Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • WE LEARN FROM WHO WE CAN UNDERSTAND If you can access Sowell, Hoppe, Hayek, Haid

    WE LEARN FROM WHO WE CAN UNDERSTAND

    If you can access Sowell, Hoppe, Hayek, Haidt, and Mises then you will make better arguments. If you can access Bastiat, Rothbard and Friedman you will make adequate arguments. But if pop-libertarians activate your sentiments, and with activated sentiments you promote libertarian ideas, then I’m perfectly happy that you do a good yeoman’s labor, even if your arguments aren’t as strong as they could be or your solutions as complete and possible as they seem to be.

    Liberty need not be for philosophers alone. If you have libertarian sentiments, you need not have libertarian economics, history and analytical philosophy. All you need is a handful of moral parables to promote libertarianism.

    You will reach a lot more people more effectively than those of us who write convoluted philosophical proofs referring to empirical evidence in an effort to combat the propaganda, proofs and evidence of the opposition.

    At about every fifteen points of IQ we think very differently. Some of us in layers of abstractions, others in empirical analysis, others of us historical references, others in moral analogy and still others in moral sentiments. We think differently even if we all value liberty similarly, regardless of our method and mode of thinking.

    The desire for Liberty at its core is a sentiment: a desire, an instinct, an emotional affiliation, a preference. No matter how we express it, and which level of experience or abstraction we use to argue in favor of it – we all express our preference for liberty to those with whom we share a common language.

    Liberty doesn’t need to be precise. It needs to be popular.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 10:18:00 UTC

  • PRAXEOLOGY DOES NOT LOSE INFORMATION. ALL AGGREGATES IN MATHEMATICS CAUSE LOSS O

    PRAXEOLOGY DOES NOT LOSE INFORMATION. ALL AGGREGATES IN MATHEMATICS CAUSE LOSS OF INFORMATION. PRAXEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS DOES NOT.

    That information loss benefits the state. That is why economics is an aggregate discipline. Aggregates do EXPOSE the effects of informational asymmetry – sticky prices and contracts etc. They do help us find informational asymmetry in the multitudinous places it exists. Aggregates help investors profit from specializing in the pursuit of that asymmetric knowledge. And if you are one of the people that thinks fiat money and credit are more beneficial than the business cycle, then aggregates certainly help determine the amount of money needed by the economy at any given point in time. But aggregates do not contain information about involuntary transfers. And they destroy information as does fiat money and credit, by distorting the information provided by prices.

    The praxeological solution to advancing the economy, is not do dump disinformation in the form of credit, into the pricing system we call the economy. Instead, praxeology would tell us to create institutions that better facilitate the cooperation of groups at those scales that the market has difficulty in facilitating. Particularly those problems that are caused by jurisdictional overlap. Or those where the impact of ‘cheating’ or ‘privatization’ of investment would prevent the risk taking needed for those investments, if they were exposed to the market.

    The only mandatory function of government, as far as I can determine, is to prevent cheating. Now, it may not be obvious that the defense of property rights of all kinds is simply the prevention of cheating. But governments must prevent indirect involuntary transfers by issuing laws in furtherance of preventing privatizations of the commons – cheating.

    Praxeology makes all cheating visible and open to criticism and prevention.

    Praxeology tells us that we should endeavor to create institutions that will assist classes in creating contracts, the terms of which have the force of law under the one law of property, and not leave it to a ruling class – elected or not – to determine laws. The scope of contracts is controllable by all parties. The scope of lawmaking appears not to be controllable, because it is only bounded by the will of those in charge NOT to exercise power if they can.

    All mathematics is predicated upon ratios : balance. Accounting uses double entries to create a balance where none would exist. In human relations VOLUNTARY EXCHANGE determines this balance. Efficiency does not, because it obscures involuntary transfers. And as such, any argument to efficiency is an argument to theft.

    Praxeology: voluntarism, creates the balance, the scale, the ability to render ethical judgments not out of complex arguments to efficiency, but very simply, out of the willingness of individuals to participate in an exchange once they are confident that no involuntary transfers will be produced by this exchange.

    Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of politics in the post-democratic era.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 05:52:00 UTC

  • “Cinema can still explain the whole world. Mathematicians think it’s math. I bel

    “Cinema can still explain the whole world. Mathematicians think it’s math. I believe it’s cinema.” – Jean-Luc Godard

    Mathematics can explain only what we cannot sense. That is why we have mathematics: to compensate for our limited ability to perceive the universe.

    However, human concepts must at some point be reduced to those stimuli which we can experience. All language is reducible to an analogy to experience. All imagery is by definition experience. Mathematics is, at some degree of abstraction, simply a vehicle for compensating for our terribly weak short term memories by creating categories, applying quantities, and rearranging symbols while preserving ratios. The mind could do this without mathematics if we had the short term memory to do it with.

    Film is, today, the most informationally rich means by which, that which we *cannot* perceive directly, can be reduced by analogy and narrative, to that which we *can* perceive directly.

    At first glance, these statements are not terribly romantic.

    But after we consider that human beings have invented mathematics, the narrative, and visual media so that we can rapidly sense what we could not sense directly, we can certainly wonder at the marvel of what man can accomplish in the service of his mind and his experience. And in that understanding we can appreciate that there is no material difference between mathematics and cinema. They are simply extensions of us.

    And that is as romantic an experience as any.

    – Curt Doolittle 😉

    (Originally posted under FilmmakerIQ)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 04:41:00 UTC

  • DOOLITTLE’S GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR USE IN POLITICAL DEBATE (From Capitalismv3.com

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/menu/tools-and-techniques-for-political-debate/a-list-of-terms-for-use-in-evaluating-political-debate/CURT DOOLITTLE’S GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR USE IN POLITICAL DEBATE

    (From Capitalismv3.com)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-03 05:25:00 UTC

  • DOOLITTLE’S GUIDE TO POLITICAL DEBATE (From Capitalismv3.com)

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/menu/tools-and-techniques-for-political-debate/the-code-of-conduct-for-effective-debate/CURT DOOLITTLE’S GUIDE TO POLITICAL DEBATE

    (From Capitalismv3.com)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-03 05:24:00 UTC

  • THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND ACADEMIC BLOGGERS AND A NOTE ON PRAXEOLOG

    THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND ACADEMIC BLOGGERS

    AND A NOTE ON PRAXEOLOGY

    Um. It’s not complicated:

    1) Academics make more complex errors in logic. Independents tend to not possess sufficient scope of knowledge to render the opinions that they do. So they make more simplistic errors out of ignorance. Most logical errors I find in academic work are due to methodological constraints within a narrow discipline that erroneously attribute causation within that paradigm.

    2) Academic errors are most often driven by accepted political beliefs. Popper and Kuhn’s warning about paradigmiatic traps is a greater problem in economic science than it is in the physical sciences. Independent writers tend to vary more from the accepted paradigm. Thats why they’re interesting. The current problem with academic work is its nearly exclusive reliance on aggregates, and the fact that aggregates reinforce the goals of totalitarian state action.

    3) Academics are more likely to rely upon multiple sources of empirical data, and unfortunately, independents are not. Independents are more likely driven by the desire of something to be true, and to rely upon confirmation biases. Although, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s a natural process of research and development.

    WHY PRAXEOLOGY?

    Praxeology protects against necessary errors of information loss in any process of aggregation. Aggregation exposes limits to praxeological analysis.

    There are plenty of people working with collections of data. There are too few praxeologists working on the interpretation of data. That is because analysis of aggregates hides involuntary transfers, and praxeological analysis exposes involuntary transfers. As such, Praxeology is a libertarian, and Aggregates a totalitarian methodology.

    That’s why there are fewer praxeologists. In academica, it’s against the status quo.

    WHAT WOULD ACADEMIC RESEARCH LOOK LIKE WITHOUT THE MAJORITY RULE STATE?

    If the ‘government’ were constructed to allow exchanges, not majority rule, then academics would search for beneficial exchanges between groups rather than optimums that are always for the benefit of one group at the expense of another.

    In other words, solutions proposing an optimum are always “BAD” . Because they deprive us of that which could be mutually beneficial means even if we have independent ends.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-02 05:49:00 UTC

  • Is Austrian Economics Falsifiable?

    COMMENTS ON THE COMMENTS ABOVE

    1) Falsification requires the failure of an empirical test, sufficient to contradict the theory. The purpose of falsification is to require us to rely on evidence that is unobtainable by our senses alone, and independent of the frailty and error of the mind and its perceptions.  None of the criticisms above pass this criteria. 

    2) That austrianism, or any body of work, contains insufficiencies is not the same as it whether or not it contains errors.  The failure to see the stickiness of prices is a natural consequence of micro analysis.  Just as the failure to see cognitive biases and irrationality are a natural consequence of macro analysis.   The value in micro analysis is that it correctly informs us as to the behavior that will result from incentives. So it is perhaps best to understand that we need both macro and micro analysis (top down and bottom up).

    3) Austiranism (as ten basic principles:  http://www.capitalismv3.com/menu… )
    makes only one significantly controversial premise: the theory of the business cycle: that government actions increase the severity of necessary experiments and corrections we call booms and busts. Competing interpretations (Keynesianism and Modern Monetary) assert that the economy is a perpetual motion machine that is possible to universally correct with good policy.

    4) Praxeology contains both stated and unstated propositions.  The stated proposition is that the incentives of the rational actor are deducible from the incentives available to him.  The unstated proposition is that by exposing these propositions, it becomes visible when and where involuntary transfers of property are occurring.  It is the latter statement that is of value to the libertarian movement because a) humans detest involuntary transfer, even if their construct of property varies   and b) the progressives use involuntary transfer to fund programs which the libertarians object to.  c) all involuntary transfers can be enumerated as thefts, and as thefts, the state may be attacked as a system of legitimized theft.

    5) Most of the comments by others in this thread, confuse Rothbardianism libertarianism, or Misesian Praxeology, with austiranism.  While it may be true that Mises followed Menger, and Rothbard relied upon Mises, Rothbard’s assertions are  an attempt to restate the church’s Natural Law in the defense of property rights in order to preserve individual freedom, and to demonstrate the exploitation that will occur whenever we empower the state. While Rothbard does attempt to address the business cycle that is the central tenet of austrian economic argument, it is not clear that he added anything to the debate.  Rothbard was an ANARCHIST. and Mises was a CLASSICAL LIBERAL.  Rothbard however did not succeed. He effectively prohibited all organizations and their ability to add additional rights an obligations to personal property rights which would disallow privatization of the commons (“Cheating”). (An argument that is too technical for this forum but which I’ve addressed elsewhere.)  It required Hans Hoppe to finish Rothbard’s political work, and provide us with a solution to the problem of bureaucracy.  Hoppe succeeds in replacing the bureaucracy with private institutions where Rothbard only placed a universal moral ban them.

    6) Caplan’s “Why I am Not An Austrian” is a political piece that I have criticized elsewhere.  One should see this piece as a complaint against the Rothbardian wing’s attempt to hijack Austrianism for its political ends, more than an attack against Austrian economics.   To quote:

    “My equation of Austrian economics with Mises and Rothbard rather than F.A. Hayek is bound to be controversial.”  -Caplan

    Caplan (and the entire George Mason group), consistently express frustration that the anarchists have been ideologically successful and have intentionally conflated anarchism and austiranism such that austrianism’s dependence upon classical liberalism has been lost in the popular vernacular.

    Caplan’s argument must be understood in this context. Unfortunately the rather weak conflated argument he puts forth in his essay has posed a bit of trouble for all of us, myself included.  Since the article is mis-titled.  It should be “Why I am not a Rothbardian Praxeologist”. 

    I am a supporter of Caplan’s work (particularly his new work on education).  But as I am the only theorist trying to resolve this conflict by extending praxeological analysis to preserve the insights of both the anarchic and classical liberal wings, I find the use of Caplan’s essay unhelpful and confusing to the general reader.


    CLOSING
    I hope this somewhat clarifies the topic for readers here, rather than muddying the waters further.  There is a place for both micro analysis and it’s emphasis on prohibition of involuntary transfers in order to create a natural aristocracy, and macro analysis and its emphasis on maximizing involuntary transfers in support of redistribution in order to create communal egalitarianism.  These two ends of the spectrum promote different choices, not truths.  There are certainly statements within each set of preferences which can be subject to tests of truth. But the collections of statements we categorize as macro and micro, because they promote subjective preferences, are not subject to tests of truth or falsity.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-Austrian-economics-falsifiable

  • OPAQUE PHILOSOPHY – IN HUMBLING COMPANY I’ve been extremely self critical about

    OPAQUE PHILOSOPHY – IN HUMBLING COMPANY

    I’ve been extremely self critical about the opacity of my writing, and struggling to make it digestible. It’s brutally difficult to follow Spinoza’s advice: “Speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people.” And, while I’ll never be able to address common people, I think I’ve finally reduced propertarianism to something that’s at least reasonably accessible, and analytically clear, regardless of one’s political preferences and moral codes. Perhaps I can get it down to twenty pages if I can figure out how to elegantly and succinctly tie the biology of moral codes, to the necessity of property, to the institutions necessary for property. Maybe thirty pages. My first draft was almost three hundred. So obviously i’m making progress.

    I still have years worth of work ahead of me. I’ve used Rothbard’s ideas to reframe classical liberalism and conservatism, and then social democracy, into Propertarian language. But the excruciating work of defending these ideas against the legion of very smart people both past and present is so daunting I become easily overwhelmed every time I pull my head out of one little problem or the other.

    And I don’t really find those defensive problems interesting. This is where my lack of academic training fails me. It is one thing to solve a conceptual problem. It is quite another to create an edifice with which to defend it against crushingly great minds. It is either the mark of an incredible fool, unconscionable hubris, or accidental ignorance, to take on this category of problem, and to even mention one’s feeble efforts in the same sentence with minds like this.

    Spinoza spent his entire life on two hundred pages. How did Murray work on one book for seven years full time? Rawls? And Rawls clearly needed to do a lot more work than he did. You have to be amazed by someone like Rothbard, who I’m honestly in awe of. If you look at his writing, while he oversimplifies the problem of political theory almost absurdly, he’s at least accessible and his breadth just daunting, even if you disagree with his premise.

    On the other hand, after re-reading those who don’t oversimplify the problem, namely Rawls and Nozick, I feel like the bar isn’t all that high. I mean, those works are highly influential despite being painfully inaccessible. Which is a small comfort. A very small comfort. But a comfort none the less.

    One cannot distill complex ideas to first principles expressed in analytical language unless one understands the problem thoroughly. The genius of Rothbard’s insight is a barrier to adoption because of his passion for his particular ethics of anarchism. But his Propertarianism is applicable to all political philosophy and ideology. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes them commensurable.

    Shoulders of giants and all that. Humbling. Witheringly humbling.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-26 23:35:00 UTC

  • “We live in a world of insufficient shared-reality.”

    “We live in a world of insufficient shared-reality.”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-27 15:19:00 UTC

  • Logical Fallacies? How about Cognitive Biases, Economic Fallacies, and the singl

    Logical Fallacies? How about Cognitive Biases, Economic Fallacies, and the single most important problem of debate: confusing preferences with truths?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-12 10:05:00 UTC