The phrase “The truth will set you free” turns out to have been an empirical statement after all. It’s not poetic. It’s simply fact. But it’s a little imprecise. More accurately: USE of the truth, DEMAND for the TRUTH and PUNISHMENT for untruth will construct liberty.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-12 23:09:00 UTC
Not sure that I can say this… hmmm…. Gonna try.
All general rules consist of statements of arbitrary precision.
All statements of arbitrary precision are constrained by limits beyond which they fail.
Operational definitions allow us to observe changes in state of premises (concepts), operations.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-12 16:21:00 UTC
EVERYONE IS THINKING BACKWARDS AND IT”S MATH’S FAULT?
(important piece) (central theory)
You can deduce a mathematical answer, and offer a proof of construction of that mathematical answer, because mathematics consists largely of formal operations – even if we label them incorrectly for marketing purposes. (Functions as numbers so to speak.) And the operations that we deduce with are the same (mostly) that we construct with. So much so that they constitute tautological differences only.
But this emphasis on exploring with the same tools that we use for constructing proofs, has distracted us. The fact that we deduce something mathematically is irrelevant – it’s the fact that we can offer a proof of construction operationally that is the ‘proof’ – not the deduction. The deduction is what we take credit for, but it might as well be an act of accidental stumbling.
We face this same problem in logic – we can deduce, something however we want to – in some vague approximation of the mathematics wherein the process of deduction mirrors the process of construction.
But it is NOT the DEDUCTION that provides us with value, it is the proof of construction that has value – that tells us that a theory is testifiably true – as existentially possible.
***The better perspective is that the delta between our means of deduction and our means of construction simplifies the likelihood that we CAN at some point create a proof of construction.***
So here again, Popper is ALMOST RIGHT. It’s not the justification or the deduction that matters. But he fails to grasp that it is the proof of construction that tests a theory, then it is the proof of construction of an internally consistent description. That it is a proof of external correspondence. That we have limited the errors in that correspondence through falsification.
Of course justification of one’s deductions doesn’t matter! The question is whether your theory is demonstrably parsimonious enough that we can use it without harm (waste), and whether you warranty it as such.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-12 08:55:00 UTC
—“There are no paradoxes. Only bad definitions.”—
All conclusions are only as good as their presumptions.
Words are not actions, only symbols carrying meaning.
Actions exist. Measurements (observations) exist.
Unlike words, definitions constitute formal theories.
It’s not complicated.
If you hit a paradox, your theories are wrong.
(worth repeating)
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-12 08:45:00 UTC
THE MANNERS OF TRUTH
It is one thing to argue whether x leads to y “is true”. It is another to argue whether we and our opponent’s speak truthfully.
And now, we know, that the statement “x leads to y is true” can *only* mean “I promise you will also find that x leads to y”.
We have been indoctrinated into untruthful speech. We have become a culture of liars. We have lost Grammar, lost Rhetoric, lost history.
Imagine a news talk show, where one spoke truthfully and the other didn’t.
We can and should call liars liars, and even vectors for lies, liars.
Because it is true.
To treat manners with higher priority than truth is to let others steal from the normative commons merely by their utterances. And moral men neither can steal, nor tolerate stealing from others.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 22:20:00 UTC
Since I can never knowingly speak the truth, all I can do is use every possible means of guaranteeing that I speak a falsehood.
Yes, truthful speech is expensive. So is the damage caused by untrue speech.
So, if someone will not undertake this effort, nor warranty his speech, then what are we to assume?
We have options:
1) he cares not for the damage done (a hazard)
2) he intends to cause damage (cause harm)
3) he exports risk because of his failure onto others (theft)
None of them are good.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 11:29:00 UTC
If you can’t calculate it, then it’s just an act of faith. Go look up the list of cognitive biases and show me how you think you’re so much smarter than the next guy? Isn’t it that you’re not? Isn’t it that you just are too ignorant to know better? Anything that you think is in your interests is at some point not in someone else’s. Anything you think is in everyone’s interest is impossible to achieve – because at some point, doing the opposite is in someone else’s interest. And all of us do what is our interest – at all times.
All Propertarian statements are calculable and decidable. PERIOD.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 10:11:00 UTC
POPPER, HAYEK, HOPPE, BROUWER, BRIDGMAN, POINCARÉ – The` Least Wrong Philosophers.
Dragging Germans and Cosmopolitans out of the well of authoritarianism.
For my purposes, Popper and Hayek are just the best thinkers to build upon, because they’re the least wrong. Hoppe isn’t important so much for what he has said but how he has taught us to say anything we wish to say at all. And whether he likes it or not (I don’t much care are this point) my work is a continuation of his – dragging it out of the absurd primitivism of cosmopolitan and german rationalism, kicking and screaming all the way. I think that, as of yesterday, I was able to drag Popper out of the cosmopolitan tradition as well. Laundering him of his cultural habits.
THE FORMULA
If you haven’t solved morality you need authority. But if you have solved morality you don’t need authority. I solved morality and therefore I don’t need authority: there is no difference in morality and property other than the scope of morality that the community is willing and able to enforce. Conversely, the less morality that people are wiling and able to enforce, the more people will demand for an authoritarian government to either impose an arbitrary moral standard, or impose sufficient order that retaliation for immoral and unethical actions is prohibited.
As such the primary determinant of whether a polity can obtain liberty under rule of law is determined by the difference between the rate of adaptation of the legal code and the rate of change in the accumulated forms of property demonstrated by the populace for use in their reproduction and therefore production.
The reason the west was able to evolve then, faster than all other civilizations, both times that it managed to escape eastern mysticism, is because the rule of law, judges and the jury can produce adaptation faster than other cultural methods of adaptation.
(pretty cool really)
Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
de.aristocratia at gmail.com
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 07:00:00 UTC
THE ADVANTAGE OF LIE-THEORIES (UNTRUTHFUL THEORIES)
Lie-theories can accumulate references, quotes, citations, recommendations, and advocacy, more cheaply and easily that truthful-theories. And they do.
It is more advantageous, and cheaper to lie, than to speak the truth. Just as it is more advantageous to commit fraud than it is to trade with the fully informed. just as it is more advantageous to work for the state, than in the market. Just as it is more advantageous to conquer than to trade.
Free riding is always more advantageous to one party than another. But it is less advantageous to a polity.
This is why polities matter – without them, morality is not in anyone’s interest. Together, as a polity, morality is in *nearly* everyone’s interest, if not in every single soul’s interest. Conquerors, oligarchs, and their dependents are the ones who benefit least from morality.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 04:42:00 UTC
THE NEXT PROBLEM TO SOLVE: the habituation of untruthful speech.
I think I may yet find research value in Internet debate. Because I have experimented with the assumption that I cannot determine whether an individual is dishonest or not, rather than whether we can get away with a statement, but I am still struggling with it.
How do I change the structure of argument so that the presumption is one of deception and error rather than one of error ant the possibility of truth? How do I raise the requirement for moral speech such that immoral speech is not possible.?
The vulnerability in modern discourse is that it relies on western medieval assumptions that both parties are honest or at least honest even if they are vectors for lies.
We evolved debate by putting away our weapons and our status during the debate. Under the assumption once we exited the debate a dishonest man might be killed.
Meaning: He must warranty his words with his life.
We slowly converted this behavior into a softer norm. But the duel persisted until recently – and it appears to have had severe consequences.
The cosmopolitans and the Germans revoked this constraint.
And the cosmopolitan virus of deception was successful only because of it : we retain the softer norm, but eliminated the warranty.
The cosmopolitans violate the softer norm with impunity. And the consequence is the loss of the norm of truth telling that we developed over more than 5,000 years.
This was only possible because we valued the technical knowledge distributed by printing so highly that we have speech a little license.
Then when the new cheaper media hit, it was no longer possible for an individual to hold a speaker accountable for his words.
They then user new media to saturate – overload – us with lies.
Thus turning out altruism and trust from a strength to a vulnerability.
How do I conduct arguments that force the other to speak truthfully without exiting argument and applying violence?
How do we restore truth telling unless by treating the normative commons as paid-in capital? (Which it is.)
I will have to call a lot of people liars to figure that out.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-11 04:21:00 UTC