Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • SHORT COURSE IN TESTIMONIAL TRUTH

    http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/2015/06/28/a-short-course-on-propertarianisms-testimonial-truth/A SHORT COURSE IN TESTIMONIAL TRUTH

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-11 13:10:00 UTC

  • THEORY VS FACT VS A PRIORI This is one of those things that i have to explain ov

    THEORY VS FACT VS A PRIORI

    This is one of those things that i have to explain over and over again.

    1) THEORY: we are capable of only one epistemological method (EM) of describing cause and effect relations:

    observation > free association > idea > wayfinding > hypothesis > criticism > theory > public criticism > law > survival in widespread application > incorporation into normative metaphysical value judgements.

    2) A FACT: A fact is a special case of the EM, in which we create an hypothesis, theory, and law to describe an OBSERVATION.

    3) THE A PRIORI: an apriori is a special case of the EM in which once we discover an hypothesis, we cannot imagine a false condition (I use the incidence of prime numbers as an example of special cases). Almost all non-reductio apriori statements fail unless they also include limits and full accounting. this does not prevent the use of apriori concepts. it limits that which can be deduced from apriori statements to ‘very little’.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-11 10:54:00 UTC

  • If, in your reasoning, you do not account for costs, you are not a philosopher b

    If, in your reasoning, you do not account for costs, you are not a philosopher but a mystic at best, and a fraud at worst. Good luck finding many philosophers who survive that test. Most are frauds and the rest are mystics.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-09 10:43:00 UTC

  • False argument to positivism. The REAL is not discovered by confirmation but by

    False argument to positivism.

    The REAL is not discovered by confirmation but by LIMITS.

    We know something is a truth candidate only when we cannot find a method of it being false.

    The fact that some idea ‘works’ tells us far less, than when some variant of that idea fails to work.

    much of sophomoric philosophy is predicated on the desire for low cost epistemology: confirmation. While science and most advanced philosophy is predicated on the use of high cost epistemology: falsification.

    So the example you give (as well as almost all sophomoric philosophy or religion) is an attempt for those without resources, those without patience, or those who are lazy, to find a discounted means of achieving their ends.

    There are no free lunches.

    Knowledge is expensive. Promises of cheap knowledge through the mind are merely deceits. Comforting deceits.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-09 08:07:00 UTC

  • “Define your terms. If you can’t define a term operationally, then don’t use it.

    —“Define your terms. If you can’t define a term operationally, then don’t use it. That’s the difference between a scientist, and a story teller.”— Felicity Sharpe

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-08 17:48:00 UTC

  • Peter (all), (again, probably epistemologically too technical for this crowd) RE

    Peter (all),

    (again, probably epistemologically too technical for this crowd)

    RE: https://www.facebook.com/peter.boettke/posts/10158213805095389

    IT’S NOT A CASE OF MISINTERPRETATION BUT MISREPRESENTATION, AND IGNORANCE

    There is a difference between:

    (a) misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

    (b) monopoly/authoritarianism(subjective/apriorism/operationalism vs objective/existential/empiricism) and competition(survival from criticism in both apriorism and empiricism)

    (c) scientists(survival from criticism) and ideologues (justificationism as in misesian/rothbardians)

    ASSERTION

    Any and every statement of social science proposed as a truth claim must survive the following forms of criticism, of which AUSTRIAN economist’s operationalism/intuitionism (misnamed ‘methodological individualism’) provides the first INNOVATION in science in over a century.

    1) categorical consistency (identity – non conflation)

    2) logical consistency (internal consistency)

    3) empirical consistency (external correspondence)

    4) existential consistency (operational language/intuitionism/methodological individualism)

    5) reciprocal consistency (objectively moral: productive, fully in formed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to productive externalities)

    6) scope consistency (full accounting, limits, and parsimony – where full accounting includes the difference in opportunity costs: the seen, unseen / intended, unintended / caused, uncaused.)

    That completes the scientific method.

    When a mainstream quantitative (correlative) economist issues his findings, in almost NO case does he test (4)(5)(6), and arguably they rarely test (1). In other words, most mainstream (correlative) economists cherry-pick in order to defend priors and desired measures.

    We succeed at what we measure. We fail at what we don’t.

    WHO IS AT FAULT

    1) The Mises Institute has polluted the informational commons for 30 years, if for no other reason than they are philosophically sophomoric to the last man. Their propagandizing by making innovative use of the internet to capture interest has created large numbers of activists who lack breadth of knowledge necessary to judge (test) the ideology they absorb.

    2) While the Christian Austrians (austrians proper) maintained a metaphysical (subconscious) accounting of the challenge of organizing the commons (an aristocratic bias), many if not all of the Cosmopolitan Austrians (jewish Austrians), like the Rousseau, ignored the cost of organizing the commons, under the pretense that man was oppressed – rather than domesticated by the aristocracy (like any other animal) through the use of war, governance, law, and policy. Yes, domesticating man was profitable. It continues to be. That does not mean man was oppressed if it means forcing him into the market and to respect life, liberty, and property.

    3) Academic Practitioners of operationalism / intuitionism / methodological-individualism AND empirical observation are almost equally philosophically sophomoric in their understanding of the innovation of the Austrian method, as the first instance of operationalism/intuitionism discovered in ANY of the sciences.

    This is because (a) philosophers were distracted by the pseudoscientific effort of trying to make analytic philosophy of language into a ‘science’. (b) Popper/Kuhn failed to complete the scientific method sufficiently to explain why it worked so successfully, and therefore how to apply it to adaptive systems (social science), and while Hayek correctly identified information as the model we should study in social science, and correctly identified the common natural law as the means of regulating that information, he failed to learn from Simmel, Weber and Mises, as well as Brouwer and Bridgman how the scientific method could be captured in law and used to regulate that information. (c) the Incentive to take advantage of fiat currency (stock in the state’s revenue and income potential) was so great that economists were as equally distracted by the use of it to obtain legitimacy and influence as were philosophers distracted by the philosophy of language to obtain legitimacy and influence.

    WHY DOES AUSTRIAN ECON MATTER?

    1) because operationalism is more important in social science than physical science, and physical science more important than in mathematics, for the simple reason that the difference between the methods of observation and survival (proof/test/criticism) are trivial in mathematics, limited in physical science, and expansive in social and cognitive science.

    2) because Austrians discovered operationalism in economics where it is most important of all sciences other than perhaps psychology.

    3) because by discovering operationalism in economics, Austrians largely completed the scientific method – despite failing to grasp that they had done so.

    KNOWING THIS, HOW DO WE REPOSITION AUSTRIAN ECON?

    1) By using both empirical and operational methods, Austrian econ’s are engaged in social science: the study of human cooperation those markets for reproduction, production of private goods and services and information, production of common goods, services, and information, and production of competition against other groups (group evolutionary strategy). THEY PRACTICE SCIENCE.

    2) By attempting to correct accumulated misinformation in the economy and assist networks of sustainable specialization and trade in adaptation, Chicago (freshwater) economists are attempting to (a)remain within rule of natural law (social science) and preserving the individual’s (b) ability to forecast and plan, (c) protection from retroactive legislation (policy) required by natural law. THEY PRACTICE MORAL SCIENCE.

    3) By attempting to maximize consumption, mainstream economists ignore social science, violate natural law, and insert disinformation into the economy to the point where disinformation and malincentives accumulate on longer time horizons at greater scale, than individuals, organizations, the economy, the nation, and the civilization can adapt to. THEY PRACTICE DECEITFUL, IMMORAL, PSEUDOSCIENCE.

    WHERE CAN YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT AUSTRIAN ECON’S PLACE IN HISTORY?

    This post contains pointers to a series of articles that position Menger/Mises and their discovery in intellectual history as part of the movement of late 19th and early 20th century that failed, and allowed us to be subject to 100 years of social pseudoscience.

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/scientific.praxeology/permalink/750994611656577/

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-07 09:54:00 UTC

  • Joshua Claiming to have provided a warranty of due diligence against error, bias

    Joshua

    Claiming to have provided a warranty of due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism (pseudorationalism, pseudoscience) and deceit, without having done so.

    In practice this means following the scientific method, but the completeness of that method’s practice is the question.

    In social science as in psychology, we know that reported preference data is basically impossible to trust, whereas demonstrated preference data largely contradicts reported data.

    We know that in psychology, they’ve spent the past 30 years trying to escape pseudoscience, because projection in psychology (observation) is as impossible as reported data.

    We konw that both economics (vs social science) and cognitive science (vs psychology) caused both disciplines to reform. We know genetics and archaeology ( vs anthropology ) caused the discipline to to begin (slowly) to reform. And a present we are seeing demographic and voting patterns refute both educational ‘science’ and ‘political science’. All for the same reasons: subjective reporting is impossible wither it be self observation or other-observation.

    So, when we say that the scientific method requires a warranty of due diligence, and that we require empircal due diiligence in particular, then the means by which we warranty that we are free of error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, and deceit largely depends upon the construction of instrumentation, and the recording of data that is not subject to subjective interpretation.

    Secondly, the most common error after subjective reporting, is temporal variability or what is often called ‘externalities’. In other words, you might measure something and think it’s a good, but you fail to measure the externalities (consequences) which might be very bad (the energy consumption of producing a photovoltaic panel has until recently been far in excess of its lifetime productivity.)

    Thirdly, one must report on one’s criteria of decidability in the statement of a judgement of good, neutral, or bad. Meaning, one cannot take for granted that one’s value judgements are rational, and certainly not scientific. What are those priors? have we tested them? Or in other words, you cannot deduce from false premises, and you cannot equally deduce from false value judgements – doing so is an other form of reporting error.

    But that is not the full scope we must warranty against. That full scope is:

    1 – categorical consistency (identity)

    2 – logical consistency (internally consistent)

    3 – empirical consistency (externally correspondent)

    4 – existential consistency (by use of operational language)

    5 – scope consistency (full accounting, limits, and parsimony – where full accounting includes deltas in opportunity costs.)

    6 – reciprocity consistency (or what we call objective morality)

    Unfortunately, while most people are reluctant to comment on the physical sciences when they do not feel that they understand them, the average person at every level of society feels qualified to comment on psychological, social, political, and economic phenomenon that are in fact quite more complex than the physical.

    But then this is a cognitive bias we all share. That’s because we evolved to negotiate on behalf of our reproductive interests (genes) and not to tell the truth. The average person equates truth with ‘in my, my kin’s, my alliances’, and my nation;s reproductive interests.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Curt Doolittle,

    The Propertarian Institute,

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-05 11:31:00 UTC

  • THE PATTERN OF HUMAN ERROR IN PSEUDOSCIENCE (from elsewhere) Mark, There is a pa

    THE PATTERN OF HUMAN ERROR IN PSEUDOSCIENCE

    (from elsewhere)

    Mark,

    There is a pattern to human error.

    There is a particular pattern to 20th c. error, if not to enlightenment error, and certainly to French->Cosmopolitan error.

    One does not need to necessarily know the answer to a scientific question as much as know the categories of error that humans make in pursuing answers to questions. In other words, when confronted with a complex problem, it is just as valuable to look at cognitive, personal, social, cultural, and methodological biases as it is to explore the question. (Einstein’s late discovery is an example of our assumption of the nature of such a basic concept as length.)

    Anti-spanking, like anti-fist-fighting, like anti-duelling, like anti-hanging (death penalty), like anti-war sentiments fall into a category of common human errors. Just like democracy, universalism, scale, peace, and predictability fall into that same category of human error.

    Maximizing the pleasure or comfort of individual life on a society-wide scale is the result of conspicuous consumption in an era of windfall-wealth.

    A simple person can isolate a particular cause effect relationship but this fails to make take full accounting of the consequences of ‘the peace’: fragility, vulnerability, overextension, risk expansion.

    How do you know that the luxury good of not-doing X (in this case spanking) is in fact a good, rather than an example of hyperconsumption that causes externalities that are the opposite of what one predicts?

    And is not the Period of the 19th and 20th century science not one of a series of optimistic predictions the culmination of which are rather obvious bads?

    Keynesian economics appears to be a good. Democracy appears to be good. Universal enfranchisement seems to be a good. No fault divorce seemed to be a good. Social security seems to be a good. Welfare seems to be a good.

    We have attempted to create many goods that are dependent upon what we call ‘science’. But the experiment that we have been conducting since the enlightenment seems entirely predicated upon the physical sciences – and almost everything we have attempted in the social sciences that was the product of the Cosmopolitan enlightenment (Boaz, Marx, Freud, Adorno-et-al) appears to be false. If for no other reason than the time scale of our measurements.

    In other words, our SENSES and our REASONING from our senses appears to be just as erroneous in social science as it was in physical science prior to empiricism. And we solved much more of physical science precisely because it’s more simple than social science given the rate at which changes are reflected in the universe.

    We have mostly overthrown all Boaz, Marx-Keynes, Freud by the replacement of their disciplines with anthropology, genetics, and cognitive science. Our libertarian and conservative movements are attempting to overthrow Adorno-et-al. But the reason that we are the victims of pseudoscience in anthropology, politics, sociology, psychology, economics, and to a lesser degree in physics, came out of the enlightenment – an era in which each society (british, american, german, french, jewish/cosmopolitan, and russian) attempted to state their LOCAL group evolutionary strategy as a universal moral good, as a justification for overthrowing the church-monarchy balance of powers with a political monopoly we call ‘democracy’.

    Now, I work on this problem, so does Taleb – albeit we work from different perspectives – but any number of historians work on it (Ferguson, Acemoglu, Emmanuel Todd et all.) And we are all engaged in attempting to correct these erroneous presumptions that have caused the accumulated damage to western civilization despite the vast returns on (largely 19th c.) science.

    And it’s very easy, from the perspective of “humans are making these kinds of errors all over the place for these historical reasons”, simply because of the insufficiency of what we call the scientific method, to identify areas of high probably of error by the kind of arguments made and the means of decidability those arguments depend upon.

    And spanking, like all anti-violence, anti-stress, hyperconsumptive arguments fall into that category.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-05 07:46:00 UTC

  • “Curt, what readings do you recommend for epistemology? Specifically, I want to

    —“Curt, what readings do you recommend for epistemology? Specifically, I want to source the work you put into testimonialism. And, can you add those to your reading list?”—

    I relied on I think four different axis:

    1) I consider Testimonialism a completion of the critical rationalism project. You can read popper for that. If you understand the philosophy of science and falsification vs justificationism that’s half the battle.

    2) I came in via Locke/Weber/Mises/Rothbard/Hoppe’s attempt to reduce all moral questions to statements of property rights, and used Haidt’s research to tie it back to evolutionary biology. And that taught me that the only empirical social science was the common (natural) law.

    3) I have had a long history of programming and an equally long-running issue with mathematical platonism and so I have spent a significant amount of time on the foundations (theory) of mathematics, and computer science

    4) Hayek is the author that I most relate to. And he was the first that I know of to identify the shift from thinking in terms of forces, to electromagnetism, to information – not just in physics – but as the general model for all thought. This corresponds with the evolution of computer science out of mathematics (which is chiefly concerned with forces).

    If you were to spend some time reading, my pieces in the FB group “scientific praxeology’ (which is a kind of slur against Misesians) cover the vast majority of the subject.

    Here is how I look at it:

    When we hit the late 1800’s we surpassed human scale in nearly everything we did, and because of the corrupt incentives provided by the developments of universal democracy, marxism/keynesianism, statistical analysis, Cantorian mathematics, and the distraction of the philosophical community as it tried to create a science out of the study of language, the movement that involve Poincare’, Brouwer, Bridgman, Popper, Hayek, and Mises (and others) including the attempt to create strict construction in law, all failed.

    I think what I have tried (and I think succeeded) in accomplishing is the unification of science, philosophy/morality, and law into a single discipline (Testimonialism) by completing the failed project of the 20th century in defining the means of falsifying enough dimensions of reality that we can implement demands for truthful speech in law.

    Everything else that I’ve done flows from this. The argumentative technique that you see my followers use, is an application of testimonialism (epistemology) and propertarianism (ethics) under what we consider to be a formal logic of natural law.

    SOURCING.

    Well I just gave you the sources, but you know, putting that rather obscure set of blocks together requires fairly deep knowledge of a set of complex disciplines, and it’s non trivial.

    I think it’s better to read my writing and work backward from it rather than to read others and attempt to understand it.

    (But ask Ayelam Valentine Agaliba, Bill Joslin, Josh Jeppson, William Butchman, Moritz Bierling, James Augustus Berens, Con Eli Khan, Ricky Saini … and the whole gang that comments less frequently. I mean, I don’t know how Eli Harman did it. He’s just intuited it I think. Josh says that if you have a grasp of any advanced science and the scientific methods used in it, then its a lot easier. But honestly, there is a reason no one did it before me….. I am not sure it was possible before. It was too much of a leap prior to widespread understanding of the problems of computer science vs mathematics.)

    SEE THIS SERIES OF READINGS

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/scientific.praxeology/permalink/750994611656577/

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-03 21:01:00 UTC

  • (depends on your definition of philosophy. we don’t have a word in the west for

    (depends on your definition of philosophy. we don’t have a word in the west for ‘thinker’ that separates Reason from Mysticism the same way that Scientist is separated from Philosopher. But as far as I know there is only one family of philosophers: European and its reaction by Indo-Europeans, Greek, and it’s reaction by Confucius, and Anglo and the reaction by all after the enlightenment. )

    Source date (UTC): 2017-01-03 07:34:00 UTC