(the importance of the work)
I realize that I have spent a lot of time over the past twelve months on Truth. And that this appears (falsely) to be a rat-hole, that is not as interesting as attacking the argumentative follies of the political extremes.
But I am working at an institutional solution to the restoration of truth telling and suppressing the problem of intentional deception and ignorance, and acting as a vector for deception and ignorance. This hasn’t been done before. It’s hard work.
The degree to which we justify our investment in ‘meaning’ and justify our reproductive (moral) biases was something that I wasn’t prepared for. Nor was the level of sophistication that can be accomplished by using ‘meaning’ as a means of manufacturing ignorance.
A rationalist says “but it’s useful for understanding” (a justification). A mathematician says “but it works” (a justification). A logician says “but it largely works” (a justification). A lawyer says “but we have tradition” (a justification). A politician says “The people will not understand that” (a justification). An economist says “We try only to solve this problem, not that one” (a justification). A physicist says “that’s unscientific”, without understanding what the ethics of science demand of him, and why (a justification).
All of these justifications (fallacies) manufacture ignorance. All of them impede truth. They provide incentive to continue to justify what we know, rather than reform what we know. Over time they calcify by the mere accumulation of the cost of learning an alternative: transaction costs and conformity costs.
I think this specializing at justification is the underlying reason that civilizations calcify and fail.
But even if that problem is farther out than the one we face today, prohibiting deception in economics, politics(government) and law, so that the people who speak the truth may prosper, dragging humanity along with them, is still the central problem that I face.
And to institutionally expand prohibition on immoral action (negative externalities) thereby increasing transaction (and conformity) costs[1], on an activity that is currently assumed to be harmless (free of negative externality), and expanding that prohibition by law, requires that we have some criteria sufficient to test statements for due diligence against the production of that externality – even if the cost of producing that common (the truth) requires all of us pay costs in both material, intellectual, and of forgone opportunities.
***That sufficiency consists of due diligence and warranty, where the form of due diligence was discovered by scientists, and while inarticulately expressed, requires not just internal consistency, external consistency and the 20th century innovation: the requirement for falsification, but the 21st century innovation: the requirements for operational definitions as proof of existential possibility and the requirement for moral constraint: free of imposed costs that we call negative externalities – stated positively as a requirement for productive, diligent(truthfully stated), fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of all negative externality under the same recursive criterion.***
So that is why I must solve the problem of truth, uniting law, morality, philosophy, science and economics into a single system of thought: the art of truth telling, the means of due diligence, and the provision of warranty to our testimony to the jury of our peers.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev Ukraine
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[1] Technically speaking a transaction costs (material), opportunity costs(consequences), forgone opportunity costs (norms) and conformity costs(psychological and behavioral costs), are categorized differently – however, I tend to suggest that emphasis on the form of cost is a means of imposing value judgements on what are merely ‘costs’. As such I tend to use ‘transaction cost’ similar to ‘information’: that which is necessary to change state, regardless of whether the cost is material(physical property), physical(body, action and time), or mental(psychological).