Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

(review)

Probably your best paper yet. No criticisms. Subject near and dear to my heart.

-Unwanted, Thoughts-

“Ought” is a moral term, that we have appropriated for use in probability. Where probability has altered the declarative nature of the english language significantly since it’s origins in 16th century, but more extensively since the development of statistics in the 19th and 20th centuries. So much so that most stuttering and rephrasing in English is almost always reducible to an attempt to convert english declarative speech, into political and probabilistic speech.

Application of the principle of Probability outside of closed axiomatic systems falls under the Ludic fallacy, just as justification falls under the Ludic fallacy. Man-made systems may be constructed axiomatically, but very little in nature is so closed.

The most important error, or oversight, or ‘missing concept’ in popper’s thought is cost. Just as the most significant error, oversight, or missing concept in western philosophy for 2500 years has been cost.

For, it is not that we ought to do what is probable, any more than we ought to do what is justifiable. it is that we ought to do what we can ascertain will provide us with the greatest return, at the lowest, cost, in the shortest, time, with the greatest certainty, at the lowest risk.

Popper’s two anchors – critical preference and critical rationalism – ignore the problems of decidability, cost, and action. And he never conducted any research on whether his logical statement was empirically true, or he might have discovered that it wasn’t true.

That is because there is a very high correlation between taking the least cost route to experimental discovery, and discovery – for obvious reasons: the the universe out of necessity operates by this same axiom. Only man delays action in order to amplify returns. Nature seizes all available opportunity.

So, my view is that Popper didn’t understand physics (although he did understand the calculus thoroughly), just as mises did not understand either science, or mathematics. And that Poincare, Popper, Mises, Brouwer, Bridgman and Hayek – and I can group Einstein in this list – were all victims of the same 2500 year old bad habit in philosophy of avoiding the consideration of cost, because not only is it difficult (See Pareto) to obtain sufficient data, but it was considered Gauche in most of history for learned men to soil their hands, words, and minds with the sin of cost: reality.

So in summary, I kept wanting to interject “but…” when reading your otherwise excellent paper. Because I think you illustrate the point but do not answer the failure of the philosophy of the social sciences on one end – to consider cost – and the failure of economics on the other end – the failure to fully account for genetic, normative and institutional costs.

Cheers.