To begin with, let's get the Holmes quote out of the way. It comes from a letter to Frederic Pollock:

Chauncey Wright, a nearly-forgotten philosopher of real merit, taught me when young that I must not say necessary about the universe, that we don't know whether anything is necessary or not. I believe that we can bet on the behavior of the universe in its contact with us. So I describe myself as a bet-abilitarian.

What this does or does not have to do with anything I leave to others to decide.

I of course have a particular problem in commenting on this essay. It is too much about me, and too much of that is flattering (if not flattery). I hope that eventually it will be clear whether some of the social processes I designed and set in motion justify the praise unduly lavished now on the minor phenomenon of a teacher merely but seriously teaching his students.

I am actually the fracture at the midline, and if I were removed, the remaining sections could come together more effectively. Arnold's analysis of the way in which organizations are held together is still appropriate, as you show. His understanding of organizational psychology captured much that would later become so overwhelming as to be (as you show) invisible, because he explicated mechanisms that mass broadcast media would mold into an immense organizational landscape literally unimaginable at the opening of the 20th century.

But the principles of social self-organization represented by the quotation from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are becoming powerful themselves in the 21st century, as the Net makes it possible to form collaborative organizations stretching across the whole breadth of humanity in the blink of an eye. My work and the work of hundreds of thousands of other people has shown that anarchic production in such communities can not only rival but surpass capitalist innovation, and that cultural distribution will be massively democratized, leading to the collapse of power-concentrating mass media, with equally profound organizational consequences as those that Arnold's writing partially described.

What all those boats are about might otherwise be described as the development of new forms of "institutional architecture" for young people such as yourselves to become masters of. Obviously you will have teachers, and evidently I will be one of them. But by the time you have come fully into your powers we will be gone, and the world to be made will be made as you are beginning to imagine making it.

I share your curiosity and desire for knowledge, albeit, I think we have entirely different approaches and attitudes on the subject.

(1) I think the character you are looking for is not from Holmes but H.A. Rey. At any rate, I don't see why you are deferential to my comments, especially being off the mark on betabilitarian. I did not give you what I believe Holmes is talking about and I also did not give you any evidence to suggest that you were off the mark--and I don't see why I'm any better authority than you are (save for the fact that I may have looked up the quote).

(2) Like I said, the subject is fine--I just feel like you are experiencing a problem that I often struggle with: you have these metaphors, quotes, and structures you want to use but in the end they detract from the message. Even if you like them and are eloquent, the rather obvious step in my view is to remove the metaphors and replace it with substance. In the end, the essay seems fractured at the midline, because neither idea fits with the other.

(3) This is not so much a comment on the paper and more on the philosophy: You, the betabilitarian, place rather large amounts of confidence in your bets with the Law School and Eben (and in my comment, for god knows why).