Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • PROPERTARIANISM AND THE IS-OUGHT DIVIDE As far as I know, under Propertarianism,

    PROPERTARIANISM AND THE IS-OUGHT DIVIDE

    As far as I know, under Propertarianism, (a) “is” and “ought” are identical, and (b) all moral propositions are decidable. And as far as I know, satisfaction of those two conditions is the only requirement for a universal theory that solves the is-ought dichotomy.

    I would say that the prohibition on free riding (parasitism) is the general rule. But, that very moral, and very immoral peoples make use of different strategies. The moral proposition then could be suicidal. And the immoral proposition could be highly successful. We could have a universally moral world in theory and practice given a narrow distribution of talents. But we cannot have that world if immorality is advantageous. There is no way of attributing success to morality. In other words, morality is may not result in a successful evolutionary result.

    So the assumption that a universally applicable moral theory may be true, but the desirability of the application of a universally applicable moral theory may not be. (and appears not to be), precisely because immoral activity is more temporally advantageous than moral activity.

    One position to adopt is that we should then eradicate immorality from the practice of man, regardless of the consequences. The counter argument would be that it is somehow moral to provide an institutional framework in which immorality flourishes.

    My argument is to imposed the universal rule by means of nomocracy, deny redistribution to immoral peoples, and let evolution take its eugenic course. This is how the aristocratic egalitarians under manorialism functioned. It is quite the opposite of the Sinic method of constant deliberate culling of the population.

    Propertarianism a sufficient institutional solution for all moral people irrespective of their distributed abilities. But, the question remains: what do you do with groups who practice immorality as a positive strategy? Why are they any different from terrorists, conquerers or thieves?

    Why tolerate immorality?

    (I honestly don’t know what to do here. )

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-20 15:56:00 UTC

  • WHY DO WE LET THEM LIE TO US? They lied to us and they taught us to lie. But why

    WHY DO WE LET THEM LIE TO US?

    They lied to us and they taught us to lie. But why were we weak? What made warriors into gullible victims? Why did the cosmopolitan lies, and the lies of the christians, succeed? Why could we not resist the christian lies, the cosmopolitan pseudoscientific lies, and the socialist, postmodern and feminist lies?

    (Altruism. Trust. Our Respect for the Commons.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-20 04:55:00 UTC

  • THE PROBLEM OF THE IS-OUGHT GAP IS ONLY TRUE UNDER THE FALLACY OF UNIVERSALISM.

    THE PROBLEM OF THE IS-OUGHT GAP IS ONLY TRUE UNDER THE FALLACY OF UNIVERSALISM.

    We ‘ought’ to develop cooperative institutions, even if we can’t know what we ‘ought’ to accomplish using them.

    —“As Hume has made abundantly clear, there can be no basis in physical nature of any values or norms. The is-ought gap is unbridgeable.”—

    Not quite sure how to say this, but the reason I disagree with Hume is that he means ‘universal theories (“is” statements) exist for physically transformational (physics – say of geology), genetically heuristic (plans and animals), and memory-heuristic (man or AI) entities.

    However (a) the arbitrary precision for any system on that spectrum decreases from the physical-transformational to the memory-heuristic. Meaning that the precision of predictability of any instance decreases as we progress – gasses are hard to predict, and humans are harder to predict than gasses. We can make general statements (theories) about man, but we cannot make specific predictions about any given human. And (b) for sentient creatures, given what “is” both in the universe, and in our physical properties, we can choose from a variety of strategies, but we cannot know which we ‘ought’ to choose, because if we claim an ‘ought’ as a universal strategy for all of man, all choices are to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others, because we are sufficiently unequal to compete on equal terms. So any universal strategy ‘harms’ some body of people.

    However (c), assuming we desire both the best competitive choices for every group AND the best overall strategy for man, we can construct institutions that allow cooperation between heterogeneous moral codes (reproductive and evolutionary strategies), such as the market, because in such institutions we can cooperate on means, if not ends, and that through diverse pursuit of ends we can still ‘advance’.

    Yes it is not possible to select which theory might be right, or which human strategy might be right – those are synonyms. But we can choose what strategy might be wrong: chaos, violence and dysgenia that forbid the accumulation of capital sufficient for our long term prosperity.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-19 02:49:00 UTC

  • TABOOS You know, I look at investigating taboos as intellectual honesty. And I k

    TABOOS

    You know, I look at investigating taboos as intellectual honesty. And I know that makes people a little frustrated with me. But I have to fully explore the intellectual taboos to understand their CONSTRUCTION. So, I don’t think it’s wise to avoid these subjects, as much as it is to understand how and why they are constructed so that we can develop arguments and institutions that solve the REAL PROBLEMS that taboo subjects (ideas, biases, norms) evolved to counter. You cannot solve something by pretending it’s false, or avoiding it because it’s undesirable.

    Sometimes you just need to get in there and get your hands dirty.

    (Reminds me of that woman who dissects beached whales and can’t get the small off of her for a few weeks afterward… lol).

    Most taboos exist for reasons. Good reasons. Most stereotypes are true. That does not mean we should not understand them so that we can find institutional solutions that allow us to replace A-RATIONAL taboos, with rational institutions.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-15 05:53:00 UTC

  • ECONOMICS IS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE – ALL DISCIPLINES MUST BE CONSTRUCTED AS EMPIR

    ECONOMICS IS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE – ALL DISCIPLINES MUST BE CONSTRUCTED AS EMPIRICAL SCIENCES – AND THOSE THAT ONE ARGUES OTHERWISE DEMONSTRATE EMPTY VERBALISM ON THE PART OF THE ADVOCATE.

    (from elsewhere)

    a) to be classified as a science a discipline must practice the scientific method: observation (measurement to overcome limits to perception and memory), tests of external correspondence (experiments), tests of internal consistency (logic).

    b) empiricism (observation) is not equal to experimentation (positivism).

    c) economic properties are not deducible from first principles, and we have dozens of examples, the most common of which is sticky prices.

    d) humans are able to cooperate because of sympathetic intention, and could not do so without it. That is, we can (as can dogs, but not apes) understand intentions. We are also marginally indifferent in our incentives. As such we can test the rationality of incentives. Therefore all economic statements are empirically testable by sympathetic experience (the reduction of stimuli to that which we can perceive by our senses.) Or what is called ‘instrumentalism’.

    e) as such economics does not differ from any other scientific discipline in that we require instrumentation (both mechanical and logical) to reduce that which we cannot experience to that which we can experience, and upon experiencing, make a comparison. We simply need less instrumentation to perceive the data than we do in most other fields.

    f) the purpose of which is to develop general rules of arbitrary precision that we can use to model that which we cannot experience directly, from fragmentary information that we can experience directly.

    g) All statements of external correspondence are and always must be theoretical (in the spectrum intuition->hypothesis->theory->law.

    h) Since all hypothetical statements must include arbitrary precision, all general rules are limited by some scale or another(greater or lesser), beyond which the theory fails. In other words, all phenomenon demonstrate a distribution. That which does not is merely tautological.

    i) All axiomatic statements consist of constructions, with deterministic consequences, not observations – because all information that can exist, exists in the axioms.

    Ergo, economics is an empirical science as are all disciplines. All thought is empirical, hypothetical, theoretical, and bound by one or more axis of arbitrary precision. Logical MODELS consist of general rules. Axiomatic systems are TAUTOLOGICAL. Their value is in their tautology: which allows us to test the internal consistency of our statements.

    Mises failed to grasp operationalism which is why he had to create a lot of verbalist nonsense by equating verbal definitions with the properties of reality, so that he could justify his failure.

    (Honestly in retrospect, it’s amazing that like marx he could create that much nonsense – enough nonsense to overload the gullible.).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 03:48:00 UTC

  • NOT JUST ME: PUTTING A WOODEN STAKE IN VERBALIST PHILOSOPHY “Analytic Philosophy

    http://www.amazon.com/Empty-Ideas-Critique-Analytic-Philosophy/dp/0199330816IT’S NOT JUST ME: PUTTING A WOODEN STAKE IN VERBALIST PHILOSOPHY

    http://www.amazon.com/Empty-Ideas-Critique-Analytic-Philosophy/dp/0199330816

    “Analytic Philosophy Consists of Empty Ideas”

    http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/philosophy-is-a-bunch-of-empty-ideas-interview-with-peter-unger.html

    Like I said. The 20th century was an attempt at restoring mysticism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-13 21:16:00 UTC

  • Talking with Don at the moment on why so many CS guys leann libertarian: because

    Talking with Don at the moment on why so many CS guys leann libertarian: because our generation understands (a) information transfer, (b) undecidability of propositions, (c) correspondence vs causation (d) the frailty of reason that writing software forces you to accept (e) the problem of computability (existence proof), (f) the incentives provided to users via interacting with information they observe.

    Hoppe’s generation did not have it. Plus he was trained by Marxists and their reliance on rationalism, in German universities under german rationalism. He didn’t have the luxury of standing on the shoulders of Turing, and so when he read through the Intuitionist and Operationalist argument he did not understand that they had found what Mises had failed to.

    I’m lucky. I can stand on the shoulders of Hoppe and On the shoulders of Turing, Poincare, Brouwer, Bridgman.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-11 08:26:00 UTC

  • THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD” All processes of product

    THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD”

    All processes of production are the same. We merely weight the outputs differently in value. Science values knowledge for its own sake (supposedly.) The scientific method ignores both real costs and opportunity costs. Technology doesn’t ignore them, because it is goal directed. The production of consumer goods, ignores places lower value on knowledge development and hides it rather than publishes it. But all that differs in any process of production (study of transformation) is which inputs we consider, and which outputs we prefer. PERIOD.

    The scientific method is but one instance of THE METHOD. The method is the same, whether in craft, production, technology or science. You would not believe how hard I have tried to make this argument, and how hard critical rationalists try to deny it so that they can preserve a special place in their hearts.

    Here is the mind blowing bit: The scientific method is written as a moral rule more than a logical one. The reason that scientists developed this moral rule in some detail before other fields, was because it was so much easier to lie, err, and fantasize about the production of hypotheses than it was to produce craft, production, or technology. Worse, (and this is what I work on) it is even harder to take the same moral prohibition and apply it to social science (economics, religion, morality, politics, law) because the incentives to lie, err, and fantasize, are even greater than those in science. My objective, in my work, is to apply the moral constraints we put in place upon science to defend us from lies, errors, and fantasies, to the social sciences, and the moral literature. And I expect that there will be a lot of resistance to following THE METHOD. Precisely because lying, useful error, and selling fantasies is so profitable.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-02 12:19:00 UTC

  • The reason I frame propertarianism as philosophy, despite that it is a social sc

    The reason I frame propertarianism as philosophy, despite that it is a social science (system of measurement) is to kill the ability to use philosophy to lie. End postmodern pseudoscience.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-01 03:36:00 UTC

  • Maybe I am locked in a struggle though. I am locked in a struggle for the truth

    Maybe I am locked in a struggle though. I am locked in a struggle for the truth against the cult of mysticism, obscurantism, deception and justification.

    Truth is a great argument to base Aristocratic Egalitarianism and Propertarianism upon. It is very hard to defeat.

    Their only possible response is “I prefer to lie”.

    ——-

    Curt Doolittle wrote:

    Just had a thought last night as I questioned my own work: If one’s bias is one of conflict prevention, then what? Thats my bias (obviously from a childhood with too much conflict in it). How do I check my own bias?

    So while I agree with the argument that all human discourse is signaling, negotiating, and justification, I wonder if not all biases are non-neutral.

    Because a bias in favor of compatibilism rather than ‘winning’ seems to produce positive externalities, not biased ones.

    ——-

    Jonathan Haidt 8:33 PM (7 minutes ago)

    i like your point about externalities.

    i also think that if you are not part of a team locked in struggle with another team, you are more likely to see the truth.

    jh

    ——-

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-30 13:47:00 UTC