Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • RE: Sebastian Ortiz It’s cool. In principle, Seb’s basically arguing that I am c

    RE: Sebastian Ortiz

    It’s cool. In principle, Seb’s basically arguing that I am correct in my analysis – but that he chooses a different preferred evolutionary strategy.

    And I am perfectly OK with that. He demonstrates that Propertarian analysis will allow you to argue for your preferred model. That is what I am looking to accomplish: a universal language of political analysis.

    That I prefer aristocratic egalitarianism rather than ghetto parasitism is a choice, not a truth. That he prefers the parasitic ethic, and that the parasitic ethic may indeed be a superior evolutionary strategy, is his choice. It may indeed be a wiser choice since the west, at least under Anglo dominance, has become suicidal.

    So I don’t disagree with him. In fact, I applaud his use of Propertarian argument to advance his strategy.

    I don’t claim that western aristocratic egalitarianism is the best for everyone. I claim only that it will evolve prosperity for a broad population faster than all possible alternatives, merely because transaction costs are lowest in a high trust homogenous polity. This in turn WILL allow for redistribution in the Scandinavian model, as long as immigration is prohibited, and lower class reproduction is limited.

    All forms of parasitism by a minority on a host appear to be successful for the parasite. Mandarins included. Russians included. Most of history included. However, that does not mean that non-parasitic cooperation will not defeat them all. The west was a minority and despite smaller numbers, and poorer populations, farther from the source of the bronze, iron, and steel ages. But truth telling allows a large population – albeit at high cost – to innovate (adapt, reorganize) faster.

    While Sebastian is correct, that selective reproduction and outcasting members who cannot memorize rituals, who then practice high trust internally, but low trust externally, can maintain asymmetric prosperity, and genetic advantage, in a host civilization as long as the host does not exterminate them.

    The problem appears to be that hosts tend to exterminate them. And if not for the status-seeking of evangelical anglos, the germans might have been successful in eliminating both the jews and the gypsies.

    So I am not sure it is a very safe strategy. There are a lot of jewish tombstones across central Asia in cities where there used to be jews, but no longer are. The Gypsies are here in the west to escape extermination. And without anglo imperialism and the post-war consensus, I kind of doubt the emphasis on human rights that has been western Christiandom’s claim to high status, and moral authority will survive under post-western ethics. And we are, as you can see, entering the post-western era.

    So I will argue that Seb is correct, that parasitism is the best possible strategy for small populations who add high-IQ value to host polities – as long as they avoid politics and power.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 12:51:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://slnm.us/yhI9pWW

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 11:16:00 UTC

  • Wonderful. Save it. Use it

    Wonderful. Save it. Use it.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 01:19:00 UTC

  • On Matt Breunig’s Criticism of Hoppe

    Regarding: Matt Breunig’s HHH, Libertarian Theoretical Historian?

    [M]att.

    Better criticism than is usually thrown at him. I think most of his justification can be seen as nonsense.

    I also think that at this point his primary contributions are:

    (a) the difference in incentives between the private german micro states and the corporate bureaucratic states. Fukuyama would probably argue that this is weak, but only because Chinese were low trust peoples and the germanic peoples were already high trust peoples by the time of the Hanseatic league. Napoleon adopted the same strategy as the Chinese bureaucracy as well as total war and fiat credit and proved that small states cannot resist bureaucratic-war-states.

    (b) he also contributed the means of arguing across heterogeneous moral codes by reducing all rights to property rights.

    The latter is a profound innovation that no one other than he has mastered to that degree. And his particular insight, if written as Elinor Ostrom wrote her nobel prize winning study of institutions, would have placed him as the natural consequence of that line of reasoning.

    Unfortunately he was trained by German, Rationalist, marxists (Habermas) and then Jewish Cosmopolitan Rationalists (Rothbard and Mises) and his frame of reference was rationalist, (justifiactionary), and authoritarian, rather than scientific (demonstrative) and skeptical.

    Which is horribly depressing from my position, as someone who is attempting to reform (correct) his work by dragging it kicking and screaming into the ratio-scientific fold.

    Nice piece really.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • On Matt Breunig’s Criticism of Hoppe

    Regarding: Matt Breunig’s HHH, Libertarian Theoretical Historian?

    [M]att.

    Better criticism than is usually thrown at him. I think most of his justification can be seen as nonsense.

    I also think that at this point his primary contributions are:

    (a) the difference in incentives between the private german micro states and the corporate bureaucratic states. Fukuyama would probably argue that this is weak, but only because Chinese were low trust peoples and the germanic peoples were already high trust peoples by the time of the Hanseatic league. Napoleon adopted the same strategy as the Chinese bureaucracy as well as total war and fiat credit and proved that small states cannot resist bureaucratic-war-states.

    (b) he also contributed the means of arguing across heterogeneous moral codes by reducing all rights to property rights.

    The latter is a profound innovation that no one other than he has mastered to that degree. And his particular insight, if written as Elinor Ostrom wrote her nobel prize winning study of institutions, would have placed him as the natural consequence of that line of reasoning.

    Unfortunately he was trained by German, Rationalist, marxists (Habermas) and then Jewish Cosmopolitan Rationalists (Rothbard and Mises) and his frame of reference was rationalist, (justifiactionary), and authoritarian, rather than scientific (demonstrative) and skeptical.

    Which is horribly depressing from my position, as someone who is attempting to reform (correct) his work by dragging it kicking and screaming into the ratio-scientific fold.

    Nice piece really.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • Repeating

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/01/04/if-you-can-name-a-thing-you-can-kill-a-thing/Worth Repeating

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 09:41:00 UTC