What do you mean "pragmatic conservativism ITSELF"? Who says conservatism is essentially a form of pragmatism? Where's the encyclopedia article that makes that claim? You're positing an idiosyncratic, game-theoretical formulation, and I'm trying to incorporate it into my project by aligning it with something like Canadian technocracy (which will end up being quite liberal).
Obviously, the conservative figures I'm critiquing aren't arbitrary. I'm hardly the only one who regards them as thought leaders. In fact, a reader recommended I deal with some of them, but they're on any informed list of representative intellectual conservatives.
And your characterization of my critiques of those figures as just personal attacks (calling the authors wackos, etc.) is laughable. Either you haven't been reading this series or you haven't been reading it nearly well enough. I've criticized the arguments in their writings. I'm talking about the viewpoints entailed by those writings, not the quality of the author's character. Your mischaracterization is grossly unfair and baseless.
Why on Earth do you think your game-theoretic formulation is obviously essential to conservatism? Says who? Just you? Yours is a meta-take on all social contracts and conventions. It's like saying we'd have to consider evolution if we wanted to talk about any trait that evolved or any pastime that's been influenced by natural selection, like food, entertainment, warfare, sex, etc. That would be evolutionary psychology or a form of greedy cognitive imperialism.
What happens instead is that evolution produces these many things that then take on a "life of their own." Nonreducible, exapted levels of complexity emerge that are dealt with by the special sciences or by the various arts and humanities. Conservatism and liberalism emerge with the revolutions of modernity. We don't always have to stretch the discourse to the broadest possible perspective. Sometimes we want to look at the tree types themselves, and aren't interested in the bare properties of wood.
Saying I've strawmanned conservatism would make more sense than saying I've personally attacked conservatives. But it would still be mighty boastful and weird. I haven't declared "victory!" The series is ongoing, for one thing. And it's only a representative sample, at best, so the conclusion would be probabilistic.
You've sort of dodged my question about falsifiability, with a quibble. I'm asking whether your game-theoretic take on conservatism is falsifiable. (Psst, I'm laying a trap for you.)
