For the most part I stick with your suggestion of efficacy referring to action and relevance to ideas, but I also tend to allow some seepage.

I'm trying to exploit the connotations of relevance we use on the web (search engine relevance) to affect how we think of action (not just human action, but chemical, genetic, etc) — on a really general level, it's about organization.

The question I'm trying to address with that is the old one of “is man inherently good or inherently evil?” and all of its permutations.

To me, “beyond good & evil,” we're all just trying to optimize the network of connections we make with the world and others around us.

When you talk about becoming more aware of the theories and stories we use (mostly unconsciously) I think you're talking about exactly what Jean-Francois Lyotard was talking about in his notion of paralogy. He puts paralogy forward as a word to describe the way that discourse proceeds in the postmodern world. If we become aware of our own theories and stories, we're able explicitly to negotiate different ones with others who don't share ours. He basically says that the definition of postmodernism is the recognition that we can no longer assume that we all share any single story or theory (a metanarrative, as he calls it). Previously, we might have thought this, and might have used that metanarrative as a way to validate our other arguments (it was our discourse of legitimation, in his terms). But now we don't have that. Every time we want to discuss something, we have to work out explicitly the rules about how our discourse will be advanced. It's not “efficient” but it's the only way forward from where we are now.

For the most part I stick with your suggestion of efficacy referring to action and relevance to ideas, but I also tend to allow some seepage.

I'm trying to exploit the connotations of relevance we use on the web (search engine relevance) to affect how we think of action (not just human action, but chemical, genetic, etc) — on a really general level, it's about organization.

The question I'm trying to address with that is the old one of “is man inherently good or inherently evil?” and all of its permutations.

To me, “beyond good & evil,” we're all just trying to optimize the network of connections we make with the world and others around us.

When you talk about becoming more aware of the theories and stories we use (mostly unconsciously) I think you're talking about exactly what Jean-Francois Lyotard was talking about in his notion of paralogy. He puts paralogy forward as a word to describe the way that discourse proceeds in the postmodern world. If we become aware of our own theories and stories, we're able explicitly to negotiate different ones with others who don't share ours. He basically says that the definition of postmodernism is the recognition that we can no longer assume that we all share any single story or theory (a metanarrative, as he calls it). Previously, we might have thought this, and might have used that metanarrative as a way to validate our other arguments (it was our discourse of legitimation, in his terms). But now we don't have that. Every time we want to discuss something, we have to work out explicitly the rules about how our discourse will be advanced. It's not “efficient” but it's the only way forward from where we are now.

Therefore, all the conscious thinking in the world isn't going to change a damn thing unless we realize our conscious minds aren't in control (as unsettling as that is) and deal with the underlying reasons for our behaviour. Unfortunately, that ain't easy.