024):

• Synthetic-opioid overdose death rate correlated with pill purity: r = 0.62 (95% CI 0.44–0.74)
• …and with powder purity: r = 0.37 (95% CI 0.15–0.56)

Their takeaway: purity and deaths turned down at about the same time, and are meaningfully correlated, consistent with a supply-side shift that changed potency exposure.

2) Seizure counts (NFLIS)

They treat the number of fentanyl seizures/identifications as another supply proxy:

• US fentanyl seizures peaked in the first half of 2023
• Fell 15% in the second half of 2023
• By the second half of 2024 were 37% below the peak

They acknowledge a classic ambiguity: seizures could fall if enforcement intensity drops even if supply doesn’t. But they argue that given strong public/political attention during this period, a real supply reduction is more plausible than a large enforcement pullback.

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Evidence stream 2: An “unconventional” indicator—Reddit as a customer-side signal

Because it’s hard to survey buyers in real time, they mine Reddit discussions where users talk candidly about availability/quality.

What they did

• Scraped posts containing “fentanyl” and slang/misspellings (e.g., “fetty”) across six subreddits:

  • r/fentanyl, r/heroin, r/opiates, r/meth, r/cocaine, r/mdma

• Within that set, they tracked monthly mentions of “drought” and similar shortage terms from Jan 2021 to Jan 2025

• They manually checked that “drought” references were actually about fentanyl availability (not unrelated uses).

What they found

• A first notable “drought” mention peak in July 2023
• A much larger spike starting late 2023 that continued until subreddit moderation intervened
• In Jan 2024, r/fentanyl’s moderator temporarily banned drought-related posts (concern about violating platform rules)
• By July 2024, drought mentions rose again well above baseline and stayed elevated through end-2024

Their interpretation: discussions of shortages begin mid-2023, lining up with the beginning of the mortality decline, and persist into 2024—consistent with an extended disruption rather than a brief blip.

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Evidence stream 3: Canada as a “supply chain comparator” to locate the shock’s source

This is their most “detective work” section: if both the US and Canada show downturns at similar times, it could hint the disruption is upstream (e.g., precursor chemicals), not only Mexico-specific actions.

Their premise about supply chains

They describe a “widely held view”:

• Both countries depend on precursor chemicals largely sourced from China.
• The US market: much fentanyl is synthesized in Mexico.
• Canada: more synthesis is believed to occur domestically from imported precursors.
• Cross-border US-Canada fentanyl flow is believed to be small relative to US-Mexico and Canadian domestic production.

So:

• If the disruption is precursors, both countries could get hit around the same time.
• If the disruption is mainly US/Mexico enforcement or Mexican producer dynamics, Canada should be less affected (or affected differently/timing mismatch).

What Canadian indicators show

Canada doesn’t publish national fentanyl-specific deaths monthly, but they use quarterly indicators where fentanyl dominates:

• Quarterly opioid deaths (with >80% fentanyl-related): start declining in Q3 2023

• Similar declines in:

  • EMS responses to suspected opioid poisonings
  • Opioid-related hospitalizations
  • Opioid poisoning ED visits

Supply-side Canadian lab signals are messier:

• Average purity of analyzed fentanyl powder didn’t drop until late 2024, but became more volatile starting early–mid 2023.
• Identifications of fentanyl in lab-assayed samples fell through 2021–2024, but was offset by increases in fentanyl analogs—a shift they say is not seen in US NFLIS patterns.

British Columbia (BC) as a special case

BC is singled out because it was hit early and plays a big role in Canada’s fentanyl context:

• BC overdoses dipped in Aug–Sep 2023
• But didn’t fall sharply until Oct 2024 (later than the national “start declining” signal)

Their inference from US–Canada comparison

• Both countries’ overdose indicators begin falling around mid-2023, which they argue fits an upstream disruption.
• But the way the markets “adapt” differs (Canada shows more analog substitution), suggesting the markets are distinct yet potentially constrained by a common bottleneck.

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What they think caused the disruption (and how confident they are)

They stop short of claiming proof, but propose a leading candidate: Chinese actions that tightened scrutiny and control of precursor production/export, plus enforcement against online advertising/marketplaces.

Pieces they cite as consistent with this:

• DEA’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment language noting declining purity in 2024 and reporting that Mexico-based producers had difficulty obtaining key precursors, and that some China-based suppliers were wary due to increased controls tied to UN treaty updates.

• Reported Chinese actions in late 2023 and 2024:

  • A November 2023 notice warning about selling substances usable for drug manufacture
  • Increased enforcement activity against synthetic drug/precursor suppliers
  • Claims by June 2024 of taking down large volumes of ads and multiple platforms
  • A Biden–Xi meeting in Nov 2023 linked to increased cooperation

They also discuss the geopolitical logic: the US bears huge overdose costs; China’s domestic opioid burden is small, so China may have leverage to act at relatively low domestic cost.

They acknowledge alternative explanations (including “maybe US/Mexico interventions hit the US supply while something separate hit Canada”), but argue the parallel timing makes an upstream story plausible.

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Policy implications they draw

They caution against everyone claiming credit (“success has many fathers”), and emphasize that if supply disruption played a big role, it changes how you interpret “what worked.”

Three big implications if it was a supply shock:

1. Supply control might matter without mass street-level arrests

   • They stress there wasn’t a visible surge of retail arrests like in earlier US drug wars, and that’s “heartening” because street enforcement can drive incarceration and racial disparities without reliably raising prices or reducing availability.

2. The good news may be temporary

   • Trafficking organizations often adapt to shocks (they analogize to meth precursor controls).
   • Possible adaptations: bigger inventories, hardened logistics, alternative precursors/routes.

3. Use the “drought window” to reduce demand

   • Scale prevention and treatment with evidence for lowering demand, while supply is constrained, because incentives to restore supply persist.

And if China really contributed materially:

• Diplomacy and international cooperation could have surprisingly high payoff.
• Engage other potential precursor-producing countries, especially India, which they note is a growing concern in enforcement discussions.

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Limitations they explicitly flag

They’re pretty direct that this is an inference-heavy, nonexperimental analysis:

• No randomization / causal identification: coincident internal changes in US/Canada could theoretically explain the patterns.
• Purity data representativeness: seizure purity isn’t necessarily retail purity; powder samples may be more wholesale. Shifts in the mix of sample types over time could bias average purity trends.
• COVID retreat as alternative: they consider whether waning COVID reduced overdoses. They argue timing is off—ODD decline begins in 2023, well after the last major COVID mortality peak in early 2022 (they cite a week in Jan 2022 and a large decline over the next three months).
• China inference is speculative because of limited transparency and episodic reporting.
• Data gaps: they call for more systematic real-time monitoring of drug supply chains, including better purity tracking and structured social media surveillance.

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Bottom line of the paper

They don’t claim a smoking gun, but argue that multiple independent indicators point in the same direction:

• US purity down + deaths down + seizures down, starting mid-2023
• Reddit users talking about shortages beginning mid-2023 and continuing into 2024
• Canada’s opioid death indicators also turning down around mid-2023 (with some regional timing differences), which supports the idea of an upstream disruption (e.g., precursor constraints)

So their answer is essentially: yes, the fentanyl trade likely experienced a supply disruption, and that disruption could plausibly explain a meaningful portion of the sharp overdose-death decline beginning mid/late-2023.

If you want, I can also:

• extract the paper’s implied causal chain as a simple diagram (precursors → purity/availability → dose exposure → deaths), or
• list what new data would most strongly confirm vs refute the supply-shock hypothesis.

Lehrer vs Elster on love

Compare these texts and write a synthesis of what we learn from the comparison.

[The prompt here contained the entirety of “Love” (§IV.3 of “Ulysses and the Sirens”, by Jon Elster) and “Love and Transcendence” (Chapter 5 of “Self-Trust”, by Keith Lehrer), which are omitted from this post for copyright reasons.]

I gave this prompt to both Gemini and ChatGPT.

• Gemini
• ChatGPT

Gemini 3 output

This synthesis compares Jon Elster’s "Ulysses and the Sirens" (§IV.3) and Keith Lehrer’s "Self-Trust" (Chapter 5).

Both authors grapple with a central philosophical dilemma: The tension between Love and Autonomy (Freedom). Both take Jean-Paul Sartre’s pessimistic view—that love is a contradictory attempt to possess another’s freedom—as a starting point. However, they diverge significantly in their conclusions: Elster explores why love is often an "inherently unrealizable project" fraught with paradox, while Lehrer constructs a logical hierarchy to prove that "Autonomous Love" is possible through self-regulation.

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1. The Shared Diagnosis: The Paradox of Possession

Both authors agree that love, in its raw or "extreme" form, creates a logical contradiction regarding freedom.

• The Sartrean Problem: The lover wants to possess the beloved. However, they do not want to possess a robot or a slave; they want to possess the beloved's free choice to love them.
• The Contradiction: To demand someone love you is to destroy their freedom to choose. As Elster notes via the "Be Spontaneous" paradox: "I want you to love me freely, but I demand that you do so."

2. Jon Elster: Love as an Unstable Game

Elster treats love primarily as a psychological knot and a game-theoretic problem. He focuses on why love creates instability, decay, and "clinical symptoms" of irrationality.

• The Seesaw of Reciprocity: Elster highlights the "Groucho Marx paradox": I wouldn't love anyone who would stoop so low as to love me.

• If the beloved does not love back, the lover is obsessed.

• If the beloved does love back, the lover loses interest because the beloved has "lost value" by engaging with an inferior.

• Game Theory & Dominant Strategies: Elster argues that love is like a game without a "dominant strategy" (a move that is always best). For love to work, both parties must transform simultaneously. However, this is precarious.

• The Collapse of Time: Elster introduces the element of time as a destroyer of love.

• Anticipation of Decay: Like a Prisoner’s Dilemma, if lovers know love might end (decay), they may preemptively withdraw to protect themselves, causing the very decay they feared.

• Inner Time: Stendhal’s observation that the waiting lover consumes the present moment with past expectations and future fears, making the actual meeting with the beloved disappointing.

Key Takeaway from Elster: Love is often an "inherently unrealizable project" because the dynamics of desire, time, and strategic interaction tend toward instability and paradox rather than equilibrium.

3. Keith Lehrer: Love as a Hierarchy of Preference

Lehrer accepts the danger of "bondage" in love but rejects the idea that it is inevitable. He proposes a taxonomy of love, moving from base desire to high-level autonomy. His solution is Metamental Ascent: the ability to think about and evaluate one’s own thoughts.

Lehrer distinguishes between Desire (first-order, impulsive, bondage) and Preference (higher-order, evaluated, autonomous).

Lehrer’s Taxonomy of Love

1. Extreme Love (Bondage): Based on raw desire. "I desire to satisfy your desires." This creates a feedback loop (sniffing desire in roses) but results in slavery to the other’s whims.
2. Desire/Preference Love (Asymmetrical): One party loves based on desire, the other on preference (e.g., parent/child).
3. Fully Autonomous Love (The Solution): This creates a "keystone loop" of stability.
• Definition: S prefers A out of fully autonomous love for T if and only if S autonomously prefers A because T autonomously prefers A.
• The "Trick": How do you avoid bondage? You prefer what the partner prefers because you prefer to have that preference structure. You are not obeying them; you are obeying your own decision to align with them.

4. Synthesis: Pessimism vs. Constructivism

The comparison reveals a fundamental divide between a descriptive analysis of human failure (Elster) and a normative framework for human success (Lehrer).

Feature	Jon Elster ("Ulysses and the Sirens")	Keith Lehrer ("Self-Trust")
View of Love	A paradox; an "unrealizable project."	A manageable structure; a "transcendence."
Role of Time	Destructive. Future decay ruins the present.	Constructive. Trust implies stability over time.
Mechanism	Game Theory: Prisoners Dilemma, Dominant Strategies.	Preference Logic: S prefers A because T prefers A.
Autonomy	Threatened by love. The lover tries to be both subject and object (en-soi and pour-soi).	Secured by love (if autonomous). We "open the loop" of self-trust to include another.
Outcome	Likely instability, "seesaw" dynamics, or decay.	Potential for "Autonomous Love" based on mutual trust and reason.

Conclusion

From comparing these texts, we learn that desire is the source of the paradox, but preference is the source of the solution.

Elster remains stuck in the "desire" phase (which he calls "sentimental stuff" or clinical symptoms), where the clash of freedoms leads to a "game without a solution." Lehrer argues that we can escape this game by moving up a level: by converting raw desires (which push us around) into preferences (which we choose to hold).

Synthesis: Love is a paradox of bondage only if we remain passive subjects of our immediate desires (Elster’s view). If we exercise "metamental" control—choosing to value the other's autonomy through our own autonomous choice—love becomes a stable expression of self-trust (Lehrer’s view).

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Next Step: Would you like me to construct a formal truth table or logic diagram applying Lehrer's definition of "Autonomous Love" to one of Elster’s "Seesaw" scenarios to see if it solves the paradox?

ChatGPT 5.2 output

Reading Elster beside Lehrer teaches you to see “love” as less a simple feeling than a dynamic structure—a set of feedback loops between two agents—where the same mechanisms that generate intensity also generate instability.

What both texts agree on

Both authors treat love as essentially relational and reflexive: what matters is not only what I feel, but how my feelings/choices depend on your feelings/choices, and how that dependence feeds back.

• Reciprocity is central but dangerous. Each treats reciprocation as the “object” of love while also diagnosing ways it can undermine love. Elster’s “seesaw” (wanting recognition that loses value when granted) mirrors Lehrer’s “magic turns to bondage” (mutual desire becomes dependence, then manipulation and resentment).
• Love tangles with freedom. Both lean on Sartre’s idea that love involves wanting the other’s freedom as freedom and yet wanting it to yield to us. Elster presents this as a paradox (“possess a liberty”); Lehrer reframes it as a conflict between love and autonomy that can be redesigned rather than simply endured.

Where they sharply diverge

1) Elster is diagnostic; Lehrer is reconstructive

• Elster is mainly explaining why love becomes paradoxical: he inventories structural contradictions (Groucho Marx paradox, “be spontaneous,” game-theoretic deadlocks, anticipation reversing time, Newcomb-like self-scrutiny). Love is often an “inherently unstable project,” and his emphasis is on failure modes.
• Lehrer wants a solution concept: he builds a taxonomy from desire-love up to fully autonomous love, defined in terms of higher-order preferences (preferring what the other autonomously prefers, because you prefer to have that preference). He’s not denying pathologies—he’s offering a normative architecture meant to avoid them.

2) They disagree on what stabilizes love

• For Elster, a stable love relationship is conceivable when lovers are mutually and conditionally transformed—each changes the “boundary conditions” of the other’s life in a way that enables self-redefinition. The stability is precarious (like certain strategic equilibria) and constantly threatened by the value-destroying effects of reciprocation, time, and self-consciousness.
• For Lehrer, stability comes from autonomy and trust: replacing first-order desire dependence with higher-order evaluation and self-trust extended to the other. The key move is metamental: you don’t merely chase the other’s desires; you endorse (or don’t) the pattern of endorsement itself.

3) Elster foregrounds time; Lehrer foregrounds levels

A distinctive contribution of Elster’s chapter is that love’s paradoxes are not only interpersonal but temporal:

• love can require growth to exist,
• anticipation of decay can cause instantaneous collapse,
• inner time can “collapse” so the present is experienced as a junction of past expectation and future regret.

Lehrer’s distinctive lens is hierarchy of attitudes:

• desire → preference → autonomous preference,
• and the way each level changes what “bondage” looks like (bondage to desire vs. “higher-order bondage” to another’s preferences).

The synthesis: love as a two-person self-referential system

Put together, the comparison yields a powerful composite picture:

1. Love generates feedback loops that are intrinsically volatile. Elster maps the classic loop: I want your recognition because it has worth only if not guaranteed; I want your spontaneity but also want it directed at me; I want certainty about what will avoid regret, but self-monitoring corrupts the very spontaneity/candor love needs.

2. Trying to “solve” love at the same level that produces it often worsens it. Elster’s examples show that direct control strategies (“I’ll act so as to get you to…”) easily backfire by converting love into a game of inference, signaling, and second-guessing—where sincerity becomes unreadable and the present gets colonized by future-oriented anxiety.

3. A plausible escape is a shift in what is being coordinated. Here Lehrer supplies a missing design principle: stabilize love not by controlling the other’s desire, but by coordinating autonomous preferences—with trust doing the work that control cannot. This doesn’t remove vulnerability (Lehrer admits autonomous love can feel insecure precisely because it’s not capturable), but it changes the kind of vulnerability: from bondage/manipulation to risk under trust.

4. Yet Lehrer’s “solution” also inherits Elster’s warning. Elster helps you see why even “autonomous love” can be fragile: higher-order endorsement can itself become performative, strategic, or time-haunted (“Will I regret endorsing this endorsement?”). Lehrer anticipates this in his discussion of “love knots” (wanting to be loved non-autonomously) and in the instability of giving the other’s preferences too much weight (cycling, self-erasure).

What we learn overall

Elster teaches you why love so often collapses into paradox: it is a project aimed at another’s freedom, recognition, and spontaneity—goods that lose value when produced by force or guaranteed by design, and that are distorted by anticipation and self-scrutiny. Lehrer teaches you how love might be made livable: by moving from desire-driven dependence to preference-driven evaluation, then to mutual autonomy and trust, while recognizing that even this “highest” form has its own tensions (vulnerability, scope limits, weight-adjustment problems).

If Elster is the anatomy of love’s contradictions, Lehrer is an attempt at love’s ethics and engineering—and the comparison suggests that any “engineering” that forgets Elster’s paradoxes will accidentally rebuild bondage at a higher level.

Voltaire and Montesquieu

Tell me about Voltaire's relationship with Montesquieu

The relationship between Voltaire and Montesquieu was one of intellectual rivalry characterized by a mixture of mutual respect, jealousy, and profound philosophical disagreement.

While often grouped together as the "twin titans" of the early French Enlightenment, they were personally distant and politically distinct. They represented two different strategies for reform: Montesquieu was the calm, aristocratic institutionalist; Voltaire was the fiery, polemical agitator.

1. The Personal Dynamic: Distant and Cool

Unlike many other philosophes who gathered in the same salons, Voltaire and Montesquieu barely knew each other personally.

• Class Differences: Montesquieu was a Baron and a magistrate (a "noble of the robe") who was comfortable in established high society. Voltaire was born bourgeois (though he later bought a title) and was an outsider who spent his life in exile or fighting the establishment.
• The "Beating" Incident: When Voltaire was famously beaten by the Chevalier de Rohan’s henchmen in 1726, Montesquieu (like many aristocrats) was indifferent, viewing Voltaire as an upstart who had provoked his betters.
• Professional Jealousy: When Montesquieu published The Spirit of the Laws (1748), it was a monumental success. Voltaire, who prided himself on being the premier thinker of France, was privately envious. He later wrote critiques of Montesquieu's work to "correct" him, though he publicly defended Montesquieu when the Church attacked him.

2. The Core Conflict: "Lions vs. Rats"

The sharpest divide between them was their vision of how to structure a government to prevent tyranny.

Feature	Montesquieu (The Aristocratic Liberal)	Voltaire (The Enlightened Monarchist)
Ideal Government	Constitutional Monarchy. He admired the British "mixed" government. He believed liberty was preserved by institutions and the separation of powers.	Enlightened Absolutism. He believed a strong, educated King was the best way to crush the Church and the nobility's abuses.
View on Nobility	Vital. He believed the nobility and "intermediary bodies" (like Parlements) acted as a necessary buffer against the King becoming a tyrant.	Dangerous. He hated the Parlements and the nobility, seeing them as reactionary persecutors (they were the ones who tortured and executed innocents like Calas).
Philosophy	Checks and Balances. "Power must check power."	Efficiency & Reason. A single, rational hand is better than a chaotic group of petty tyrants.

The Famous Retort: Voltaire famously crystallized their disagreement with the question:

"Which is better: to be ruled by one lion, or by a hundred rats?"

• For Voltaire, the "lion" was the King (whom he hoped to enlighten), and the "rats" were the aristocrats and magistrates like Montesquieu.
• Montesquieu would argue that those "rats" (intermediary powers) were the only barrier preventing the "lion" from eating everyone.

3. Intellectual Disagreements

Voltaire spent years critiquing Montesquieu’s masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws.

• Climate Theory: Montesquieu famously argued that climate dictates human character and laws (e.g., hot climates lead to despotism). Voltaire mocked this as unscientific, arguing that culture and government matter far more than the weather.
• Universalism vs. Relativism: Montesquieu was a relativist; he believed laws should fit the specific culture and history of a people. Voltaire was a universalist; he believed that justice and reason were the same everywhere.
• Religion: Both were critical of the Church, but Montesquieu viewed religion sociologically—as a useful "check" on the ruler and a stabilizer for society. Voltaire viewed organized religion as "l'infâme" (the infamous thing) that had to be crushed to allow for reason.

4. Shared Ground

Despite their feuds, they were allies in the broader Enlightenment project against the "Old Regime":

• Anglophilia: Both spent time in exile in England and used England as a stick to beat France. They both praised English tolerance, science (Newton/Locke), and commerce.
• Humanitarianism: Both were fierce opponents of torture, slavery, and the barbarity of the French judicial system.
• Legacy:
  • Montesquieu provided the structural blueprint for modern democracy (separation of powers), heavily influencing the American Founding Fathers.
  • Voltaire provided the moral fire for civil liberties (free speech, freedom of religion), establishing the modern role of the public intellectual.

Would you like me to explain how their specific views on the English political system differed?

Libertarianism via purposes ontology

This is an idea that I was thinking about in this X/Twitter conversation (see comments there for amendments; in particular, “permanent engagement” was implausible, and unnecessary for the desired conclusions).

Consider the possibility of founding libertarian private property theory on an ontology of “purposes”. The structure of a purpose is, “agent S intends to do P with objects O₁, O₂, O₃, ... Oₙ at time T.” Purposes can be stated, and can be demonstrated in action. At every time T, every agent demonstrates-in-action some purpose with his own body. An object that has had a purpose demonstrated-in-action with it becomes “engaged” in action. The foundation of private property is simply the attempt to avoid “action conflicts”, which are attempts to use an object for conflicting purposes. Hence, once a previously unengaged object has been engaged, it remains engaged with the same agent until explicitly disengaged; this is original acquisition. Contracts are formalized statements of purpose which, by convention, also demonstrate purpose in action. Attempt to formalize this.

Let’s build a skeletal formal theory around your “purposes” idea and show how private property drops out of it.

I’ll use fairly simple, typed first-order logic with time and events.

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1. Ontology

We assume:

• A nonempty set of agents: A
• A nonempty set of objects: O
• A linearly ordered set of times: T with order <
• A set of purposes (plans, action-types): P

We also assume each agent has a distinguished body-object:

• body : A → O
  (read: body(s) is the object that is s’s body)

We treat bodies as just special objects in O, but they’ll get special axioms.

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2. Purposes and actions

Your slogan:

“Agent S intends to do P with objects O₁…Oₙ at time T.”

We formalize two main predicates:

• Intend(s, p, X, t)
  = at time t, agent s intends to realize purpose p using finite set of objects X ⊆ O.

• Act(s, p, X, t)
  = at time t, agent s actually demonstrates in action purpose p with the objects in X.

You wanted: at every time, each agent is demonstrating some purpose with their own body:

• Axiom (Continuous bodily action)
  ∀s ∈ A ∀t ∈ T ∃p ∈ P ∃X ⊆ O
  body(s) ∈ X ∧ Act(s, p, X, t)

So every agent is always doing something with their body, even if it’s just “remain seated”, “observe”, etc.

We don’t reduce intention to action here. We only assume a weak connection:

• Axiom (No action without relevant intention)
  Act(s, p, X, t) → Intend(s, p, X, t)

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3. “Engagement” of objects in action

Now we introduce the key relation:

• Engaged(s, o, t)
  = at time t, object o is engaged in the ongoing activity of agent s.

This is the “property carrier” in your story.

3.1. Self-engagement of bodies

We encode self-ownership as permanent engagement of each agent with their body:

• Axiom (Self-ownership as permanent engagement)
  ∀s ∈ A ∀t ∈ T: Engaged(s, body(s), t)
  and
  ∀s≠s' ∀t: ¬Engaged(s', body(s), t)

So: each body is always and only engaged by its owner.

3.2. Original engagement (“homesteading”)

Your rule: when an agent first uses a previously unengaged object for some purpose, that object becomes engaged to that agent.

We need a notion of “previously unengaged” at a time immediately before t. To keep it simple, use:

• Unengaged(o, t) := ¬∃s Engaged(s, o, t)

We also need a “just before t” operator. Instead of building full temporal logic, we can use a schematic “earlier than t” condition:

“Previously unengaged” = unengaged at all times earlier than t.

• Unengaged_before(o, t) := ∀t' < t ¬∃s Engaged(s, o, t')

Then:

• Axiom (Original engagement / acquisition)
  For all s, o, t, p, X:
  If Act(s, p, X, t) ∧ o ∈ X ∧ Unengaged_before(o, t),
  then Engaged(s, o, t).

Intuition: the first agent to actually do something with the object brings it under their engagement.

3.3. Persistence of engagement

Your principle: once engaged, the object stays engaged with that agent until explicitly disengaged.

We add a special kind of action for abandonment:

• Predicate Abandon(s, o, t)
  = at time t, s demonstrates in action the purpose of disengaging object o from his activity (e.g. discarding it, publicly renouncing control).

We then define no abandonment between times:

• NoAbandonBetween(s, o, t₁, t₂)
  := ¬∃t (t₁ ≤ t < t₂ ∧ Abandon(s, o, t))

And impose the persistence axiom:

• Axiom (Persistence)
  ∀s, o, t₁, t₂:
  if t₁ ≤ t₂ and Engaged(s, o, t₁) and NoAbandonBetween(s, o, t₁, t₂)
  then Engaged(s, o, t₂).

Abandonment cancels engagement:

• Axiom (Abandonment frees the object)
  Abandon(s, o, t) → ¬Engaged(s, o, t') for all t' ≥ t.

So: objects are “sticky” to their engager until a specific action breaks the link.

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4. Action conflicts

Your idea: the purpose of property is to avoid action conflicts — simultaneous attempts to use an object for incompatible purposes.

We introduce a primitive relation on purposes:

• Conflicts(p₁, p₂, o)
  = using object o for purpose p₁ is incompatible with using o for purpose p₂ at the same time.

Example: drinking from a cup vs. smashing it at the same moment.

Then define:

• Definition (Action conflict on an object)

  Conflict(s₁, s₂, o, t)
  :⇔ ∃p₁, p₂, X₁, X₂ such that

  • Act(s₁, p₁, X₁, t)
  • Act(s₂, p₂, X₂, t)
  • o ∈ X₁ ∩ X₂
  • Conflicts(p₁, p₂, o)

So a conflict is literally two incompatible demonstrations of purpose using the same object at the same time.

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5. The normative core: property as a conflict-avoidance rule

Now we turn the descriptive structure into a libertarian property norm.

We introduce:

• Permitted(s, p, X, t) = it is morally/permissibly allowed for s to perform Act(s, p, X, t) at time t.

Property rule:

Once an object is engaged to an agent, others must not use it in ways that conflict with that agent’s potential purposes for it.

We don’t need to know exactly which purposes the owner has; you can take “potential purpose” as any purpose they might choose to demonstrate with it.

We encode it schematically as:

• Axiom (Property norm)
  ∀s₁, s₂, o, t, p₂, X₂:
  if Engaged(s₁, o, t) ∧ s₁ ≠ s₂ ∧ o ∈ X₂,
  then:

  For every possible purpose p₁ agent s₁ might adopt for o,
  if Conflicts(p₁, p₂, o), then ¬Permitted(s₂, p₂, X₂, t).

In words: if o is engaged to s₁, no other agent s₂ is permitted to demonstrate any conflicting purpose with o.

Then you get, as a theorem, that if everyone respects the property norm, no action conflicts occur over engaged objects:

• Theorem (No conflict among respectful agents)
  Suppose:
  (i) All agents only perform actions that are Permitted.
  (ii) Engagement is generated by the axioms above.
  Then for any s₁, s₂, o, t, if Engaged(s₁, o, t) and s₁ ≠ s₂, there is no Conflict(s₁, s₂, o, t).

So property is precisely the rule that assigns exclusive authority over engaged objects, to systematically prevent conflicting uses.

Self-ownership is a special case: your own body is always engaged to you, so others may not use it for conflicting purposes (assault, coercion, etc.).

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6. Contracts as formalized purposes

You suggest:

Contracts are formalized statements of purpose which, by convention, also demonstrate purpose in action.

We can model a contract event e as a particular kind of action that:

1. States future purposes.
2. Counts as a present demonstration of purpose (by convention).

To keep it simple, define:

• A set of contract events C ⊆ Events.

• For each contract c ∈ C:

  • parties(c) ⊆ A
  • subject_objects(c) ⊆ O
  • terms(c) = a structured description of conditional future purposes and transfers.

We won’t fully formalize terms, but assume they specify:

• A set of trigger conditions on future states (e.g. “payment of price X by time T₀”)
• A set of target engagement changes (e.g. “if condition holds, Engaged(buyer, o, t') instead of Engaged(seller, o, t') for t' ≥ T₀”).

We say:

• Contract(c, t) = contract c is validly concluded at time t.

By your convention:

• Axiom (Contract as purpose-demonstration)
  If Contract(c, t) and s ∈ parties(c), then:
  ∃p, X such that

  • subject_objects(c) ⊆ X
  • Act(s, p, X, t)
  • and p encodes the intention to be bound by the terms of c.

So signing/agreeing to a contract is itself an action that displays a purpose regarding the objects.

6.1. Transfer of engagement via contracts

Now we need a rule that says: when the contract’s conditions are satisfied, the engagement relation is updated as specified.

Introduce:

• ConditionsMet(c, t) = at time t, the conditions of contract c are satisfied.

Then a generic transfer clause can be written:

• Suppose c specifies that when conditions hold, for each o ∈ subject_objects(c):

  • engagement moves from some s_old to some s_new.

We encode this as:

• Axiom (Contractual transfer of engagement)
  For any contract c, subject object o, time t:

  If

  • Contract(c, t₀) for some t₀ < t,
  • ConditionsMet(c, t),
  • Engaged(s_old, o, t⁻) (just before t),
  • and the terms of c specify transfer of o from s_old to s_new,

  then:

  • Engaged(s_new, o, t)
  • ¬Engaged(s_old, o, t)

This models contracts as purpose-structured actions that, once their conditions are satisfied, reassign engagement.

Note how cleanly this fits your idea:

• The contract is a statement of purpose (the parties’ joint plan).
• By convention, that statement is also an action (they bind themselves now).
• The property system then updates who is engaged with what when the plan’s conditions occur.

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7. Putting it all together

We now have:

1. Purposes and actions: agents continually demonstrate purposes in action, especially with their own bodies.
2. Engagement: a dynamic relation between agents and objects, created by first use (Act on previously unengaged objects) and destroyed by abandonment or contract-based transfer.
3. Conflict: simultaneous, purposive uses of an object that are incompatible (Conflicts).
4. Property norm: a moral rule forbidding others from using an engaged object in conflicting ways.
5. Original acquisition: the first successful action with an unengaged object makes it engaged to the acting agent.
6. Contracts: coordinated action-events that articulate future purposes and, under conventional rules, govern future updates to the engagement relation.

Conceptually:

• Property = a normative closure condition on the engagement relation, whose function is to eliminate action conflicts.

• Libertarianism appears as the doctrine that:

  • engagement is first justified by original acquisition (purposeful first use),
  • it persists until abandonment or contractual transfer,
  • and others must not act in ways that create conflicts with the purposes of the engager.

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If you’d like, next steps could be:

• Add explicit deontic operators to prove “no-conflict theorems”.
• Work out edge cases (shared purposes, co-ownership as a joint engagement relation, leasing as temporary partial engagement).
• Compare this to standard Lockean/Hoppean formalizations to see where your “purpose ontology” changes or clarifies things.

Take me back to Piauí

Explain these lyrics (write the explanation in English)

Take me back to Piauí
Juca Chaves

Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Adeus, Paris tropical
Adeus, Brigitte Bardot
O champanhe me fez mal
Caviar já me enjoou
Simonal que estava certo
Na razão do Patropi
Eu também que sou esperto
Vou viver no Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Minha terra tem Chacrinha
Que é louco como ninguém
Tem Juca, tem Teixeirinha
Tem dona Hebe também
Tem maçã, laranja e figo
Banana quem não comeu
Manga não, manga é um perigo
Quem provou, quase morreu
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Mudo meu ponto de vista
Mudando de profissão
Pois a moda agora é artista
Ser júri em televisão
Tomar banho só de cuia
Comer jaca todo mês
Aleluia, aleluia
Vou morrer na BR-3
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
(Everybody)
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
(Meu Deus, meu Deus)
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
(Take me back to Piauí)
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí
Hey, hey, dee-dee, take me back to Piauí

This song is basically a funny, ironic love letter to Brazil – especially to a very “non-glamorous” Brazil – dressed up as a cheerful, dancey tune.

Juca Chaves was a Brazilian singer, comedian and sharp political satirist, active under the military dictatorship and later exiled in Europe. His song “Take Me Back to Piauí” (early 1970s) sounds playful, but it’s full of jokes about class, pop culture, and the image of Brazil as a “tropical paradise.” (Far Out Magazine)

Below I’ll go part by part.

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The chorus: “Take me back to Piauí”

He keeps repeating in English: “Take me back to Piauí.”

• Piauí is a poor, hot, rural state in Brazil’s Northeast, often seen as “backwards” and forgotten compared to rich, modern cities like Rio and São Paulo. (Wikitravel)
• Using English (“take me back”) over a Brazilian groove is already a bit ironic: it’s like a Brazilian artist using “cool foreign pop language” to say he wants to go to one of the least glamorous places in the country.
• So the chorus is both comic and symbolic: instead of dreaming of Paris, New York or even Rio, he says, “No, no, send me back to this forgotten Brazilian place.”

It can also be heard as the voice of someone in exile wanting to go home, since Juca Chaves really was forced abroad for criticizing the dictatorship. (Far Out Magazine)

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Verse 1 – Goodbye to “tropical Paris” and luxury

“Adeus, Paris tropical… Adeus, Brigitte Bardot
Champagne made me sick, caviar already disgusts me”

• “Paris tropical” is a sarcastic nickname for Brazil (especially Rio): a country that wants to be sophisticated like Paris but is in the tropics, marketed as an exotic paradise. It also plays with the hit song “País Tropical” (“Tropical Country”), recorded by Wilson Simonal, which celebrated Brazil as a joyful, sunny land. (Wikipedia)
• Saying goodbye to Brigitte Bardot (the French film icon) means: “I’m done with this obsession with European glamour and celebrities.”
• Champagne and caviar making him sick = rejection of elite, imported luxury. He’s mocking the rich Brazilian who wants French lifestyle while living in a poor, unequal country.

“Simonal was right / in the logic of ‘Patropi’ / I, who am clever / will go live in Piauí”

Here are the layers:

• Wilson Simonal was a very popular singer who made “País Tropical” a huge hit, tied to a nationalistic, optimistic image of Brazil that the dictatorship loved to use. (Wikipedia)
• “Patropi” comes from the way “país tropical” was chopped up rhythmically in that song (“pa-tropi”), and became slang for “this tropical country,” with all its contradictions and stereotypes (beaches, football, carnival, fun, and nonsense). (Wikipedia)

• There was a kind of musical “discussion” going on:

  • Jorge Ben wrote “País Tropical” (sung by Simonal).
  • Juca Chaves answered with a satire called “Paris Tropical”, criticizing the overly rosy picture.
  • Then Jorge Ben answered back with “Resposta”, defending Brazil.
  • Finally Juca releases “Take Me Back to Piauí”, half-admitting, half-mocking: “Ok, Simonal was right about this crazy tropical country.” (Wikipedia)

So “Simonal was right in the logic of Patropi” is a very ironic way of saying:

“Brazil really is this absurd, tropical mess. Knowing that, the clever thing is to embrace it – I’ll go hide out in Piauí.”

It’s affectionate and teasing at the same time.

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Verse 2 – My homeland has TV clowns and fruit (parody of a famous poem)

“Minha terra tem Chacrinha… tem Juca, tem Teixeirinha, tem dona Hebe também”

This is a parody of Brazil’s most famous patriotic poem, “Canção do Exílio” by Gonçalves Dias, which starts “Minha terra tem palmeiras / Onde canta o sabiá…” (“My homeland has palm trees, where the thrush sings”). Juca swaps palm trees and birds for TV and pop stars. (docs.lib.purdue.edu)

• Chacrinha – a wildly eccentric TV presenter and comedian, known for chaotic variety shows. (Wikipedia)
• Juca – Juca Chaves himself; he humorously includes his own name.
• Teixeirinha – a hugely popular singer of gaucho music from southern Brazil. (Wikipedia)
• Dona Hebe – Hebe Camargo, one of the biggest Brazilian TV presenters, known as the “Queen of Brazilian Television.” (Wikipedia)

So, instead of “my homeland has beautiful nature,” he’s saying:

“My country is defined by loud TV shows, famous singers and talk-show hosts.”

It’s a funny but critical picture of a Brazil dominated by mass media and entertainment, not by poetry and nature.

Then he goes into the fruit:

“It has apple, orange, fig / Everyone ate banana / But no mango, mango is dangerous / Whoever tried it almost died”

This keeps parodying the idea of Brazil’s “natural riches”:

• He lists fruits as if they were noble national treasures.
• Banana and mango also carry sexual and joke meanings in Brazilian culture, so there’s probably playful double-entendre there.
• “Mango is dangerous, whoever tried almost died” sounds like nonsense, but it likely hints at the old Brazilian myth that eating mango with milk kills you (a legend from the slavery period used to stop slaves from consuming expensive foods). (Rádio Itatiaia)

So the whole verse is mocking clichés about Brazil’s nature and turning them into absurd humor.

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Verse 3 – TV culture, simple life, and BR-3

“I change my point of view / by changing profession
Now the fashion is to be an artist / to be a TV judge”

Here he jokes about the rise of television and show business:

• “Changing profession” to become an “artist” and especially a TV talent-show judge is portrayed as the fashionable, easy way to be famous and respected.
• He’s poking fun at celebrities who gain status just by being on television, not necessarily for real artistic talent.

“Take a bath only with a gourd / eat jackfruit every month”

• Bathing “only with a cuia” (a gourd/bowl) evokes rural poverty and simplicity – as if there’s no running water; you pour water over yourself from a bowl.
• Eating jackfruit (jaca) every month is another image of rustic, sticky, messy tropical life – opposite of champagne and caviar.

“Aleluia, aleluia / I’ll die on BR-3”

• BR-3 was the name of a very popular Brazilian soul song by Tony Tornado in 1970, itself about a federal highway (old designation for part of today’s BR-040). (Wikipedia)
• Highways like that symbolized modernization and internal migration – especially poor people traveling from the interior to big cities seeking a better life, often in dangerous conditions.

• Saying “I’ll die on BR-3” is dark humor:

  “Hallelujah, my glorious destiny is to die on a Brazilian highway.”
  It mixes religious language (“aleluia”) with a bleak, very earthly reality: traffic accidents, long journeys, the harshness of Brazilian roads.

So this verse wraps together:

• The shallowness of TV celebrity culture.
• The romanticized “simple life” in the Northeast.
• And the brutal reality of Brazil’s development, symbolized by a highway where people live and die.

---

So what is the song saying overall?

Putting it all together:

• On the surface it’s a catchy, silly song about wanting to go back to Piauí.

• Underneath, it’s:

  • Laughing at Brazil’s obsession with European glamour and luxury (“Paris tropical”, Bardot, champagne, caviar).
  • Answering the optimistic anthem “País Tropical” with a more ironic view: yes, Brazil is a “tropical country” – but full of contradictions, media circus and inequality. (Wikipedia)
  • Making fun of a culture dominated by television idols (Chacrinha, Hebe) and showbiz.
  • Romanticizing and mocking at the same time the idea of escaping to the poor interior (Piauí) as the “real” Brazil.
  • Sneaking in criticism of the social reality of the dictatorship era through joking images (BR-3, Patropi, mango myth).

Because Juca Chaves was a comedian and a political satirist, the tone is deliberately playful and absurd. The chorus sounds like a fun party chant, but the details show a guy who sees Brazil very clearly – both the charm and the absurdity – and uses humor to talk about that instead of giving a serious political speech.

Gricean dating advice

Write an article giving dating advice based on Gricean pragmatics

Dating gets a lot easier (and less weird) when you understand what people do with words—not just what they say. That’s exactly what Gricean pragmatics is about.

Let’s turn the Gricean maxims into a very nerdy-but-surprisingly-useful dating guide.

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1. The 30-second primer: Grice, but make it romantic

Philosopher H.P. Grice noticed that in everyday conversation, people usually follow an unwritten rule:

The Cooperative Principle: Make your contribution as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of the conversation.

He broke this into four “maxims”:

1. Quality – Be truthful. Don’t say what you believe is false or what you lack evidence for.
2. Quantity – Say as much as needed, but not more.
3. Relation – Be relevant. Stay on topic.
4. Manner – Be clear. Avoid obscurity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity.

When we follow these, people understand us. When we play with or break them (on purpose), we create hints, jokes, and flirtation—what Grice called implicatures.

Dating is basically:

• Learning to cooperate using these maxims, and
• Learning to spot (and use) implicatures without driving each other nuts.

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2. Maxim of Quality: Honesty as actual strategy

In dating terms

Say what you actually mean, especially about feelings, boundaries, and intentions.

• “I had a good time, but I don’t feel a romantic connection”

  High Quality: kind, honest, clear.

• “I’m just really busy right now” when you’re actually uninterested

  Low Quality: sounds polite, but creates confusion, false hope, and ghosting.

How to use Quality well

On your profile

• Don’t say: “Love hiking, always outdoors,” if you mean “walks to the coffee shop sometimes.”
• Do say: “I sometimes hike and I’d like to do more of it with someone.”

When you’re not feeling it Instead of ghosting, a Quality-respecting message might be:

“Thank you again for meeting up. You’re great to talk to, but I’m not feeling a romantic spark. I wish you the best.”

Short, kind, and truthful. You’re not pretending something might happen that won’t.

When you are feeling it Instead of vague reactions:

• Vague: “That was fun.”
• Quality-aligned: “I really enjoyed tonight—and I’d like to see you again.”

You’re reducing guesswork. That’s attractive.

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3. Maxim of Quantity: Don’t send novels, don’t send crumbs

Say enough to be helpful, but not so much that you overwhelm or chase.

Texting: finding the “just right” zone

Too little (under-informative)

• “K”
• “lol”
• “sure” This can signal disinterest—even if you’re just socially anxious or busy.

Too much (over-informative) Them: “How was your day?” You: Eight-paragraph breakdown with hourly timestamps and a childhood trauma cameo.

That’s a lot for early-stage dating. Too much info too soon can feel like pressure or emotional dumping.

Balanced reply

“Pretty good! Work was hectic but I survived 😅 Went climbing after, now I’m a noodle. How was yours?”

Enough detail to open doors for conversation, not so much that it feels like a monologue.

On early dates

Quantity also applies to how much you share about your life and past.

• First / second date: Light stories, interests, values.
• Later, with trust: Deeper history, vulnerabilities, family stuff.

Rule of thumb: match their depth. If they’re paddling in the shallow end, don’t immediately dive into the Mariana Trench.

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4. Maxim of Relation: Relevance = “I’m really here with you”

Stay on topic in a way that shows you’re actually engaged.

On dates

If they say:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about changing careers.”

And you say:

“Yeah. Anyway, I love pizza.”

That’s a Relation violation. It suggests you’re not listening.

Better:

“What are you thinking of switching to?” “What do you not like about your current job?” “What would your dream job look like?”

You respond to the emotion and topic they presented.

In flirting

Flirty relevance is when you pick up something small they said and play with it.

Them: “I’m weirdly obsessed with houseplants.” You: “So if we ever date, I’m basically competing with a fern for your affection?”

You’re staying relevant but adding humor and warmth.

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5. Maxim of Manner: Clarity is sexy

Be clear, especially about interest, boundaries, and expectations.

Ambiguous, foggy signals create anxiety. Clear signals create safety.

Be clear about interest

Instead of:

• “We should hang out sometime.” (vague, non-committal)

Try:

“I’d like to see you again. Are you free Thursday evening for coffee or a walk?”

You’re clear:

• that you’re interested
• about what you want
• about when and how

Be clear about boundaries

Instead of hinting:

• “Yeah, I’m just… not that type of person I guess haha”

Try:

“I’m not comfortable sending photos like that.” “I like moving slowly physically. Is that something you’re okay with?”

Clear > hinting. Good people will respect it; the rest self-select out (which is a gift).

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6. Flirting with implicature: Breaking maxims on purpose

Flirting often works by obviously bending the maxims in a playful way.

Example: Flouting Quantity

Them: “So, what kind of music do you like?” You: “Objectively terrible pop that I will passionately defend with my life.”

You under-inform (no list, no specifics), but you imply:

• you’re playful
• you’re self-aware
• you’re inviting follow-up

Example: Flouting Quality (hyperbole)

“I nearly died waiting for your text.” “We are clearly soulmates because you also hate coriander.”

You don’t literally mean this. The exaggerated untruth creates humor and warmth, but works only if the non-literalness is obvious.

Example: Flouting Relation (teasing)

Them: “I’m trying to be more organized this year.” You: “Ah, so this is your villain origin story.”

Slightly off-topic, but related enough to be funny and show personality.

Key rule: Playful violations work after basic trust and clarity are established. On dating apps or first texts, stick closer to the maxims until you have a feel for the other person’s humor.

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7. Reading between the lines: What their pragmatics might be telling you

Gricean pragmatics is super useful for decoding mixed signals.

When Quantity drops

If they:

• go from long, engaged replies → one-word answers
• stop asking questions back
• keep saying “I’m busy” with no follow-up plans

Possible implicature: they’re withdrawing or not that interested.

You don’t have to over-interpret every small fluctuation, but a consistent pattern matters.

When Relation disappears

You send thoughtful messages, they respond with:

• random memes without context
• no reference to what you said
• “haha” and then change topic every time you get emotional

Possible implicature: they’re uncomfortable with emotional depth, or not invested in you so much as in casual distraction.

When Manner is suspiciously vague

“I don’t want anything serious right now.” “I’m just seeing what happens.” “You never know…”

Could be honest ambivalence. Could also be a way to keep you around without committing.

You’re allowed to ask for clarity:

“When you say ‘nothing serious,’ does that mean casual dating only? I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

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8. Using Grice for hard conversations

Tough talks (“What are we?” “I need more from this relationship”) go better when you consciously use the maxims.

Example: “Define the relationship” (DTR) talk

Instead of circling and hinting:

Quality:

“I like you and I’m interested in being exclusive.”

Quantity: Enough context, not a dissertation:

“We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m not seeing anyone else and I don’t want to. I’d like to know how you’re feeling.”

Relation: Stay on this topic. Don’t drag in old fights or side stories.

Manner: Be direct, not cryptic:

“How do you feel about being exclusive?” Not: “So… where do you see yourself… in general… with people.”

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9. Online profiles through a Gricean lens

Quality: Be truthful, not market-y

• Don’t: “6’0” if you’re 5’8.
• Don’t: “Ready for something serious” if you’re actually just bored and swiping.

Honesty filters in compatible people and filters out mismatches.

Quantity: Enough info to start a conversation

Bad:

“I like food and travel.” (So does almost everyone alive.)

Better:

“Currently trying to find the best ramen in the city. Also will absolutely drag you to random bookstores.”

You’re giving hooks—specifics people can reply to.

Manner: Be clear about what you want

Instead of:

“Open to possibilities” (which can mean anything)

Try:

“Open to something serious with the right person; not interested in hookups.” or “Looking for something casual and fun, not a relationship.”

Clarity saves everyone time and heartache.

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10. TL;DR: A Gricean cheat-sheet for dating

You can mentally run your dating life through four questions:

1. Quality (Truth):

   • Am I being honest about what I feel, want, and intend?

2. Quantity (How much):

   • Am I giving enough information—but not flooding the other person?

3. Relation (Relevance):

   • Am I really responding to what they just said or showed me?

4. Manner (Clarity):

   • Would a reasonable person understand what I mean, or am I being confusing/ambiguous?

And then, once that foundation is solid:

• Playfully break these rules now and then to flirt, tease, and build in-jokes.
• But don’t use ambiguity or half-truths to keep people on the hook. That’s bad pragmatics and bad ethics.

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If you want, I can take a specific situation (e.g., “I’m texting someone I like and don’t know what to say,” or “I think someone is sending me mixed signals”) and walk through it step-by-step using the Gricean maxims.

Explain Haas vs FDT tweet

Figure out what this post means

sadly as a fan of Haas’s verificationism I have to sympathize with the part of FDT where they’re like “look, we’ve basically solved this, you just have to plug something in this hole where you’re supposed to fit a semantics for counterfactuals”

It’s basically a self-deprecating joke that says:

“I like Haas’s version of verificationism, which itself kind of cheats by saying ‘once we have a good semantics for counterfactuals, everything works’ – so I can’t really complain when FDT does exactly the same thing.”

Let me unpack the moving parts.

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1. Who/what is being referenced?

Haas’s verificationism

• Verificationism = the idea that a statement is meaningful only if it can, in principle, be verified by experience (or is a tautology). It was central to logical positivism.(Wikipedia)
• Gordian Haas wrote Minimal Verificationism: On the Limits of Knowledge, where he tries to rescue a weak (“minimal”) form of verificationism using modern tools like belief-revision theory and a formal semantics for counterfactuals.(Google Books)
• The book blurb literally says that modern theories of justification and belief revision, along with a formal semantics for counterfactuals, can help overcome the traditional problems of verificationism.(Google Books)

So Haas’s project is: “Verificationism can be made to work… once we plug in the right semantics for counterfactuals and other tricky stuff.”

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FDT (Functional Decision Theory)

• FDT is a decision theory due to Yudkowsky & Soares (MIRI). Roughly, it says:

  Treat your decision as the output of a fixed mathematical function and choose the output that would lead to the best outcome.(arXiv)

• To do this, FDT leans heavily on logical counterfactuals like: “If the decision function I implement outputted A instead of B, what would happen?”(alignmentforum.org)

• But making sense of such counterfactuals is hard, especially when they’re counterpossibles (their antecedent is logically impossible, e.g. ‘If this deterministic algorithm had output something else...’). Philosophers have pointed out that FDT explicitly admits it doesn’t yet have a full account of its counterfactuals and calls this an “open problem”.(alignmentforum.org)

So FDT’s situation is: “We basically know how rational decision-making should work… once we plug in a good semantics for our special kind of counterfactuals.”

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“Semantics for counterfactuals”

• “Counterfactuals” are “if… had…” claims, like “If I had left earlier, I would have caught the train.”
• A semantics for counterfactuals is a precise theory of what such sentences mean and when they’re true or false (Lewis/Stalnaker possible-worlds semantics, causal-model semantics, etc.).(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• This turns out to be notoriously difficult, especially for counterfactuals with impossible antecedents (“counterpossibles”) or involving logic/computation, which is exactly what FDT needs.(PhilPapers)

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2. So what is the post actually saying?

Putting it together, the post is doing three things at once:

1. Confessing a bias

   “I’m a fan of Haas’s verificationism…”
   i.e. “I like a theory that itself relies on an unfinished piece about counterfactual semantics.”

2. Recognizing the same move in FDT The line about FDT saying “look, we’ve basically solved this, you just have to plug something in this hole where you’re supposed to fit a semantics for counterfactuals” is a slightly snarky paraphrase of how FDT looks to critics:

   • FDT claims to have the right structure of decision theory.
   • But the core technical/mathematical difficulty—how exactly to interpret the counterfactuals it uses—is postponed as “future work”.(alignmentforum.org)

3. Expressing reluctant sympathy The “sadly” and “I have to sympathize” are the joke:

   • From the outside, this can sound like:

     “We’ve solved it in principle; just assume someone eventually solves the really hard missing piece.”

   • But because Haas’s verificationism does almost the same thing—“verificationism can be rehabilitated, once we have a nice semantics for counterfactuals etc.”(Google Books)—the poster can’t really complain about FDT doing that without also undercutting their own favourite view.

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3. Super-short paraphrase

“Both Haas’s verificationism and Functional Decision Theory kind of ‘hand-wave’ the same crucial technical issue: we don’t yet have the right formal semantics for counterfactuals (especially weird logical ones), but once we did, our theory would be great. As someone who likes Haas’s project, I’m in no position to throw stones at FDT for making the same move — I’m stuck sympathizing with them.”