Excellent post. I like the linking of freedom with danger and safety with slavery. We can agree that unaided humans can't fly - those are first-order effects of the natural world. Depending on your stance on mathematics then yes, 1+1=2 -> it's either Platonic or at least at least nominally true once the semantics are stripped. Second-order effects, e.g. social effects, however, can be self-fulfilling prophesies.