—“if one can demonstrate construction then all further expansions will consist of increases in precision, not declarations of falsehood.”—-
I am pretty sure this is correct. But, how do I test it? Need to talk to Mokyr…..
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-29 23:14:00 UTC
Knowledge of change in state (awareness)
Knowledge of correlation between cause and effect (knowledge of use) (hypothesis)
Knowledge of causality (knowledge of construction) (truth)
Knowledge of Increases in precision (increase in parsimony and explanatory power)
Knowledge of the limit of marginal indifference ( ultimate truth ) The point at which the question must change in order for the theory to change.
I am aware of it.
It’s over there somewhere.
I can reach it today
I’s N paces away
It’s X feet away.
It’s Y * 10^Zth mm away.
It’s L light seconds away.
Precision is determined by context, and so the theory above, of the location of whatever I am aware of, is never false.
Achilles always passes the tortoise (marginal indifference)
You always can get close enough moving halfway across the couch, to obtain a kiss. (marginal indifference)
Buridan’s Ass always can make a choice (and so can we – information is always available).
No case of infinity exists (only cases of arbitrary precision)
Not enough ‘marginal indifference’ in math.
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-29 08:42:00 UTC
PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOLOGY: TRUTH IS ENOUGH.
The Job of Scientists, Philosophers, Ideologists, Activists and Priests.
I. Science-> II. Philosophy-> III. Ideology -> IV. Religion
Science is a purely descriptive discipline. Philosophy consists of constructing true statements that assist us in ethical action. ideology consists of inspirations to act to obtain power, and requires only the minimum truth necessary to obtain power. Religion consists of rituals and myths that bind us together pre-cognitively, and in religion, true propositions are unnecessary – and largely undesirable.
Therefore, truth content of each discipline: science, philosophy, ideology and religion – varies significantly.
***Now, if we merely sought discretionary power as do most, then it wouldn’t matter if our arguments were constructed scientifically. But since we are proposing an order that lacks discretionary authority, and where discretionary authority is prohibited, and where economic prosperity is the promised common good, then ideas and actions must correspond with objective reality rather than subjective command, law must be rationally calculable, and truth (correspondence with reality) is required of us. Truth is the only ‘rule’ that we can ‘rule’ by.***
This does put us at an ideological disadvantage: our messages are harder to convey. We promise no free rides. Offer no eternity. No certainty.
But that said, for some minority of us, truth, liberty, prosperity, and reality are desirable enough for us to act, and act with the threat of violence, to obtain them.
Our ideology then, consists of the truth, the promise of liberty and prosperity, the organized application of violence to obtain them, and the moral justification whereby moral men feel that their actions are morally sanctioned.
Therefore, the job of a philosopher, like myself, is to produce the truth. The job of ideologists, is to provide moral sanction. The job of activists, is to distribute moral sanctions. The job of shamans is to bind us together through shared experience, ritual and myth.
Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine (writing from L’viv)
🙂
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-28 04:35:00 UTC
[Y]eah…. I don’t make “should” or “belief” arguments. Sorry. If you wanna make people believe something, start a religion or cult like Rothbard did. If you want to create a stateless, private or anarchic polity, then you have to eliminate rational demand for the services provided by the state. To do that requires a high trust society. And the evidence is universally in my favor that it does. So the burden on the lunatic fringe, is to demonstrate that people will rationally join a low trust polity in the absence of strong central authority that suppresses retribution for unethical, immoral and conspiratorial actions. Because human beings demonstrate that they will commit acts of violence in retribution for unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions, just like they will for criminal actions. Just how it is.
[Y]eah…. I don’t make “should” or “belief” arguments. Sorry. If you wanna make people believe something, start a religion or cult like Rothbard did. If you want to create a stateless, private or anarchic polity, then you have to eliminate rational demand for the services provided by the state. To do that requires a high trust society. And the evidence is universally in my favor that it does. So the burden on the lunatic fringe, is to demonstrate that people will rationally join a low trust polity in the absence of strong central authority that suppresses retribution for unethical, immoral and conspiratorial actions. Because human beings demonstrate that they will commit acts of violence in retribution for unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions, just like they will for criminal actions. Just how it is.
(PRIVATE ON TRUTH AND TESTIMONY) Archive for reference.
Hmmm…. number of random thoughts on this paper….
1) The mechanism that serves to help us identify similarities is not rational, but intuitive – pre-rational (System 1) that performs searches of our memories. The mechanism that we use to deduce the reason for the similarities we have intuited, is rational (System 2). Critical observations from System 2, once committed to memory, then add to System 1.
I can’t think of anything that doesn’t follow the process of System 2 instructing(loading) System 1 “searches for patterns.” But the operation of System 1 (intuition) is invisible to us. Largely I believe, we verbally justify the instruction of intuition as the application of reason – but that is impossible as far as I know.
2) Once we have constructed a theory through this combination of intuition(searching) and direction (reason), we then start to try to confirm this theory and falsify it. I think the major difference between individual behavior comes from whether we search for refutations, or confirmations, and how exhaustively (depth+breadth search) we attempt to refute it.
3) Now, it’s possible to state those two paragraphs above (1+2) in language that is more precise, albeit using a lot more terminology, but as far as I know, that is what actually occurs when we hypothesize and test.
4) In the spectrum deduction (sufficient information), induction (insufficient information), and abduction(sparse information), only deductions can be claimed to be true. That does not mean that we cannot guess – only that we cannot claim that our guesses are true. Long division works by the process of organized guessing. Repeating sequences are proof that the information is not present to produce an information without the arbitrary decision of choosing a limit to the precision of the decimal expansion. So the information to conduct division in the absence of contextual precision still faces the problem of sufficient determination of truth. This problem is also true of all statements about the dimensions of circles. But it is not true of the properties of rectangles. Without context we possess insufficient information to make a deduction without the arbitrary introduction of human choice to limit precision.
5) —“We have just seen that universal statements cannot be justified or confirmed by observation-statements.”—
Isn’t this just a verbalism? When we communicate we reduce reality to a set of selected symbols (words) that reduce the information content to communicable and useful form that humans can make use of. We make expressions in a context, just as we make measurements in a context. We can never make universal statements that are non-tautological for this reason. Non-tautological, True statements REQUIRE the absence of information. No? Deductive (tautological) answers are proofs. Truth requires testimony that the work done exhausts the standards of demonstration available to us. Ultimate truth is never attainable any more than an infinite limit is attainable. At the point the ultimate truth, or limit is reached, we achieve the construction of a tautology, not a testimony to the exhaustive proof of one’s statements given currently available knowledge.
More in a bit.
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-27 06:25:00 UTC
SCIENCE VS BELIEF – INSTITUTIONS OF LAW VS RELIGIONS AND CULTS
Yeah…. I don’t make “should” or “belief” arguments. Sorry. If you wanna make people believe something, start a religion or cult like Rothbard did. If you want to create a stateless, private or anarchic polity, then you have to eliminate rational demand for the services provided by the state. To do that requires a high trust society. And the evidence is universally in my favor that it does. So the burden on the lunatic fringe, is to demonstrate that people will rationally join a low trust polity in the absence of strong central authority that suppresses retribution for unethical, immoral and conspiratorial actions. Because human beings demonstrate that they will commit acts of violence in retribution for unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions, just like they will for criminal actions.
Just how it is. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-27 05:50:00 UTC
A HIGHER STANDARD OF TRUTH
(reposted for archival purposes)
I’m arguing about necessary properties of truth (knowledge claims) not mere utility (correspondence), which are two different things. Determining Truth is a matter of testing our knowledge of use (external correspondence), of knowledge of internal consistency, and knowledge of construction. I don’t think I’m really addressing the problem of hypothesis creation (conjecture). I’m addressing the problem of truth. I think ultimate truth is addressed already: unknowable, ultimately parsimonious, proof of knowledge of correspondence, consistency and construction, for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. Since we cannot know this we can only testify to the truth of the most currently most parsimonious, proof of knowledge, correspondence, consistency and construction for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. These two definitions are often conflated: truth we can currently testify to, and the truth we aspire to one day testify to.
For me to succeed in quashing postmodernism, mysticism, and even ‘continental and cosmopolitan rationalist empty verbalisms’ in political and legal speech, then I have to get to the (unsolved) nature of truth. Which I think I have. (above)
All other variations on truth are simply analogies for proofs that make use of fewer properties of necessary truth. LIke “numbers” we use the word “truth”, imprecisely, as an analogy in multiple contexts.
Only one ‘truth’ can be demonstrated to exist: performative truth. Everything else is a rough analogy. And almost all is proof not truth. And most of those proofs are limited to very narrow conditions.
I find it terribly interesting that the problem of truth was not solved, despite all the work on it. And the reason it was not solved, is that all statements are ethically contingent. And that is a troublesome thing to tell a scientist or logician trying to escape the false ethics of religious mysticism and that tradition, rather than the objective ethics and morality of propertarianism
Maybe this is a greater change in conventional thought than appears to me. I know that for mathematicians the idea that they’re utilitarian traditions and contrivances are unethical (untrue) appears absurd. But I’m sure to most critical rationalists, the idea of using analogies as truth claims as immoral and unethical might seem absurdly burdensome. And I know that for Austrians, the idea that apriorism is immoral and unethical is not only absurd but extremely burdensome. I know that for average speakers, the fact that using the word “is” for other than existence, set membership or location (specifically for properties) is extremely cognitively burdensome.
But there is a vast difference between internal dialog, and public speech. And while internal dialog can suffice for utilitarian purposes, and places no criminal, ethical or moral constraint upon others, the moment we speak , write or publish to others, we have entered into an ethical and moral realm, and are engaged in unethical and immoral action if we make truth claims that we cannot demonstrate we have the knowledge to make. If we must state the truth in public, or hypothesis in public, or rumour in public, or myth in public, is it not immoral and unethical to misrepresent one’s statement?
Only under very rare conditions may we make truth claims. In the most part we are communicating rough analogies, others we are hypothesizing, and rarely are we engaged theorizing – and almost never are we capable of making truth claims.
Under performative truth, we are making a promise. That promise is implied. Most of the time, we are not making a truth claim. But an hypothetical claim. And that is implied too. The question is, do we know when we are doing one or the other.
And I think not.
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-26 04:22:00 UTC
—“It is better to reduce our statements into actions or events that exist, rather than into objects or entities that we imagine”–
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-25 07:34:00 UTC
IN SEARCH OF APHORISMS – CREATING AND REPEATING ORDERED SETS.
It is incredibly difficult to take novel ideas, especially revolutionary ideas, and reduce them from intuitions, to analogies, to causal relations, to communicable narratives, to something close to an aphorism that is self evident and easily digestible by its mere construction as overlapping sets.
One technique I’ve used extensively is to try to articulate and enumerate, all ideas as a spectrum rather than as an ‘ideal type’ – a single term. This tends to solve most problems of conveying novel or complex ideas. It’s more burdensome to write and argue, because it requires a lot of repetition of sequences, but it’s much more effective to compare points on a line (ordered set), with points on another line (ordered set), than to rely upon less precise terminological ‘blobs’ open wide to interpretation – which is what most ideal types are: uselessly imprecise.
When comparing concepts you can generally talk in supply-demand curves, even if the reader doesn’t understand that’s what you’re doing. But he can understand the intersection of two concepts using two lines, arcs, or distributions as CAUSAL rather than as analogistic, if you give him the tools to.
It’s just brutally hard work. I’ve been sort of keeping track and it takes me at least ten attempts at writing to do it, sometimes many more.
If you write empathically that’s one thing. But if you’re whole endeavor is to not rely on intuition, then you have to write in some way that contains information without relying on experience external to the argument. The relationship between members of an ordered set (sequence of term) tends to do that for you. Comparing two or more ordered sets is much more effective than any narrative. The mind does the work for us, that reason would have to do otherwise.
Back to breaking verbal rocks…. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2014-06-22 04:59:00 UTC