Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • FAILURE TO USE OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS IN ECONOMICS, POLITICS AND LAW IS CRIMINA

    FAILURE TO USE OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS IN ECONOMICS, POLITICS AND LAW IS CRIMINAL.

    (Profound)(reposted)(worth repeating)

    While a failure to rely upon operational definitions in mathematics, logic and philosophy may only be immoral, and in science unethical – in economics, politics and law it is criminal.

    In Mathematics avoiding operationalism merely perpetuates an error; in logic and philosophy it is deceptive of both others and one’s self; in science wastes others’ time. But in economics, politics and law, failure to use operationalism creates theft.

    That is the answer to the riddle Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe couldn’t solve in economics and ethics. Nor Hayek and Popper and their followers in politics and philosophy. But then, neither did Bridgman and his followers in science, nor Brouwer and his followers in math. I don’t think the long list ending with Kripke solved it either in logic.

    One cannot use this heavily loaded term ‘true’ as other than analogy without a constructive knowledge of its meaning. And the only meaning that is constructively possible is testimony: performative truth. All else is merely proof. And the quaint linguistic contrivance that conflates the most parsimonious possible theory with testimony is, much like multitudinous abuses of the verb to-be, nothing more than a means by which we obscure our ignorance as a means of making mere analogies as a substitute for truth claims. Only constructive proofs demonstrate that one possesses the knowledge to make a truth claim. Everything else is merely analogy.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-04 16:33:00 UTC

  • SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM? —“The easiest way to look like (and be) the smartest

    SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM?

    —“The easiest way to look like (and be) the smartest guy in the room is ask the questions a reporter is supposed to ask (but seldom does these days.) Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? Easy peasy, I’ve been doin’ it for decades.”— Glenn R. Tankersley

    Smart.

    Me, I follow incentives, and ask why anyone would do such a thing. People don’t do what they should. They do what they have the incentives to do. Getting stuff done is largely crafting the incentives needed by people who need to do things.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-04 14:50:00 UTC

  • Just Because It's Useful Doesn't Mean It's True

    [M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.

  • Just Because It's Useful Doesn't Mean It's True

    [M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.

  • Just Because It’s Useful Doesn’t Mean It’s True

    [M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.

  • Just Because It’s Useful Doesn’t Mean It’s True

    [M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.

  • “My view is that concepts are open-ended classifications based on leaving detail

    “My view is that concepts are open-ended classifications based on leaving details unspecified. They are densely stitched together through relationships of similarity and context. This ties back to Newton’s errors and the fact that there is no “bang on” infinite. Newton’s scientific writings are infected with a sense of the mystical, which should not surprise anyone who has studied Newton in depth. He made deductions from phenomena that are pure nonsense and are more within the realm of pseudo-science.” — Michael Phillip

    Well said. Very. Thank you.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-03 02:23:00 UTC

  • You know. If you express ideas in operational terms then the mysticism in scienc

    You know. If you express ideas in operational terms then the mysticism in science that so enraptures progressives disappears.

    I am not sure that the language of experiential analogy masquerading as secularism is not even worse than the language of mythological metaphor. Although i am certainly willing to admit that authoritarian scriptural religion is worse than either. The results speak for themselves.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-02 04:21:00 UTC

  • (Profound) While a failure to rely upon operational definitions in mathematics,

    (Profound)

    While a failure to rely upon operational definitions in mathematics, logic and philosophy may only be immoral, and in science unethical – in economics, politics and law it is criminal.

    In Mathematics avoiding operationalism merely perpetuates an error; in logic and philosophy it is deceptive of both others and one’s self; in science wastes others’ time. But in economics, politics and law, failure to use operationalism creates theft.

    That is the answer to the riddle Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe couldn’t solve in economics and ethics. Nor Hayek and Popper and their followers in politics and philosophy. But then, neither did Bridgman and his followers in science, nor Brouwer and his followers in math. I don’t think the long list ending with Kripke solved it either in logic.

    One cannot use this heavily loaded term ‘true’ as other than analogy without a constructive knowledge of its meaning. And the only meaning that is constructively possible is testimony: performative truth. All else is merely proof. And the quaint linguistic contrivance that conflates the most parsimonious possible theory with testimony is, much like multitudinous abuses of the verb to-be, nothing more than a means by which we obscure our ignorance as a means of making mere analogies as a substitute for truth claims. Only constructive proofs demonstrate that one possesses the knowledge to make a truth claim. Everything else is merely analogy.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-01 13:21:00 UTC

  • TO BOETTKE ON HAYEK AND MISES’ FAILURES Peter, I have spent years on this questi

    TO BOETTKE ON HAYEK AND MISES’ FAILURES

    Peter,

    I have spent years on this question and I am fairly certain now that Mises’ work, like Bridgman’s was an unsuccessful attempt at developing operationalism.

    Both Mises and Popper can best be understood as cosmopolitan intellectuals bringing their pseudoscientific allegorical culture to their work, just as Kant brought continental duty and authority to his – both rebelling against anglo empiricism.

    Hayek could not solve the problem of the social sciences either. He correctly intuits that the problem exists, but he can only offer us laments, criticisms, and classical liberal solutions. Unfortunately he did not have decades of computer science to provide him with an alternative conceptual framework and terminology to replace his classical liberalism and moral psychology.

    Post mainstream economists cannot yet solve the relationship between mathematics, logic, ethics and economics. And Austrians should have. But the sad state of our ranks and the distraction of philosophers by the marxist, socialist, and postmodern programs misallocated intellectual capital in pursuit of the impossible. So when hayek says the 20th century will be remembered as an era of reemergent mysticism, he only knows something is wrong : endemic pseudoscience – but he does not know why or how to fix it.

    He was a herald and a critic but he did not solve it. So did Poincare, Mandelbrot, Bridgman, the mathematical Intuitionists. So did mises.

    The interesting insight that I have only recently understood, is that the ither disciplines succeeded but their scope was narrower than that of economics. And had mises not failed. Had popper not failed. Had Hayek not failed, then the missing argument would have been available to the less complicated fields of math, logic and science, as well as economics.

    The insight that the only truth that can exist is performative, and the only possible claim to sufficient knowledge necessary to make a truth claim, is the demonstration if construction by operational means and measures. Ie: the problem is ethical.

    I am fairly certain now, that I have solved that mussing bit -by accident. And that the necessary insights exist in the multiple attempts at articulating operationalism in multiple fields – thereby solving, finally, the nature and definition of truth.

    This allows us to repair praxeology as an empirical research program whose theoretical constructs are reducible to operational statements, each of which is sympathetically testable by human perception, as to the rationality and volition of those statements. Ie: truth.

    Mises was too much on a mission, too arrogant, too culturally biased, and too ignorant of mathematics, science and philosophy to solve the problem. But he came closer than anyone else had to date.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-30 06:55:00 UTC