(From Original Post: https://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle/posts/10156430444672264)
Lets get posturing out of the way first: I can judge from your argument and sentence structure I have somewhere in the vicinity of 15-30 IQ points on you (at a minimum), from your activity stream, far greater agency, have built multiple technology companies of scale, and am in the process of making a more than marginal contribution to human thought. That’s said, if we’re both done with appeals to achievement, let’s go through what non-argument you’re making and see if there is anything to it or not.
Now onto discussion.
1. Original criticism makes two accusations: (a) pseudoscience, and (b) poor or lazy writing. The second (c) mentions something about scientific laws.
As for (b), I don’t ‘dumb down’ my sentences in the postwar model. I’m perfectly happy with Jefferson, Lincoln, and Seneca’s prose. Writing for publication is different from sketching for followers. Dumbing it down is work I avoid. In fact, the higher on the Flesch Kincaid scale my writing lands, the more natural it is for me. (You clearly haven’t read Menger or Kant.) Although followers do say that experience with latin grammar is helpful. But yes, the accusation of laziness is correct. Although I consider it economically. It’s not worth my time to invest the extra effort.
As for (a) Pseudoscience, well, I think we can address that with a little effort below.
As for (c) “scientific laws”, I said “science and law” meaning that both the hard sciences and law require operational prose. This is logical because in large part, western civilization has always relied upon tort (empirical law) into prehistory, and our discourse, debate, law, reason, and science, all developed out of that prior influence.
However, to put a sharper point on it. In the sequence: free association > hypothesis > theory > law > convention, each interstitial consists of a method of falsification. And whether a law consists of a mathematical expression of constant relations in deterministic (physical) or a verbal expression of constant relations in semi-deterministic (behavioral), is merely dependent upon the determinism of the discipline. Most economic laws can only be expressed symbolically because the categories change. Most physical laws can, in addition, be expressed mathematically for the simple reason that the categories do not change. “The universe can’t choose to outwit itself. Humans choose to outwit the universe and capture the difference in calories.”
2. Regarding:
—“Also, no matter what language scientists write in, the rules of grammar of that language apply, as do the majority of the terms used therein.”—
This statement depends on whether you use the definition of grammar of (a) the 19th and early 20th century (normatively) that was developed for mass education, or (b) the definition of grammar of the enlightenment prior to the revolutionary wars, and definition of grammar of the post-Turing (postwar) period (Operationally) (Chomsky). I use the latter: Universal Grammar > Generative Grammar > Rules of continuous, recursive disambiguation.
Secondly, once one defines grammar “operationally” not “normatively”, as Continuous Recursive Disambiguation, one is forced to reorganize Semantics(dimensions of reference) as limited by grammar (rules of continuous disambiguation).
Thirdly, once we do so, we discover that we have produced many, many ‘grammars’ (rules of continuous disambiguation, each limiting or expanding semantic dimensions), including Mathematical (positional), Logical (dimensional), Operational (actions), Procedural(programming), Contracts(property), Testimony(observability), Ordinary Language, Narrative, fictional, and the Fictionalisms.
Fourth; once we account for the influence that the work of Popper Kuhn thru Kripke, and the work of Brouwer(physics), Bridgman(Math), Mises (economics), and the Operational, Operationalist, Intuitionistic, movements have had on the sciences, we see that the current language of at least the physical sciences is limited to Operational Grammar (and semantics). And that this difference in grammars separates the sciences (hard) from the pseudosciences (soft): psychology, sociology, literature, pseudo-history, theology, philosophy.
Fifth, Operational grammar contains the most observable (empirical), least inflationary and conflationary (most deflationary) and most correspondent description (Testimony) that is possible – and therefore the most parsimonious in information EVEN IF FAR MORE PEDANTIC IN PROSE.
Although we can, at some point, reduce SOME phenomenon to mathematical descriptions (constant relations) as long as the relations (categories, relations and values) are constant (physical world). Even if we cannot always do so because the relations are inconstant (economics, sentience). Although we have discovered that all economic phenomenon produce some set of symmetries (lie groups etc) which show that even in economics the hierarchy of the physical word (subatomic, atomic, chemical, biochemical, biological, ecological) also applies to a lesser degree to the discretionary (less deterministic) phenomenon that includes human memory, forecasting, and choice.
CLOSING
As far as I know I have no peers in these matters. As far as I know you have just stumbled onto one of my sketches, made for my followers, and either presumed you understood, or counter-signaled against prose you couldn’t understand. I don’t know.
I just know it is in the nature of men to police the commons and you think that is what you are doing. Well done. But with this ‘crime’ brought before the judge so to speak, you merely err in your accusation.
-Cheers