Category: Epistemology and Method

WHEN WE SAY SCIENTIFIC WHAT OPERATIONS ARE WE REFERRING TO?

(important) (scientific method) (informational commons)

It’s not the subject matter, nor the method of inquiry, nor the method of hypothesizing that’s classifiably scientific or that places any limits on what we call scientific investigation.

ORIGINATION OF HYPOTHESIS: INCREASED INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO PERCEPTION

We can produce an hypothesis through free association, or random selection. The method of arrival doesn’t tell us anything. In general we must increase the amount of information that we possess either by concentrating time, expanding time, expanding scale, decreasing scale, increasing precision of physical instrumentation, increasing precision of logical instrumentation, increasing precision of institutional instrumentation. Once we have increased information by reducing it to an analogy to experience that we CAN perceive, we can then compare and make judgements and offer hypotheses that transcend the limitations of perception, time, scale, and instrumentation.

The function of the discipline of science – and that which we call the scientific method – is to test each dimension of a hypothesis to determine whether it survives. And by survival increase the burden that we place on the testing; and by failure discover new potential ideas (avenues) for inquiry (free association).

Because of this, the discipline of science, with which we practice the scientific method, functions (like its origins in law), as a warranty of due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion(and substitution), overloading(pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, propaganda), and deceit.

In the process of due diligence, we search (a process of wayfinding), for possible causal explanations.

INVESTIGATION: CONSTRUCTION OF INSTRUMENTATION

The act of scientific *investigation* consists not in the warranties, but in developing categorical, logical, physical, and institutional instrumentation with which to reduce what we cannot directly experience, to that which we can experience, so that we can detect marginal differences, and make decisions, which serve as inputs to our free association (search of memory for patterns).

So just as we use justification for moral and legal argument, and criticism for truth and scientific argument. Just as we use the golden rule to assert desirable ends, and the silver rule to prevent negative ends, we also construct instrumentation to assert positive tests, and we apply the scientific method, to conduct negative tests.

Most science requires the invention of tools to extend our perception such that we can reduce the imperceptible to an analogy to experience with which we can make comparisons and render judgments.

DUE DILIGENCE: WARRANTY OF TRUTHFULNESS

But why must we perform due diligence?

True Enough? True Enough For What Purpose

———————————————————————

Comprehension?

Further Association?

Planning action?

Acting?

Risking?

– or –

Communication?

Negotiation?

Advice?

Ethical license?

Moral license?

Risk of loss license?

Risk of harm license?

Risk of Death License?

There are greater consequences to our utterances than there are to our thoughts. What happens in your bedroom is beyond the reach of the commons, and so long as it does not enter the commons there is not a moral question. What happens in your living room among guests may enter the commons or not. What actions and words you speak in public are de facto within the commons. If you PUBLISH and especially do so for any form of profit, then you are manufacturing a good (or harm) that is not only entered into the commons but for the duration of its existence. There is no difference between shipping a poisonous medicine, an incorrect recipe or plan, a product that if misused can harm, or a product that can harm without extraordinary due diligence.

We tolerate emotional outbursts from one another. We tolerate error from one another, we tolerate bias sometimes, we tolerate suggestion infrequently, and we react negatively do deception and harm. Moral intuitions evolved to cause us to retaliate even at very high cost, against those who engage in parasitism by any means, including the imposition of harm directly or indirectly.

NO MAN WANTS TO PAY THE COST OF REGULATION AGAINST HARM – HE PREFERS TO EXTERNALIZE THE COSTS PARASITICALLY, FOR TESTING HIS UTTERANCES.

Parasitism in production, consumption, defense, and information are all natural human behaviors: we take discounts where we can get away with them.

But the history of civilization is the history of incremental suppression of parasitism from murder, to violence, to theft, to fraud, to conspiracy. And the (Popperian) insight that science occurs not only personally, interpersonally, and socially, and that we do harm by pseudoscientific and insufficient diligence, because we have insufficient incentive to warranty our utterances.

The scientific method, at least for scientists, asks us to use instrumentation and judgement to warranty our utterances against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overlaoding, and decet. It just so happens that in an effort to speak the truth, through these process of warranties, we are more likely to discover that truth.

THE X/Y AXIS OF DECIDABILITY IN THE SUFFICIENCY OF WARRANTY

x—> Epistemic process, Y —> Due diligence against harm.

There is no difference between the production of any good whether physical, normative, institutional, or intellectual. It follows the same process from free association, to individual rational testing, to individual or group hypothesis, to thorough testing, to theory to social application testing, to law, to universal metaphysical assumption about the nature of the universe we live in: physical and totally deterministic, or sentient, and less so.

What differs only is which output we value that is produced in that process AND the level of ‘truthfulness’ necessary to act upon it without harm to ourselves or others.

COSTS PROVIDE DECIDABILITY IN CHOICE

We must always, if we are to avoid error and immorality, remember that the reason that the ancients failed to solve the problem of social science was that they ignored costs. Whether this was a polite mannerism of the wealthy crippling their reason, or the natural consequence of cost exposing our different interests, or fear of overlapping religion and politics, morality and law, and drawing their ire. The separation is either an error, a bias, or a deceit.

The reasons we did not solve the problem of social science, are the same reasons popper did not correctly identify the scientific equivalent of the mathematical axiom of choice: cost.

The universe takes the least cost route. Man takes the least cost route. Scientific investigation can and does proceed successfully by taking the least cost route. And it is the least cost route to information expansion that we CAN and do use to provide decidability in matters of inquiry. And that is what we do.

Man is a very simple creature. We observe changes in state of assets that we value (calorically). These changes in assets produce chemical reactions we call emotions. Our mind evolved to assist us in obtaining those emotions. Our minds use memory to conduct wayfinding. We then criticize our wayfinding. And of the possible found ways, we take that which provides the greatest return in the shortest time, for the least effort, with the greatest degree of certainty, ad the lowest risk.

Becuase we are merely a part of nature. And memory is very useful for the production of energy, and the conservation of energy, despite its extremely high cost of operation.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute