[p2p-research] Defining terms for clear communication

[Lord AGNUcius]

Hello fellow P2P Researchers!


My name is Patrick Anderson.  I've been lurking here for a few months, but
when I tried to post a reply to Michel yesterday, my email was not
recognized I think because of something to do with the way DNS resolves my
email address to my hosting provider instead of to my registered domain...

Anyway, that's all fixed and here is my slightly edited response:



Michel,

I agree with your concern, but the fix you propose would not help
our community come to any sort of "agreement" on the definition of the
terms we need to communicate clearly with each other.  Any such
"agreement" would probably need to be held in a sort of semi-stable
'tension' after many suggestions, battles, and rewrites, but at least we
would know what terms to choose when writing new sentences to minimize
confusion.

I consider term definition the primary reason for faulty communication and
misunderstanding that often leads to unnecessary conflict and lack of
resolution.

For instance, what does the word 'Value' mean?  To some people, 'Value'
means the ability withhold the physical sources of production from user
control for the sole purpose of keeping price above cost.  Governments use
this definition and the scarcity logic based on it to do terrible things
in the name of progress including using OUR tax dollars to pay farmers to
NOT grow foods such as wheat so supply is artificially restrained and
profit is perpetuated.


After writing that last paragraph I was reading the Oekonux list and
noticed a great example of this:

Dmytri Kleiner writes at
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04129.html
>> Here Stefan appears to have lost his command of the distinction
>> between "value" (use-value) and "price" (exchange-value). Does
>> he mean that workers can capture the "use-value" of their
>> labour-power ("work-force")? This would mean his claim was
>> self-contradictory as with equal access to productive assets
>> this by definition would be the final product of their
>> labour ("value of their work")?

Stefan Meretz responds with
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04145.html
>>> Due to "translations" being wrong, you are mislead. Value means value,
>>> and not use-value. Price means price and not exchange-value.

How can we ever expect to help each other resolve concerns when we are not
even speaking the same language?  We each live in our own little world
where every word and phrase means slightly different things to each of us
depending upon our background and the assumptions we make.

I don't really care which definition is chosen for each term, only
that we can finally use them in regular discourse and that they are
'stable' enough to allow the creation of claims and proofs that have
deterministic meaning.

Once these definitions stabilize, the meaning of a sentence such as:
"Profit can be calculated as the difference between the Price a consumer
pays, and all the Costs (including Wages) that the Owners already paid for
that round of Production." will either make sense to the reader, or that
reader can click on any of those terms to find what the community has
already decided about how that word or phrase is to be interpreted.  The
clickability of those words is not yet automated, but could be through a
plugin that implements the ideas at
http://CommunityWiki.org/en/PlainLink<http://communitywiki.org/en/PlainLink>
.

I will add the tags you suggest if you reject this proposal, but otherwise
would like to see pages such as the following adjusted according to what
is most "correct" in the collective minds of the P2P Foundation members.

http://P2PFoundation.net/Rent <http://p2pfoundation.net/Rent>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Cost <http://p2pfoundation.net/Cost>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Price <http://p2pfoundation.net/Price>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Profit <http://p2pfoundation.net/Profit>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Wage <http://p2pfoundation.net/Wage>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Product <http://p2pfoundation.net/Product>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Physical_Source<http://p2pfoundation.net/Physical_Source>
http://P2PFoundation.net/Value <http://p2pfoundation.net/Value>

... There are others I've forgotten for now...


Your peer,
Patrick

> Hi Patrick,
>
> thanks for adding your items to the wiki, which I think is a good thing
> ...
>
> however, I'm concerned by the lack of context for readers, as your prose
> is
> very terse, and self-referential, referring to a context most people will
> be
> unfamiliar with.
>
> I therefore propose to things:
>
> 1) that you would have your own area under Projects (see bottom of right
> column); that you would tag your items so they also appear automatically
> in
> that category, and that you clearly indicate in your entries, some
> indication of the context, for example: "as used in [[User Ownership]]
> theory .. Readers have to know why there is no general description of the
> term, but a definition within a specific context .
>
> What do you think? If you agree, what should you/we use as a specialized
> tag? Perhaps: [[Category:Usertheory]] ??
>
> Michel
>
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