Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • VERY VERY IMPORTANT SET OF IDEAS Lets translate Kantian Rationalism into scienti

    https://wordpress.com/post/propertarianism.com/39903A VERY VERY IMPORTANT SET OF IDEAS

    Lets translate Kantian Rationalism into scientific and testimonial speech.

    I’m going to teach epistemology by using economics in order to repair much of the damage that has been done to epistemology by the Platonists(mathematics), and the Rationalists (Kant etc), and the Analytic Philosophers (Just about all of the 20th century).

    *Reality consists of a limited number of actionable dimensions and by using economics we are able to include all of them, and therefore avoid the errors that the platonists, rationalists, and analytics have introduced into philosophy.

    “DEFINITIONS AND SERIES”

    1) Empirical:

    Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. “From Observation”.

    2) A Priori:

    “independent of observation.”

    There are three dimensions to claims of a priori truth claim:

    i) Aprioricity vs A posteriori,

    ii) Analyticity vs Syntheticity, and

    iii) Necessity vs Contingency

    Therefore we can produce at least the following spectrum of a priori claims.

    (a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: 2+2=4 and all deductions thereof.

    (b) Synthetic A Priori : Increasing money increases inflation.

    (c) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: Childless women will have no grandchildren.

    (d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.”

    This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision:

    (a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori

    (b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori

    (c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori

    (d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori

    Which corresponds to the testable dimensions of numbers.

    (a) identity (numbers)

    (b) logical (sets)

    (c) empirical (ratios)

    (d) existential (constructible)

    (e) time is unaccounted for in the a priori model.

    Which corresponds to dimensions of physical reality

    (a) point

    (b) line

    (c) shape

    (d) object

    (e) time (change)

    Which corresponds to a subset of the dimensions of actionable reality , the full set of which we express in fully express in Testimonialism as:

    (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)

    (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)

    (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)

    (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object)

    (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)

    (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes)

    (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?)

    (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.)

    Which together account for the totality of actionable reality (by man) that we currently know of (and its quite hard to imagine anything else is possible).

    DEDUCTIBILITY FROM A-PRIORI PROPOSITIONS

    Ergo, while one can claim the tautological truth (the Analytic A Priori), and one can claim the ideal(logical) truth (the Necessary Synthetic A Priori), one cannot ever know the non-tautological(identity, The Synthetic A Priori), non-ideal(Contingent Synthetic A Priori ) truth, because we rarely possess sufficient information to do so.

    What does this mean? It means that we can deduce from Analytic A Priori and Necessary Synthetic A Priori, but we cannot deduce from General Synthetic A Priori, or Contingent Synthetic A Priori Statements because we cannot know if such deductions are true (for specific cases).

    So the problem with making a priori claims in economics is that you can say statements about statements but not about consequences in reality. You can only say ‘all other things being equal’, we should observe this effect. You cannot say, “we will always observe this effect’. Why? Because we don’t always observe such effects, and economics is rife with examples, the most commonly cited being unemployment does not necessarily increase, and prices are sticky – and for good reason.

    (NOTE: Now that’s sufficiently complicated that I almost confused myself, and I might need a day away from it to make sure I didn’t screw up what someone might read into those last two paragraphs, but otherwise it’s correct.)

    The innovation that menger brought to the table was to bring the principle of relative change from calculus to economics. The principle contribution of hayek was to transform transform the use of materials to the use of information as the model for all social phenomenon. The principle contribution of Popper was to bring the information model to philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of science and to model scientific investigation on a market. This followed the transition in physics from the use of electromagnetic fields to that of information. Which then brought physics and mathematics into full correspondence.

    What Hayek and popper and the classicals and the keynesians all missed and brouwer in math, bridgman in physics, and mises in economics, and the entire analytic and continental movements missed was that man cannot make truth claims.

    For example, we did not think the ideas of time(velocity of change), length(distance), and space(volume) varied. Einstein’s discovery was the same as mises’, brouwer’s and bridgman’s: that all our pretense of axioms are false. If our idea of length and time can be false, every other idea that is obvious to our senses and reason can be false.

    The difference between economics and physics is in :

    (a) volition vs determinism

    (b) reciprocity vs transformation

    (c) sympathetic testing of rational choice vs entropy.

    THE SCIENTIFIC (UNIVERSAL EPISTEMOLOGICAL) METHOD

    “DEFLATION”

    (0) The purpose of the scientific method is to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our statements about reality.

    “DIMENSION”

    (1) We can make:

    (a) statements about experiences(metaphysical), or

    (b) statements about statements(ideal), or

    (c) statements about existential properties(existential/real), or

    (d) statements about existential cause and effect(change).

    (e) statements about volition

    “CLOSURE”

    (2) No test of any dimension can be completed without appeal to the subsequent dimension. (ie: godel. this is profoundly important. no dimension can provide a self-test.) Ergo, all speech is deflationary.

    “CRITICAL RATIONALISM”

    (3) All descriptive propositions of existential cause and effect (change) are contingent.

    “CRITICAL PREFERENCE”

    (4) The only method of decidability between two or more non-false cause and effect propositions(change) is cost. This is a clarification of Occam’s razor. And appears to be true, for the simple reason that nature cannot but choose the least cost method, and man generally chooses the least cost method – even if we cannot know the full causal density of his considerations.

    DUE DILIGENCE AGAINST IGNORANCE, ERROR, BIAS, DECEIT

    (5) The only method of making a truth claim is to perform due diligence in each dimension of reality (a ‘premise’ of the consequential dimension) applicable to the cause and effect phenomenon. (ie:physical world can’t engage in rational choice, or voluntary exchanges)

    Again, those dimensions are:

    (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)

    (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)

    (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)

    (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object)

    (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)

    (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes)

    (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?)

    (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.)

    “DARWINIAN SURVIVAL OF IDEAS”

    (6) All propositions (facts, propositions, theories) must survive the markets for criticism at the observer-mental-testing, observer-action testing, market application testing, and market survival testing. In other words, the universal epistemological method follows this lifecycle:

    (a) observation

    (b) *Free association* (F -> observation)

    (c) test of reasonability (F -> free association )

    (d) *Hypothesis*

    (e) Perform Due Diligence (a-h) above. (F -> free association )

    (f) *Theory*

    (g) Publish to the market for application

    (h) Survival in the market for application(F ->observation – of failures )

    (i) *Law*

    (j) Survival in the market for refutation (F-> observation – of failures)

    (k) *Habituation into metaphysical assumptions*

    “SPECIAL CASES”

    7) This universal epistemological process is universal despite the fact that various results can be identified with it. Because just as we find prime numbers largely by trial and error we find special cases of statements by trial and error. But when we find these statements we have to ask ourselves what is it we are finding?

    (a) Sensations: statements about experiences(metaphysical), or

    (b) Logic(analytic): statements about statements(ideal), or

    (c) Fact: statements about existential properties(existential/real), or

    (d) Theory(Synthetic): statements about existential cause and effect(change).

    (e) Morality: statements about volition

    (f) Testimony: statements about the fully accounted change in state of a given instance of the statement we are making (I have a credit card report that shows John Doe, on 1/1/2018 at 4:06:32 exchanged $2.00 for a hershey’s candy bar at Don’s newspaper stand then existing on 225th and Main in Cityname.”)

    EXAMPLES

    The most common special cases that we find are those that are impossible to contradict at the same dimension. (a,b,c,d,e) above.

    (a) Sense(Metaphysics): we cannot sense a ball is green and red all over at the same time.

    (b) Logic: If I issue credit on fractional reserves, I will increase the supply of money.

    (c) Fact: The differences between commodity money and note money include but are not limited to: liquidity, demand, exchange fee or interest gain, portability(weight/volume), reserve risk, vendor risk.

    (d) Theory: All other things being equal, if we increase the supply of money, prices will eventually increase accordingly and lower the purchasing power of payments against debts.

    (e) Morality: All other things being equal, when we force majoritarian decisions on the polity by using representative democracy, we create a monopoly out of the market for the commons, and eliminate the possibility of cooperating on means even if we pursue different ends.

    “ECONOMIC LEVERS”

    Polities can generally use this series of levers to affect the economy.

    -Near Term-

    (a) Monetary Policy

    (b) Fiscal Policy (Spending)

    -Medium Term-

    (c) Trade Policy (import export policies, foreign trade policies)

    (d) Regulatory/Legislative Policy (also includes price controls etc)

    (e) Immigration-Deporation policy / Expand military, WPA etc.

    -Long Term-

    (f) Human Capital Policy (Education policy)

    (g) Institutional Policy (laws, regulations, bureaucracies, institutions, banks)

    (h) Strategic (military) Policy

    “SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS”

    The schools of economics reflect the culture and class of their origins. These groups do not acknowledge that their strategies and biases are as I”ve stated them here but their research evidence states the contrary. So I have tried to provide a general Spectrum of the institutions by what I understand is their culture/class bias.

    a) “Austrian / Rothbardian” (“Jewish”, Separatist) : Rule of Credit, Parasitic Optimum, Separatist / Anarchism.

    +Financial Class Bias. Anti-Commons Bias.

    (As far as I know, no university teaches the Jewish Austrian method.)

    b) “Mason-ism” (“Anglo Libertarian”, Right ) : Optimum Rule of Law, Nash Optimum, Minimal State / Christian Monarchy

    +Entrepreneurial Class Bias.

    (the only University I know of using this program is George Mason.)

    The “Mason-Libertarian” school places greater emphasis on maximizing the voluntary cooperation of individuals and organizations through reduction of impediments to ethical and moral cooperation.

    c) “Classical” (“Chicago”, Anglo, Center Right), Rule of Law, Insured Nash Optimum, Parliamentary State / Classical Liberalism.

    +Middle classes bias. (I would argue ‘not biased’)

    All other things being equal, the Chicago school places greater emphasis on policy that insures against error and failure by seeking formulas and rules that investors, businesses, and consumers can predict, thereby preserving rule of law, and maintaining the prohibition on discretionary rule.

    d) “Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, Center Left) : Mixed Discretionary Rule, Pareto Optimum, Social Democracy

    +Working Class Bias, Consumer Bias, Female bias(anti-male bias). Minority(anti-white) bias. Underclass Bias (anti-entreprenurial bias).

    All other things being equal the mainstream seeks to optimize consumption at all times, using every lever available, and favors abandoning rule of law, and adopting rule that is increasingly empirical, reactive, and discretionary.

    e) “Left Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, “Jewish left”) : Authoritarian Rule, Anti-Aristocracy(War), Extractive Maximum (Predatory), Socialism/Communism

    +Underclass (outsider) Bias.

    This is the Krugman/Stiglitz/Delong club of leftist economists maximizing both consumption and financial extraction as a means of undermining western aristocratic civilization and western norms and traditions and rule of law.

    ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

    –“…performative…”

    You keep using terms that I don’t think you understand, which is why Kant invented those terms: to conflate the empirical and the rational. He was afraid of the anglo empirical revolution. For good reason.

    —“…morality…”—

    Correct. Morality (reciprocity) requires inter-agent action. So does all economic activity. Economic activity can consist of moral (reciprocal) and immoral (unequal, irreciprocal) actions. We can make a claim that statements about irreciprocal (involuntary) actions in economics are immoral or we can claim that they are false. Whether you understand it or not, Mises is saying that its false not immoral, when he says ‘it’s not economics’.

    —“That you can verify something in reality doesn’t mean you need to empirically test it.”—

    We cannot solve the problem of ‘all other things being equal’ in order to understand why predicted phenomenon either vary widely, or do not exist.

    The neutrality of money does not appear to exist, because relative changes can propagate into various niches that absorb those changes, just like pennies being lost in landfills (so to speak).

    —“I can observe that two plus two equals four but I don’t need to design an empirical test to prove it.”—

    Yes but then it’s a tautology, whereas the nearly all economic phenomenon are only general rules.

    —“Likewise, I can observe that minimum wages increase unemployment all other things being equal, but I don’t need to conduct an empirical test to prove it.”—

    That’s just the thing, we aren’t trying to prove that it should increase unemployment, only that it turns out it that a lot of the time it doesn’t. Or rather, that the consequences of it are externalized and invisible. So where does it go? Well first it increases prices to consumers in the case of minimum wage workers it maintains employment but it prevents rotation of new workers into the economy. And the question is, is that a net gain or a net loss for everyone? Well, it’s immoral to both conduct the test, and the consequences are immoral. But does that mean the those consequences are not empirically measurable and therefore whether the policy is net beneficial? That is what economists measure.

    Secondly, if we think some good is achieved through raising the minimum wage, how can we accommodate the externality of lower rotation through the job pool? For example what if raising the minimum wage prevents least common denominator service economies? (Racing to the bottom). Is that something people prefer? In other words, would you rather have better service and higher unemployment (and greater subsidies for non-performers?)

    The underlying question is this: if prices are increasing profits can we capture more of that increase for hourly employees than we do for management, owners, and investors (or creditors)?

    So there is no difference between increasing the supply of money in order to temporarily increase consumer purchasing power at the expense of debt-holders, and increasing the minimum wage in order to capture a rise in prices for laborers at the expense of owners and investors.

    Or stated even more simply: given that economies are always changing velocities, can we redirect changes in state between participants without ‘killing the goose’ (destroying the system of production).

    Well the answer is a moral one, not a logical or empirical one.

    And the reason to claim otherwise is to use the false pretense of ‘unscientific’ or ‘logical positivism’ or ‘a priori’ or ‘logical contradiction’ to create a straw man as a means of preventing investigation into the science of economic immorality: economic manipulation by the forcible involuntary transfer of property between individuals.

    (Which is exactly what mises and rothbard were doing: shaming via straw man using obscurantism by overloading even well intended people with half truths that when fully expressed are false.)

    That’s the question people ask with these issues. No one questions if it will increase unemployment. They question the limit before it increases negative unemployment. The same as taxation. No one questions that taxation will produce declining revenues. But empirically, what is the maximum taxation that they govt can achieve before that happens – and what are the consequences.

    CLOSING

    Now you probably have no idea how profound this bit of text is. And I suspect you could spend a few months integrating it into your thought process. But that’s in large part, the state of the art in epistemology.

    THUS ENDETH THE LESSON.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, UkraineUpdated Mar 13, 2018, 12:26 AM

    Source date (UTC): 2018-03-13 00:26:00 UTC

  • A Very Very Important Set Of Ideas

    Lets translate Kantian Rationalism into scientific and testimonial speech. I’m going to teach epistemology by using economics in order to repair much of the damage that has been done to epistemology by the Platonists(mathematics), and the Rationalists (Kant etc), and the Analytic Philosophers (Just about all of the 20th century). *Reality consists of a limited number of actionable dimensions and by using economics we are able to include all of them, and therefore avoid the errors that the platonists, rationalists, and analytics have introduced into philosophy. “DEFINITIONS AND SERIES” 1) Empirical: Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. “From Observation”. 2) A Priori: “independent of observation.” There are three dimensions to claims of a priori truth claim: i) Aprioricity vs A posteriori, ii) Analyticity vs Syntheticity, and iii) Necessity vs Contingency Therefore we can produce at least the following spectrum of a priori claims. (a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: 2+2=4 and all deductions thereof. (b) Synthetic A Priori : Increasing money increases inflation. (c) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: Childless women will have no grandchildren. (d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.” This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision: (a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori (b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori (c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori (d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori Which corresponds to the testable dimensions of numbers. (a) identity (numbers) (b) logical (sets) (c) empirical (ratios) (d) existential (constructible) (e) time is unaccounted for in the a priori model. Which corresponds to dimensions of physical reality (a) point (b) line (c) shape (d) object (e) time (change) Which corresponds to a subset of the dimensions of actionable reality , the full set of which we express in fully express in Testimonialism as: (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point) (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line) (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape) (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object) (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change) (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes) (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?) (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.) Which together account for the totality of actionable reality (by man) that we currently know of (and its quite hard to imagine anything else is possible). DEDUCTIBILITY FROM A-PRIORI PROPOSITIONS Ergo, while one can claim the tautological truth (the Analytic A Priori), and one can claim the ideal(logical) truth (the Necessary Synthetic A Priori), one cannot ever know the non-tautological(identity, The Synthetic A Priori), non-ideal(Contingent Synthetic A Priori ) truth, because we rarely possess sufficient information to do so. What does this mean? It means that we can deduce from Analytic A Priori and Necessary Synthetic A Priori, but we cannot deduce from General Synthetic A Priori, or Contingent Synthetic A Priori Statements because we cannot know if such deductions are true (for specific cases). So the problem with making a priori claims in economics is that you can say statements about statements but not about consequences in reality. You can only say ‘all other things being equal’, we should observe this effect. You cannot say, “we will always observe this effect’. Why? Because we don’t always observe such effects, and economics is rife with examples, the most commonly cited being unemployment does not necessarily increase, and prices are sticky – and for good reason. (NOTE: Now that’s sufficiently complicated that I almost confused myself, and I might need a day away from it to make sure I didn’t screw up what someone might read into those last two paragraphs, but otherwise it’s correct.) The innovation that menger brought to the table was to bring the principle of relative change from calculus to economics. The principle contribution of hayek was to transform transform the use of materials to the use of information as the model for all social phenomenon. The principle contribution of Popper was to bring the information model to philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of science and to model scientific investigation on a market. This followed the transition in physics from the use of electromagnetic fields to that of information. Which then brought physics and mathematics into full correspondence. What Hayek and popper and the classicals and the keynesians all missed and brouwer in math, bridgman in physics, and mises in economics, and the entire analytic and continental movements missed was that man cannot make truth claims. For example, we did not think the ideas of time(velocity of change), length(distance), and space(volume) varied. Einstein’s discovery was the same as mises’, brouwer’s and bridgman’s: that all our pretense of axioms are false. If our idea of length and time can be false, every other idea that is obvious to our senses and reason can be false. The difference between economics and physics is in : (a) volition vs determinism (b) reciprocity vs transformation (c) sympathetic testing of rational choice vs entropy. THE SCIENTIFIC (UNIVERSAL EPISTEMOLOGICAL) METHOD “DEFLATION” (0) The purpose of the scientific method is to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our statements about reality. “DIMENSION” (1) We can make: (a) statements about experiences(metaphysical), or (b) statements about statements(ideal), or (c) statements about existential properties(existential/real), or (d) statements about existential cause and effect(change). (e) statements about volition “CLOSURE” (2) No test of any dimension can be completed without appeal to the subsequent dimension. (ie: godel. this is profoundly important. no dimension can provide a self-test.) Ergo, all speech is deflationary. “CRITICAL RATIONALISM” (3) All descriptive propositions of existential cause and effect (change) are contingent. “CRITICAL PREFERENCE” (4) The only method of decidability between two or more non-false cause and effect propositions(change) is cost. This is a clarification of Occam’s razor. And appears to be true, for the simple reason that nature cannot but choose the least cost method, and man generally chooses the least cost method – even if we cannot know the full causal density of his considerations. DUE DILIGENCE AGAINST IGNORANCE, ERROR, BIAS, DECEIT (5) The only method of making a truth claim is to perform due diligence in each dimension of reality (a ‘premise’ of the consequential dimension) applicable to the cause and effect phenomenon. (ie:physical world can’t engage in rational choice, or voluntary exchanges) Again, those dimensions are: (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point) (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line) (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape) (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object) (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change) (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes) (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?) (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.) “DARWINIAN SURVIVAL OF IDEAS” (6) All propositions (facts, propositions, theories) must survive the markets for criticism at the observer-mental-testing, observer-action testing, market application testing, and market survival testing. In other words, the universal epistemological method follows this lifecycle: (a) observation (b) *Free association* (F -> observation) (c) test of reasonability (F -> free association ) (d) *Hypothesis* (e) Perform Due Diligence (a-h) above. (F -> free association ) (f) *Theory* (g) Publish to the market for application (h) Survival in the market for application(F ->observation – of failures ) (i) *Law* (j) Survival in the market for refutation (F-> observation – of failures) (k) *Habituation into metaphysical assumptions* “SPECIAL CASES” 7) This universal epistemological process is universal despite the fact that various results can be identified with it. Because just as we find prime numbers largely by trial and error we find special cases of statements by trial and error. But when we find these statements we have to ask ourselves what is it we are finding? (a) Sensations: statements about experiences(metaphysical), or (b) Logic(analytic): statements about statements(ideal), or (c) Fact: statements about existential properties(existential/real), or (d) Theory(Synthetic): statements about existential cause and effect(change). (e) Morality: statements about volition (f) Testimony: statements about the fully accounted change in state of a given instance of the statement we are making (I have a credit card report that shows John Doe, on 1/1/2018 at 4:06:32 exchanged $2.00 for a hershey’s candy bar at Don’s newspaper stand then existing on 225th and Main in Cityname.”) EXAMPLES The most common special cases that we find are those that are impossible to contradict at the same dimension. (a,b,c,d,e) above. (a) Sense(Metaphysics): we cannot sense a ball is green and red all over at the same time. (b) Logic: If I issue credit on fractional reserves, I will increase the supply of money. (c) Fact: The differences between commodity money and note money include but are not limited to: liquidity, demand, exchange fee or interest gain, portability(weight/volume), reserve risk, vendor risk. (d) Theory: All other things being equal, if we increase the supply of money, prices will eventually increase accordingly and lower the purchasing power of payments against debts. (e) Morality: All other things being equal, when we force majoritarian decisions on the polity by using representative democracy, we create a monopoly out of the market for the commons, and eliminate the possibility of cooperating on means even if we pursue different ends. “ECONOMIC LEVERS” Polities can generally use this series of levers to affect the economy. -Near Term- (a) Monetary Policy (b) Fiscal Policy (Spending) -Medium Term- (c) Trade Policy (import export policies, foreign trade policies) (d) Regulatory/Legislative Policy (also includes price controls etc) (e) Immigration-Deporation policy / Expand military, WPA etc. -Long Term- (f) Human Capital Policy (Education policy) (g) Institutional Policy (laws, regulations, bureaucracies, institutions, banks) (h) Strategic (military) Policy “SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS” The schools of economics reflect the culture and class of their origins. These groups do not acknowledge that their strategies and biases are as I”ve stated them here but their research evidence states the contrary. So I have tried to provide a general Spectrum of the institutions by what I understand is their culture/class bias. a) “Austrian / Rothbardian” (“Jewish”, Separatist) : Rule of Credit, Parasitic Optimum, Separatist / Anarchism. +Financial Class Bias. Anti-Commons Bias. (As far as I know, no university teaches the Jewish Austrian method.) b) “Mason-ism” (“Anglo Libertarian”, Right ) : Optimum Rule of Law, Nash Optimum, Minimal State / Christian Monarchy +Entrepreneurial Class Bias. (the only University I know of using this program is George Mason.) The “Mason-Libertarian” school places greater emphasis on maximizing the voluntary cooperation of individuals and organizations through reduction of impediments to ethical and moral cooperation. c) “Classical” (“Chicago”, Anglo, Center Right), Rule of Law, Insured Nash Optimum, Parliamentary State / Classical Liberalism. +Middle classes bias. (I would argue ‘not biased’) All other things being equal, the Chicago school places greater emphasis on policy that insures against error and failure by seeking formulas and rules that investors, businesses, and consumers can predict, thereby preserving rule of law, and maintaining the prohibition on discretionary rule. d) “Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, Center Left) : Mixed Discretionary Rule, Pareto Optimum, Social Democracy +Working Class Bias, Consumer Bias, Female bias(anti-male bias). Minority(anti-white) bias. Underclass Bias (anti-entreprenurial bias). All other things being equal the mainstream seeks to optimize consumption at all times, using every lever available, and favors abandoning rule of law, and adopting rule that is increasingly empirical, reactive, and discretionary. e) “Left Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, “Jewish left”) : Authoritarian Rule, Anti-Aristocracy(War), Extractive Maximum (Predatory), Socialism/Communism +Underclass (outsider) Bias. This is the Krugman/Stiglitz/Delong club of leftist economists maximizing both consumption and financial extraction as a means of undermining western aristocratic civilization and western norms and traditions and rule of law. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS –“…performative…” You keep using terms that I don’t think you understand, which is why Kant invented those terms: to conflate the empirical and the rational. He was afraid of the anglo empirical revolution. For good reason. —“…morality…”— Correct. Morality (reciprocity) requires inter-agent action. So does all economic activity. Economic activity can consist of moral (reciprocal) and immoral (unequal, irreciprocal) actions. We can make a claim that statements about irreciprocal (involuntary) actions in economics are immoral or we can claim that they are false. Whether you understand it or not, Mises is saying that its false not immoral, when he says ‘it’s not economics’. —“That you can verify something in reality doesn’t mean you need to empirically test it.”— We cannot solve the problem of ‘all other things being equal’ in order to understand why predicted phenomenon either vary widely, or do not exist. The neutrality of money does not appear to exist, because relative changes can propagate into various niches that absorb those changes, just like pennies being lost in landfills (so to speak). —“I can observe that two plus two equals four but I don’t need to design an empirical test to prove it.”— Yes but then it’s a tautology, whereas the nearly all economic phenomenon are only general rules. —“Likewise, I can observe that minimum wages increase unemployment all other things being equal, but I don’t need to conduct an empirical test to prove it.”— That’s just the thing, we aren’t trying to prove that it should increase unemployment, only that it turns out it that a lot of the time it doesn’t. Or rather, that the consequences of it are externalized and invisible. So where does it go? Well first it increases prices to consumers in the case of minimum wage workers it maintains employment but it prevents rotation of new workers into the economy. And the question is, is that a net gain or a net loss for everyone? Well, it’s immoral to both conduct the test, and the consequences are immoral. But does that mean the those consequences are not empirically measurable and therefore whether the policy is net beneficial? That is what economists measure. Secondly, if we think some good is achieved through raising the minimum wage, how can we accommodate the externality of lower rotation through the job pool? For example what if raising the minimum wage prevents least common denominator service economies? (Racing to the bottom). Is that something people prefer? In other words, would you rather have better service and higher unemployment (and greater subsidies for non-performers?) The underlying question is this: if prices are increasing profits can we capture more of that increase for hourly employees than we do for management, owners, and investors (or creditors)? So there is no difference between increasing the supply of money in order to temporarily increase consumer purchasing power at the expense of debt-holders, and increasing the minimum wage in order to capture a rise in prices for laborers at the expense of owners and investors. Or stated even more simply: given that economies are always changing velocities, can we redirect changes in state between participants without ‘killing the goose’ (destroying the system of production). Well the answer is a moral one, not a logical or empirical one. And the reason to claim otherwise is to use the false pretense of ‘unscientific’ or ‘logical positivism’ or ‘a priori’ or ‘logical contradiction’ to create a straw man as a means of preventing investigation into the science of economic immorality: economic manipulation by the forcible involuntary transfer of property between individuals. (Which is exactly what mises and rothbard were doing: shaming via straw man using obscurantism by overloading even well intended people with half truths that when fully expressed are false.) That’s the question people ask with these issues. No one questions if it will increase unemployment. They question the limit before it increases negative unemployment. The same as taxation. No one questions that taxation will produce declining revenues. But empirically, what is the maximum taxation that they govt can achieve before that happens – and what are the consequences. CLOSING Now you probably have no idea how profound this bit of text is. And I suspect you could spend a few months integrating it into your thought process. But that’s in large part, the state of the art in epistemology. THUS ENDETH THE LESSON. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • A Very Very Important Set Of Ideas

    Lets translate Kantian Rationalism into scientific and testimonial speech. I’m going to teach epistemology by using economics in order to repair much of the damage that has been done to epistemology by the Platonists(mathematics), and the Rationalists (Kant etc), and the Analytic Philosophers (Just about all of the 20th century). *Reality consists of a limited number of actionable dimensions and by using economics we are able to include all of them, and therefore avoid the errors that the platonists, rationalists, and analytics have introduced into philosophy. “DEFINITIONS AND SERIES” 1) Empirical: Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. “From Observation”. 2) A Priori: “independent of observation.” There are three dimensions to claims of a priori truth claim: i) Aprioricity vs A posteriori, ii) Analyticity vs Syntheticity, and iii) Necessity vs Contingency Therefore we can produce at least the following spectrum of a priori claims. (a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: 2+2=4 and all deductions thereof. (b) Synthetic A Priori : Increasing money increases inflation. (c) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: Childless women will have no grandchildren. (d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.” This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision: (a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori (b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori (c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori (d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori Which corresponds to the testable dimensions of numbers. (a) identity (numbers) (b) logical (sets) (c) empirical (ratios) (d) existential (constructible) (e) time is unaccounted for in the a priori model. Which corresponds to dimensions of physical reality (a) point (b) line (c) shape (d) object (e) time (change) Which corresponds to a subset of the dimensions of actionable reality , the full set of which we express in fully express in Testimonialism as: (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point) (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line) (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape) (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object) (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change) (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes) (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?) (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.) Which together account for the totality of actionable reality (by man) that we currently know of (and its quite hard to imagine anything else is possible). DEDUCTIBILITY FROM A-PRIORI PROPOSITIONS Ergo, while one can claim the tautological truth (the Analytic A Priori), and one can claim the ideal(logical) truth (the Necessary Synthetic A Priori), one cannot ever know the non-tautological(identity, The Synthetic A Priori), non-ideal(Contingent Synthetic A Priori ) truth, because we rarely possess sufficient information to do so. What does this mean? It means that we can deduce from Analytic A Priori and Necessary Synthetic A Priori, but we cannot deduce from General Synthetic A Priori, or Contingent Synthetic A Priori Statements because we cannot know if such deductions are true (for specific cases). So the problem with making a priori claims in economics is that you can say statements about statements but not about consequences in reality. You can only say ‘all other things being equal’, we should observe this effect. You cannot say, “we will always observe this effect’. Why? Because we don’t always observe such effects, and economics is rife with examples, the most commonly cited being unemployment does not necessarily increase, and prices are sticky – and for good reason. (NOTE: Now that’s sufficiently complicated that I almost confused myself, and I might need a day away from it to make sure I didn’t screw up what someone might read into those last two paragraphs, but otherwise it’s correct.) The innovation that menger brought to the table was to bring the principle of relative change from calculus to economics. The principle contribution of hayek was to transform transform the use of materials to the use of information as the model for all social phenomenon. The principle contribution of Popper was to bring the information model to philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of science and to model scientific investigation on a market. This followed the transition in physics from the use of electromagnetic fields to that of information. Which then brought physics and mathematics into full correspondence. What Hayek and popper and the classicals and the keynesians all missed and brouwer in math, bridgman in physics, and mises in economics, and the entire analytic and continental movements missed was that man cannot make truth claims. For example, we did not think the ideas of time(velocity of change), length(distance), and space(volume) varied. Einstein’s discovery was the same as mises’, brouwer’s and bridgman’s: that all our pretense of axioms are false. If our idea of length and time can be false, every other idea that is obvious to our senses and reason can be false. The difference between economics and physics is in : (a) volition vs determinism (b) reciprocity vs transformation (c) sympathetic testing of rational choice vs entropy. THE SCIENTIFIC (UNIVERSAL EPISTEMOLOGICAL) METHOD “DEFLATION” (0) The purpose of the scientific method is to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our statements about reality. “DIMENSION” (1) We can make: (a) statements about experiences(metaphysical), or (b) statements about statements(ideal), or (c) statements about existential properties(existential/real), or (d) statements about existential cause and effect(change). (e) statements about volition “CLOSURE” (2) No test of any dimension can be completed without appeal to the subsequent dimension. (ie: godel. this is profoundly important. no dimension can provide a self-test.) Ergo, all speech is deflationary. “CRITICAL RATIONALISM” (3) All descriptive propositions of existential cause and effect (change) are contingent. “CRITICAL PREFERENCE” (4) The only method of decidability between two or more non-false cause and effect propositions(change) is cost. This is a clarification of Occam’s razor. And appears to be true, for the simple reason that nature cannot but choose the least cost method, and man generally chooses the least cost method – even if we cannot know the full causal density of his considerations. DUE DILIGENCE AGAINST IGNORANCE, ERROR, BIAS, DECEIT (5) The only method of making a truth claim is to perform due diligence in each dimension of reality (a ‘premise’ of the consequential dimension) applicable to the cause and effect phenomenon. (ie:physical world can’t engage in rational choice, or voluntary exchanges) Again, those dimensions are: (a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point) (b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line) (c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape) (d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object) (e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change) (f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes) (g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?) (h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.) “DARWINIAN SURVIVAL OF IDEAS” (6) All propositions (facts, propositions, theories) must survive the markets for criticism at the observer-mental-testing, observer-action testing, market application testing, and market survival testing. In other words, the universal epistemological method follows this lifecycle: (a) observation (b) *Free association* (F -> observation) (c) test of reasonability (F -> free association ) (d) *Hypothesis* (e) Perform Due Diligence (a-h) above. (F -> free association ) (f) *Theory* (g) Publish to the market for application (h) Survival in the market for application(F ->observation – of failures ) (i) *Law* (j) Survival in the market for refutation (F-> observation – of failures) (k) *Habituation into metaphysical assumptions* “SPECIAL CASES” 7) This universal epistemological process is universal despite the fact that various results can be identified with it. Because just as we find prime numbers largely by trial and error we find special cases of statements by trial and error. But when we find these statements we have to ask ourselves what is it we are finding? (a) Sensations: statements about experiences(metaphysical), or (b) Logic(analytic): statements about statements(ideal), or (c) Fact: statements about existential properties(existential/real), or (d) Theory(Synthetic): statements about existential cause and effect(change). (e) Morality: statements about volition (f) Testimony: statements about the fully accounted change in state of a given instance of the statement we are making (I have a credit card report that shows John Doe, on 1/1/2018 at 4:06:32 exchanged $2.00 for a hershey’s candy bar at Don’s newspaper stand then existing on 225th and Main in Cityname.”) EXAMPLES The most common special cases that we find are those that are impossible to contradict at the same dimension. (a,b,c,d,e) above. (a) Sense(Metaphysics): we cannot sense a ball is green and red all over at the same time. (b) Logic: If I issue credit on fractional reserves, I will increase the supply of money. (c) Fact: The differences between commodity money and note money include but are not limited to: liquidity, demand, exchange fee or interest gain, portability(weight/volume), reserve risk, vendor risk. (d) Theory: All other things being equal, if we increase the supply of money, prices will eventually increase accordingly and lower the purchasing power of payments against debts. (e) Morality: All other things being equal, when we force majoritarian decisions on the polity by using representative democracy, we create a monopoly out of the market for the commons, and eliminate the possibility of cooperating on means even if we pursue different ends. “ECONOMIC LEVERS” Polities can generally use this series of levers to affect the economy. -Near Term- (a) Monetary Policy (b) Fiscal Policy (Spending) -Medium Term- (c) Trade Policy (import export policies, foreign trade policies) (d) Regulatory/Legislative Policy (also includes price controls etc) (e) Immigration-Deporation policy / Expand military, WPA etc. -Long Term- (f) Human Capital Policy (Education policy) (g) Institutional Policy (laws, regulations, bureaucracies, institutions, banks) (h) Strategic (military) Policy “SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS” The schools of economics reflect the culture and class of their origins. These groups do not acknowledge that their strategies and biases are as I”ve stated them here but their research evidence states the contrary. So I have tried to provide a general Spectrum of the institutions by what I understand is their culture/class bias. a) “Austrian / Rothbardian” (“Jewish”, Separatist) : Rule of Credit, Parasitic Optimum, Separatist / Anarchism. +Financial Class Bias. Anti-Commons Bias. (As far as I know, no university teaches the Jewish Austrian method.) b) “Mason-ism” (“Anglo Libertarian”, Right ) : Optimum Rule of Law, Nash Optimum, Minimal State / Christian Monarchy +Entrepreneurial Class Bias. (the only University I know of using this program is George Mason.) The “Mason-Libertarian” school places greater emphasis on maximizing the voluntary cooperation of individuals and organizations through reduction of impediments to ethical and moral cooperation. c) “Classical” (“Chicago”, Anglo, Center Right), Rule of Law, Insured Nash Optimum, Parliamentary State / Classical Liberalism. +Middle classes bias. (I would argue ‘not biased’) All other things being equal, the Chicago school places greater emphasis on policy that insures against error and failure by seeking formulas and rules that investors, businesses, and consumers can predict, thereby preserving rule of law, and maintaining the prohibition on discretionary rule. d) “Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, Center Left) : Mixed Discretionary Rule, Pareto Optimum, Social Democracy +Working Class Bias, Consumer Bias, Female bias(anti-male bias). Minority(anti-white) bias. Underclass Bias (anti-entreprenurial bias). All other things being equal the mainstream seeks to optimize consumption at all times, using every lever available, and favors abandoning rule of law, and adopting rule that is increasingly empirical, reactive, and discretionary. e) “Left Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, “Jewish left”) : Authoritarian Rule, Anti-Aristocracy(War), Extractive Maximum (Predatory), Socialism/Communism +Underclass (outsider) Bias. This is the Krugman/Stiglitz/Delong club of leftist economists maximizing both consumption and financial extraction as a means of undermining western aristocratic civilization and western norms and traditions and rule of law. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS –“…performative…” You keep using terms that I don’t think you understand, which is why Kant invented those terms: to conflate the empirical and the rational. He was afraid of the anglo empirical revolution. For good reason. —“…morality…”— Correct. Morality (reciprocity) requires inter-agent action. So does all economic activity. Economic activity can consist of moral (reciprocal) and immoral (unequal, irreciprocal) actions. We can make a claim that statements about irreciprocal (involuntary) actions in economics are immoral or we can claim that they are false. Whether you understand it or not, Mises is saying that its false not immoral, when he says ‘it’s not economics’. —“That you can verify something in reality doesn’t mean you need to empirically test it.”— We cannot solve the problem of ‘all other things being equal’ in order to understand why predicted phenomenon either vary widely, or do not exist. The neutrality of money does not appear to exist, because relative changes can propagate into various niches that absorb those changes, just like pennies being lost in landfills (so to speak). —“I can observe that two plus two equals four but I don’t need to design an empirical test to prove it.”— Yes but then it’s a tautology, whereas the nearly all economic phenomenon are only general rules. —“Likewise, I can observe that minimum wages increase unemployment all other things being equal, but I don’t need to conduct an empirical test to prove it.”— That’s just the thing, we aren’t trying to prove that it should increase unemployment, only that it turns out it that a lot of the time it doesn’t. Or rather, that the consequences of it are externalized and invisible. So where does it go? Well first it increases prices to consumers in the case of minimum wage workers it maintains employment but it prevents rotation of new workers into the economy. And the question is, is that a net gain or a net loss for everyone? Well, it’s immoral to both conduct the test, and the consequences are immoral. But does that mean the those consequences are not empirically measurable and therefore whether the policy is net beneficial? That is what economists measure. Secondly, if we think some good is achieved through raising the minimum wage, how can we accommodate the externality of lower rotation through the job pool? For example what if raising the minimum wage prevents least common denominator service economies? (Racing to the bottom). Is that something people prefer? In other words, would you rather have better service and higher unemployment (and greater subsidies for non-performers?) The underlying question is this: if prices are increasing profits can we capture more of that increase for hourly employees than we do for management, owners, and investors (or creditors)? So there is no difference between increasing the supply of money in order to temporarily increase consumer purchasing power at the expense of debt-holders, and increasing the minimum wage in order to capture a rise in prices for laborers at the expense of owners and investors. Or stated even more simply: given that economies are always changing velocities, can we redirect changes in state between participants without ‘killing the goose’ (destroying the system of production). Well the answer is a moral one, not a logical or empirical one. And the reason to claim otherwise is to use the false pretense of ‘unscientific’ or ‘logical positivism’ or ‘a priori’ or ‘logical contradiction’ to create a straw man as a means of preventing investigation into the science of economic immorality: economic manipulation by the forcible involuntary transfer of property between individuals. (Which is exactly what mises and rothbard were doing: shaming via straw man using obscurantism by overloading even well intended people with half truths that when fully expressed are false.) That’s the question people ask with these issues. No one questions if it will increase unemployment. They question the limit before it increases negative unemployment. The same as taxation. No one questions that taxation will produce declining revenues. But empirically, what is the maximum taxation that they govt can achieve before that happens – and what are the consequences. CLOSING Now you probably have no idea how profound this bit of text is. And I suspect you could spend a few months integrating it into your thought process. But that’s in large part, the state of the art in epistemology. THUS ENDETH THE LESSON. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • I say the same thing over and over again: the history, the novel, the myth, the

    I say the same thing over and over again: the history, the novel, the myth, the parable. all of these are no more than what they pretend to be. (See Durant). I have a problem with inflation, conflation, and fictionalisms because of the externalities produced. The problem is, that the desire for that feeling we have when listening to the storyteller around the fire, surrender our suspension of disbelief, and transport ourselves into the world of imagination and free association – that externally controlled dream state – is both profound, and worthy of that profound feeling. But why must it include inflations, conflations, and fictionalisms? I must certainly include what we call hyperbole (exaggerations) for the purpose of illustration. It must certainly contain loading for purposes of value attribution and path finding. It must certainly be organized by archetypes and the rise-fall combination of story arcs in order to fit into a grammar of general rules of behavior like all other rules of calculation we make use of. But why can we not maintain the original path of our people by maintaining a separation of narratives, like we have a separation of powers, a separation of disciplines, and a separation of property? Why do we have to fall into the same mistakes as did the eastern into europeans – the ones that are gone? The ones who failed? That something is desirable or useful does not mean it is preferable and good. Many myths parables and stories – if not all of them – convey metaphysical assumptions about the structure of reality. The ‘literature of artificial awe’ is and always has been a cancer. It is a cancer upon our people and upon mankind. It is no different from heroin, cocaine, sugar, carbohydrates, – substitutes for the euphoria of oxygenation produced by exercise and success (dominance expression). Or the opposite (“E”). It is far easier to criticize a near neighbor of marginal indifference than a distant relative of vast differences. SO it is easier to illustrate further improvements by those are more right (hoppe, mises, hayek, popper, kuhn…) than it is that those who are vastly wrong (marx, freud, boaz, cantor). And so it is far easier for me to illustrate and explore increases in precision with a peterson or hoppe than it is a zizek or any of the host of nonsense philosophers that still l live and work today – if only because people of similar mind are not interested, and the work required to correct a vast error rather than improve a fundamental by increase in precision is equal but unequally productive. I have made a business of criticizing near neighbors for the simple reason that they are less wrong, and so the returns on the investment are higher. Peterson is just a good example, because the only difference is externalities (me) and internalities(him). I mean, if I criticize some logician not only will no one understand it, but it doesn’t increase my ability to address the issues of MEANINGFUL BUT CUMULATIVELY DESTRUCTIVE ideas. My job isn’t to teach meaning. it is to create law, so that even well intentioned fools do no harm – not because they have ill incentives, but because like children running with scissors they know not the risk that they impose upon mankind. The kind of moral man (and women) all of you demonstrate that you are on a continual basis is a purely genetic and deterministic result of the provision of greater stimulation from certain categories of information (stimuli). I understand this. And for this reason some of you are more enamored of empathic stories, and some of decidability, while a few can manage to do both. So there is a difficult problem to solve that we all understand: moral men of such masculine dispositions so desirous of political change, desire inspiration to act as a group. Meanwhile the purpose of such action that produces the outcome such men desire, is not myth but law. Not to produce agreement or consent, or understanding, but to prohibit alternatives to it by law. One cannot program others to agree with you. That is only possible with lying. One can however, eliminate the incentives to agree with you by providing counter incentives not to act in discord with it. I might produce eventually a bible of sorts, and it might be as I’ve stated before, composed of excerpts from literature through the ages that DOES inspire. But I have understood as has hayek that all such efforts at monopoly of values will fail, and that the only monopoly of values that exists is the parasitism of the underclasses and those who can profit from enabling their parasitism. Via positiva does not matter except to inspire and confirm that which already exists and is therefore irrelevant. Revolutions occur because of rational incentives merely justified by narratives. The only institution that solves our problem is law. And the only means of imposing the primacy of that institution is to use the only weapon that this institution has available to it: the prohibition of falsehood no matter how attractive or useful thereby forcing all to evolve in accordance with markets. Most men go to their deaths understanding that their intellectual labors were failures. Hayek did not. And I don’t plan to. Fictionalism of today is just religion of yesterday and such defenses are no more than a few century shift in such defense from one set of one era’s norms of comprehension to another eras set of norms of comprehension – but the problem remains. The enlightenment – or rather – the continuous evolution of western man from blacksmith to aristotle, to hume, to darwin et all, is produced by the incremental suppression of comforting falsehoods that imprison us in lack of agency. Not all drugs are physical. Many, and the cheapest, and most effective are verbal. I must do my work. The truth is not comforting. It is disruptive. And I understand its import as we suffer the third conquest of empty verbalisms that we call leftism – the priesthood. Just because I have spent the past ninety days working on technology and limiting myself to idle confirmatory chatter does not mean that I have lost sight of my mission. History is the only justice whose verdict I covet. And I am confident I will win my case. Cheers

  • I say the same thing over and over again: the history, the novel, the myth, the

    I say the same thing over and over again: the history, the novel, the myth, the parable. all of these are no more than what they pretend to be. (See Durant). I have a problem with inflation, conflation, and fictionalisms because of the externalities produced. The problem is, that the desire for that feeling we have when listening to the storyteller around the fire, surrender our suspension of disbelief, and transport ourselves into the world of imagination and free association – that externally controlled dream state – is both profound, and worthy of that profound feeling. But why must it include inflations, conflations, and fictionalisms? I must certainly include what we call hyperbole (exaggerations) for the purpose of illustration. It must certainly contain loading for purposes of value attribution and path finding. It must certainly be organized by archetypes and the rise-fall combination of story arcs in order to fit into a grammar of general rules of behavior like all other rules of calculation we make use of. But why can we not maintain the original path of our people by maintaining a separation of narratives, like we have a separation of powers, a separation of disciplines, and a separation of property? Why do we have to fall into the same mistakes as did the eastern into europeans – the ones that are gone? The ones who failed? That something is desirable or useful does not mean it is preferable and good. Many myths parables and stories – if not all of them – convey metaphysical assumptions about the structure of reality. The ‘literature of artificial awe’ is and always has been a cancer. It is a cancer upon our people and upon mankind. It is no different from heroin, cocaine, sugar, carbohydrates, – substitutes for the euphoria of oxygenation produced by exercise and success (dominance expression). Or the opposite (“E”). It is far easier to criticize a near neighbor of marginal indifference than a distant relative of vast differences. SO it is easier to illustrate further improvements by those are more right (hoppe, mises, hayek, popper, kuhn…) than it is that those who are vastly wrong (marx, freud, boaz, cantor). And so it is far easier for me to illustrate and explore increases in precision with a peterson or hoppe than it is a zizek or any of the host of nonsense philosophers that still l live and work today – if only because people of similar mind are not interested, and the work required to correct a vast error rather than improve a fundamental by increase in precision is equal but unequally productive. I have made a business of criticizing near neighbors for the simple reason that they are less wrong, and so the returns on the investment are higher. Peterson is just a good example, because the only difference is externalities (me) and internalities(him). I mean, if I criticize some logician not only will no one understand it, but it doesn’t increase my ability to address the issues of MEANINGFUL BUT CUMULATIVELY DESTRUCTIVE ideas. My job isn’t to teach meaning. it is to create law, so that even well intentioned fools do no harm – not because they have ill incentives, but because like children running with scissors they know not the risk that they impose upon mankind. The kind of moral man (and women) all of you demonstrate that you are on a continual basis is a purely genetic and deterministic result of the provision of greater stimulation from certain categories of information (stimuli). I understand this. And for this reason some of you are more enamored of empathic stories, and some of decidability, while a few can manage to do both. So there is a difficult problem to solve that we all understand: moral men of such masculine dispositions so desirous of political change, desire inspiration to act as a group. Meanwhile the purpose of such action that produces the outcome such men desire, is not myth but law. Not to produce agreement or consent, or understanding, but to prohibit alternatives to it by law. One cannot program others to agree with you. That is only possible with lying. One can however, eliminate the incentives to agree with you by providing counter incentives not to act in discord with it. I might produce eventually a bible of sorts, and it might be as I’ve stated before, composed of excerpts from literature through the ages that DOES inspire. But I have understood as has hayek that all such efforts at monopoly of values will fail, and that the only monopoly of values that exists is the parasitism of the underclasses and those who can profit from enabling their parasitism. Via positiva does not matter except to inspire and confirm that which already exists and is therefore irrelevant. Revolutions occur because of rational incentives merely justified by narratives. The only institution that solves our problem is law. And the only means of imposing the primacy of that institution is to use the only weapon that this institution has available to it: the prohibition of falsehood no matter how attractive or useful thereby forcing all to evolve in accordance with markets. Most men go to their deaths understanding that their intellectual labors were failures. Hayek did not. And I don’t plan to. Fictionalism of today is just religion of yesterday and such defenses are no more than a few century shift in such defense from one set of one era’s norms of comprehension to another eras set of norms of comprehension – but the problem remains. The enlightenment – or rather – the continuous evolution of western man from blacksmith to aristotle, to hume, to darwin et all, is produced by the incremental suppression of comforting falsehoods that imprison us in lack of agency. Not all drugs are physical. Many, and the cheapest, and most effective are verbal. I must do my work. The truth is not comforting. It is disruptive. And I understand its import as we suffer the third conquest of empty verbalisms that we call leftism – the priesthood. Just because I have spent the past ninety days working on technology and limiting myself to idle confirmatory chatter does not mean that I have lost sight of my mission. History is the only justice whose verdict I covet. And I am confident I will win my case. Cheers

  • I say the same thing over and over again: the history, the novel, the myth, the

    I say the same thing over and over again:

    the history, the novel, the myth, the parable.

    all of these are no more than what they pretend to be. (See Durant).

    I have a problem with inflation, conflation, and fictionalisms because of the externalities produced.

    The problem is, that the desire for that feeling we have when listening to the storyteller around the fire, surrender our suspension of disbelief, and transport ourselves into the world of imagination and free association – that externally controlled dream state – is both profound, and worthy of that profound feeling.

    But why must it include inflations, conflations, and fictionalisms? I must certainly include what we call hyperbole (exaggerations) for the purpose of illustration. It must certainly contain loading for purposes of value attribution and path finding. It must certainly be organized by archetypes and the rise-fall combination of story arcs in order to fit into a grammar of general rules of behavior like all other rules of calculation we make use of.

    But why can we not maintain the original path of our people by maintaining a separation of narratives, like we have a separation of powers, a separation of disciplines, and a separation of property?

    Why do we have to fall into the same mistakes as did the eastern into europeans – the ones that are gone? The ones who failed?

    That something is desirable or useful does not mean it is preferable and good.

    Many myths parables and stories – if not all of them – convey metaphysical assumptions about the structure of reality. The ‘literature of artificial awe’ is and always has been a cancer.

    It is a cancer upon our people and upon mankind. It is no different from heroin, cocaine, sugar, carbohydrates, – substitutes for the euphoria of oxygenation produced by exercise and success (dominance expression). Or the opposite (“E”).

    It is far easier to criticize a near neighbor of marginal indifference than a distant relative of vast differences. SO it is easier to illustrate further improvements by those are more right (hoppe, mises, hayek, popper, kuhn…) than it is that those who are vastly wrong (marx, freud, boaz, cantor).

    And so it is far easier for me to illustrate and explore increases in precision with a peterson or hoppe than it is a zizek or any of the host of nonsense philosophers that still l live and work today – if only because people of similar mind are not interested, and the work required to correct a vast error rather than improve a fundamental by increase in precision is equal but unequally productive.

    I have made a business of criticizing near neighbors for the simple reason that they are less wrong, and so the returns on the investment are higher.

    Peterson is just a good example, because the only difference is externalities (me) and internalities(him). I mean, if I criticize some logician not only will no one understand it, but it doesn’t increase my ability to address the issues of MEANINGFUL BUT CUMULATIVELY DESTRUCTIVE ideas.

    My job isn’t to teach meaning. it is to create law, so that even well intentioned fools do no harm – not because they have ill incentives, but because like children running with scissors they know not the risk that they impose upon mankind.

    The kind of moral man (and women) all of you demonstrate that you are on a continual basis is a purely genetic and deterministic result of the provision of greater stimulation from certain categories of information (stimuli). I understand this. And for this reason some of you are more enamored of empathic stories, and some of decidability, while a few can manage to do both.

    So there is a difficult problem to solve that we all understand: moral men of such masculine dispositions so desirous of political change, desire inspiration to act as a group. Meanwhile the purpose of such action that produces the outcome such men desire, is not myth but law. Not to produce agreement or consent, or understanding, but to prohibit alternatives to it by law.

    One cannot program others to agree with you. That is only possible with lying.

    One can however, eliminate the incentives to agree with you by providing counter incentives not to act in discord with it.

    I might produce eventually a bible of sorts, and it might be as I’ve stated before, composed of excerpts from literature through the ages that DOES inspire. But I have understood as has hayek that all such efforts at monopoly of values will fail, and that the only monopoly of values that exists is the parasitism of the underclasses and those who can profit from enabling their parasitism.

    Via positiva does not matter except to inspire and confirm that which already exists and is therefore irrelevant. Revolutions occur because of rational incentives merely justified by narratives. The only institution that solves our problem is law. And the only means of imposing the primacy of that institution is to use the only weapon that this institution has available to it: the prohibition of falsehood no matter how attractive or useful thereby forcing all to evolve in accordance with markets.

    Most men go to their deaths understanding that their intellectual labors were failures. Hayek did not. And I don’t plan to.

    Fictionalism of today is just religion of yesterday and such defenses are no more than a few century shift in such defense from one set of one era’s norms of comprehension to another eras set of norms of comprehension – but the problem remains.

    The enlightenment – or rather – the continuous evolution of western man from blacksmith to aristotle, to hume, to darwin et all, is produced by the incremental suppression of comforting falsehoods that imprison us in lack of agency.

    Not all drugs are physical. Many, and the cheapest, and most effective are verbal.

    I must do my work. The truth is not comforting. It is disruptive. And I understand its import as we suffer the third conquest of empty verbalisms that we call leftism – the priesthood.

    Just because I have spent the past ninety days working on technology and limiting myself to idle confirmatory chatter does not mean that I have lost sight of my mission. History is the only justice whose verdict I covet.

    And I am confident I will win my case.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2018-03-10 11:07:00 UTC

  • Guest Post on Testimonialism

    TESTIMONIALISM
    by Alain Kassabian
    PART 1:
     
    “Testimonilaism is a series of standards including operational language, often applied to law, social systems, and incentives. The main (meta) incentive such analysis gives access to is described in Sheepdog, Logos, Stoicism, etc – technically the incentive is net agency. Testimonialism operationalizes operational epistemology: in order to facilitate that sort of high science you seem to need a high trust culture.
     
    The act of testimony is fundamental to high trust society, military, law, science, markets, and personal matters. Testimony (ideal application of speech) creates all the advantages of these institutions, that emerged by necessity when the West chose sovereignty as an organizing principle to maximize agency. Recognizing the connections here re-frames human speech, detailing the magnitude of the processes we evoke with our words and our actions. The institutions and norms we use to further our values are built out of the incentives we’ve faced and how we’ve integrated them.
     
    As intuitive as refining our speech is, it is also intuitive to obscure our speech to indulge vices and pettiness. Reducing anything, especially values down to just information and not bias is by it’s very nature going to dig at what people value. So, to the extent each of us undermines this norm, we enable the continuing parasitization and atrophying of our commons (presently: western civilization). We slim down our chances for positive Black Swans and become ever more vulnerable to the negatives Black Swans. Holding the inverse position (antifragility) seems attainable and highly useful (as in negative common law removing exposure to negative black swans and opening up the various goods and positive black swans), so again, no guarantee – but maybe altering stress response to serve rather than undercut agency by knowing the value of and how to use what we have remaining. Completing the task of optimization is all we can guarantee, investing ourselves beyond that is spiting nature (stoics make it obvious how this makes you fragile and petty).
     
    All language is motivated, and motivations promote symbiosis or they do not. Incentives can thus be divided into two catagories: incentives for net agency (Sheepdog, Logos, Law, Empiricism) and incentives that sacrifice the ideal for more immediate gain (every time any of us obscure our testimony wittingly or otherwise). Seems Biohistory’s C would be the biological conditions required to recognize/measure/optimize conditions for this incentive and V would be the conditions required to defend such an incentive. In an atrophying society perhaps the window for those higher incentives is more narrow, and the costs greater for opposing malincentives baked into leviathan like social structures, although the ultimate cost of abandoning healthy, pro-net-agency incentives is obviously greater if you frame it honestly.
     
    The precision Testimonialism affords for stoic analysis of how incentives stack and run through micro and macro social operating systems (norms) seems to reduce cognitive load. It doesn’t solve everything but it addresses the meta question of how to measure and optimize available responses (Doolittle’s “efficient capture of calories”as in Testimonialism, Propertarianism, Sheepdog, Antifragility, etc.). It shifts the focus to questions of agency and sovereignty (the conditions that underlie the various goods we pursue). On the micro level, the macro framing and organized elimination of fallacies makes shorter work of life planning, selecting information, and training your fast thinking. It’s not hard to detect when yourself or someone else is bringing your attention to something other than evidence – appealing to loading etc.
     
    Part of the micro optimization resulting from and reinforcing Testimonilaism as a norm is that removing loading and solving for agency shifts the focus to improving rather than squabbling over primordial struggles (stoicism again). This affects physical health and offers an extremely integrated sense of meaning (ie. clear definition of symbiosis across scales). You mentioned in another thread that part of the aesthetic of bothering at all against such odds, is that demonstrating value as best we can, is worth it regardless of if those odds are overcome. I agree, and consider the counter aesthetic/value system to be parasitism (not strengthening the ecosystem from which you come), which in terms of objective usefulness and my own bias provides no legitimate alternative.
     
    The first signs I usually notice of downward drag and misintegrated incentives are usually myself or someone else choosing loading and overloading over parsimony, the better one can recognize striking directly at the truth, the more obvious evasive substitutes become (hence military reporting is loud and direct, asking for only the facts). It’s a que that someone is skipping over something or semi to un-consciously avoiding information they perceive as counter to their incentives. To some degree (might depend on specifics), animosity can be inferred when incentives are guarded with deception, whether or not the person admits or realizes the incentives they answer to by operating in willful ignorance. In my mind, it stands out if I think, write, or speak something with loading – and that seems to be habituation of my fast thinking systems, so there’s less of a knee-jerk response to use careless loading (although it takes energy to realize the amount of loading people use, and then to discern when it’s appropriate – when it clarifies and transfers notions that survive empiricism).
     
    I also think letting empirical descriptions of incentives speak for themselves rather than telling people outright what to do, makes one appear more trustworthy – not to be confused with hiding one’s own biases. People seem to intuitively mistrust loading against their own biases whereas they actively look for information regarding their incentives. Although, inflating language isn’t always a bad idea, Curt had a post about how inflationary speech can actually be used to lower costs of communication and therefore further the expression of operational language, as long as we’re packaging realities to the best of our ability.
     
    Limits are also a key concept that Operational Epistemology and Sheepdog underscore the importance of, and by their very nature, grate against value systems… it’s very easy to not want to find the limit of a “beloved” notion. Yet, every statement has a limit and any view of the of the world is disjointed without sufficient emphasis on limits – this seems a common sub-optimal adaption (people refer to where their notions apply, not where they don’t – no complete testing or even guarantee it’s testable).”
     
    PART 2:
     
    “The closest thing to criticism I see for Testimonialism, Sheepdog, Logos (symbiosis raising agency) is regarding the practical access the higher tiers of incentives. I see potential pitfalls as sensible considerations for optimal application, not as contrary to the notion of Testimonilaism, ie.:
     
    1 The idea of solving everything with words is absurd (strawman of Logos) – in reality we can use precise language to shift conditions towards the net agency (meta-incentive)
     
    2 The idea of society not collapsing under prosperity seems far fetched and challenging (strawman of Sheepdog) – in reality solving for agency, c, v, etc. using testimonialism offers value as an optimization, not a guarantee
     
    3 The idea of to more ideal institutions (martial societies, due diligence, warranties, honest prosecution) seems like brutal and far fetched LARPING to the modern mind (strawman of Testimonialism/Propertarianism) – in reality these are descriptions of the norms we cycle through from high to low trust
     
    The reason I don’t see these as criticism is that the process discussed is a natural one with historical precedence. People are naturally intolerant of slights against their own interests and we have produced high levels of key items like precise law, high trust, c, and v. Additionally, the fragility of modernity and of successful civilizations in general is obvious. So to criticize a map of the biological and social systems detailing what happens as you either build up or tear down pro-trust norms as some impossible ideal is to miss the point. Things will never be perfect but we can incrementally suppress predation, parasitism, and the negative sides of co-operation, and at higher levels of Agency, C, and V, it should start looking about as ideal as it gets in reality.
     
    Again, a stoic shifting of attention to optimization rather than searching for some imaginary guarantee of success is more useful and therefore congruent with any value system you have that actually represents striving for good (symbiosis). So these measures that further testimonialism by sustaining high trust (symbiosis) are the point and throwing away the tools of measurement because “life is really hard” and “that’s impossible” is clearly not as useful. There isn’t even technically a requirement to do anything any harder, picking up better tools can make it easier to do what you already do (especially if they’re built around empiricism, operational epistemology, incentives, clarity, parsimony).
     
    The other potential criticism that jumps out is for testimonialism is that “it’s censorship”, although, I see it as assumed (and Curt has also stated) that reserving access to free truthful speech is important. So, it might seem overbearing and authoritarian, but the fact is we have been and should continue to suppress deceptive behaviour that undermines our agency, sovereignty, and antifragility. This is the idea of preserving and expressing natural authority over arbitrary authority because it aligns with a meta incentive (agency gives you more of whatever you value).
     
    I sometimes wonder if this sort of adaption is innate to being or sentience regardless of what happens to any particular species: Logos, Sheepdog, the natural advantages available given sentience. Again, I agree that for personal sanity and maximized success across larger scales, a focus on what is in our control (demonstrating value) is a better frame for considering the odds, than to consider them primarily for how bad they seem (a result affected by our actions, but ultimately beyond our absolute control). Excuses for not taking the best shot is weak in the micro and macro sense, especially in terms of survivability and aesthetics. Again, I suppose the counter aesthetic is parasitism (not bothering to strengthen the ecosystem from which you come) and that’s home how valid too (producing alienation, evasion, and excess fragility in the macro and micro)? Maybe it’s bias to prefer the pole that corresponds to the in built non-psychopath intuition (as poorly as we stick to it at times) – but it seems justified describing the empirical realities of each pole (high and low trust).
     
    There are a few versions of this list, but these are essentially the 6-8 standards of measurement referred to in
     
    Testimonialism:
     
    https://propertarianinstitute.com/2016/03/10/q-do-you-have-a-concise-definition-for-testimonialism/
     
    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-adjective-form-of-truth/answer/Curt-Doolittle

  • Guest Post on Testimonialism

    TESTIMONIALISM
    by Alain Kassabian
    PART 1:
     
    “Testimonilaism is a series of standards including operational language, often applied to law, social systems, and incentives. The main (meta) incentive such analysis gives access to is described in Sheepdog, Logos, Stoicism, etc – technically the incentive is net agency. Testimonialism operationalizes operational epistemology: in order to facilitate that sort of high science you seem to need a high trust culture.
     
    The act of testimony is fundamental to high trust society, military, law, science, markets, and personal matters. Testimony (ideal application of speech) creates all the advantages of these institutions, that emerged by necessity when the West chose sovereignty as an organizing principle to maximize agency. Recognizing the connections here re-frames human speech, detailing the magnitude of the processes we evoke with our words and our actions. The institutions and norms we use to further our values are built out of the incentives we’ve faced and how we’ve integrated them.
     
    As intuitive as refining our speech is, it is also intuitive to obscure our speech to indulge vices and pettiness. Reducing anything, especially values down to just information and not bias is by it’s very nature going to dig at what people value. So, to the extent each of us undermines this norm, we enable the continuing parasitization and atrophying of our commons (presently: western civilization). We slim down our chances for positive Black Swans and become ever more vulnerable to the negatives Black Swans. Holding the inverse position (antifragility) seems attainable and highly useful (as in negative common law removing exposure to negative black swans and opening up the various goods and positive black swans), so again, no guarantee – but maybe altering stress response to serve rather than undercut agency by knowing the value of and how to use what we have remaining. Completing the task of optimization is all we can guarantee, investing ourselves beyond that is spiting nature (stoics make it obvious how this makes you fragile and petty).
     
    All language is motivated, and motivations promote symbiosis or they do not. Incentives can thus be divided into two catagories: incentives for net agency (Sheepdog, Logos, Law, Empiricism) and incentives that sacrifice the ideal for more immediate gain (every time any of us obscure our testimony wittingly or otherwise). Seems Biohistory’s C would be the biological conditions required to recognize/measure/optimize conditions for this incentive and V would be the conditions required to defend such an incentive. In an atrophying society perhaps the window for those higher incentives is more narrow, and the costs greater for opposing malincentives baked into leviathan like social structures, although the ultimate cost of abandoning healthy, pro-net-agency incentives is obviously greater if you frame it honestly.
     
    The precision Testimonialism affords for stoic analysis of how incentives stack and run through micro and macro social operating systems (norms) seems to reduce cognitive load. It doesn’t solve everything but it addresses the meta question of how to measure and optimize available responses (Doolittle’s “efficient capture of calories”as in Testimonialism, Propertarianism, Sheepdog, Antifragility, etc.). It shifts the focus to questions of agency and sovereignty (the conditions that underlie the various goods we pursue). On the micro level, the macro framing and organized elimination of fallacies makes shorter work of life planning, selecting information, and training your fast thinking. It’s not hard to detect when yourself or someone else is bringing your attention to something other than evidence – appealing to loading etc.
     
    Part of the micro optimization resulting from and reinforcing Testimonilaism as a norm is that removing loading and solving for agency shifts the focus to improving rather than squabbling over primordial struggles (stoicism again). This affects physical health and offers an extremely integrated sense of meaning (ie. clear definition of symbiosis across scales). You mentioned in another thread that part of the aesthetic of bothering at all against such odds, is that demonstrating value as best we can, is worth it regardless of if those odds are overcome. I agree, and consider the counter aesthetic/value system to be parasitism (not strengthening the ecosystem from which you come), which in terms of objective usefulness and my own bias provides no legitimate alternative.
     
    The first signs I usually notice of downward drag and misintegrated incentives are usually myself or someone else choosing loading and overloading over parsimony, the better one can recognize striking directly at the truth, the more obvious evasive substitutes become (hence military reporting is loud and direct, asking for only the facts). It’s a que that someone is skipping over something or semi to un-consciously avoiding information they perceive as counter to their incentives. To some degree (might depend on specifics), animosity can be inferred when incentives are guarded with deception, whether or not the person admits or realizes the incentives they answer to by operating in willful ignorance. In my mind, it stands out if I think, write, or speak something with loading – and that seems to be habituation of my fast thinking systems, so there’s less of a knee-jerk response to use careless loading (although it takes energy to realize the amount of loading people use, and then to discern when it’s appropriate – when it clarifies and transfers notions that survive empiricism).
     
    I also think letting empirical descriptions of incentives speak for themselves rather than telling people outright what to do, makes one appear more trustworthy – not to be confused with hiding one’s own biases. People seem to intuitively mistrust loading against their own biases whereas they actively look for information regarding their incentives. Although, inflating language isn’t always a bad idea, Curt had a post about how inflationary speech can actually be used to lower costs of communication and therefore further the expression of operational language, as long as we’re packaging realities to the best of our ability.
     
    Limits are also a key concept that Operational Epistemology and Sheepdog underscore the importance of, and by their very nature, grate against value systems… it’s very easy to not want to find the limit of a “beloved” notion. Yet, every statement has a limit and any view of the of the world is disjointed without sufficient emphasis on limits – this seems a common sub-optimal adaption (people refer to where their notions apply, not where they don’t – no complete testing or even guarantee it’s testable).”
     
    PART 2:
     
    “The closest thing to criticism I see for Testimonialism, Sheepdog, Logos (symbiosis raising agency) is regarding the practical access the higher tiers of incentives. I see potential pitfalls as sensible considerations for optimal application, not as contrary to the notion of Testimonilaism, ie.:
     
    1 The idea of solving everything with words is absurd (strawman of Logos) – in reality we can use precise language to shift conditions towards the net agency (meta-incentive)
     
    2 The idea of society not collapsing under prosperity seems far fetched and challenging (strawman of Sheepdog) – in reality solving for agency, c, v, etc. using testimonialism offers value as an optimization, not a guarantee
     
    3 The idea of to more ideal institutions (martial societies, due diligence, warranties, honest prosecution) seems like brutal and far fetched LARPING to the modern mind (strawman of Testimonialism/Propertarianism) – in reality these are descriptions of the norms we cycle through from high to low trust
     
    The reason I don’t see these as criticism is that the process discussed is a natural one with historical precedence. People are naturally intolerant of slights against their own interests and we have produced high levels of key items like precise law, high trust, c, and v. Additionally, the fragility of modernity and of successful civilizations in general is obvious. So to criticize a map of the biological and social systems detailing what happens as you either build up or tear down pro-trust norms as some impossible ideal is to miss the point. Things will never be perfect but we can incrementally suppress predation, parasitism, and the negative sides of co-operation, and at higher levels of Agency, C, and V, it should start looking about as ideal as it gets in reality.
     
    Again, a stoic shifting of attention to optimization rather than searching for some imaginary guarantee of success is more useful and therefore congruent with any value system you have that actually represents striving for good (symbiosis). So these measures that further testimonialism by sustaining high trust (symbiosis) are the point and throwing away the tools of measurement because “life is really hard” and “that’s impossible” is clearly not as useful. There isn’t even technically a requirement to do anything any harder, picking up better tools can make it easier to do what you already do (especially if they’re built around empiricism, operational epistemology, incentives, clarity, parsimony).
     
    The other potential criticism that jumps out is for testimonialism is that “it’s censorship”, although, I see it as assumed (and Curt has also stated) that reserving access to free truthful speech is important. So, it might seem overbearing and authoritarian, but the fact is we have been and should continue to suppress deceptive behaviour that undermines our agency, sovereignty, and antifragility. This is the idea of preserving and expressing natural authority over arbitrary authority because it aligns with a meta incentive (agency gives you more of whatever you value).
     
    I sometimes wonder if this sort of adaption is innate to being or sentience regardless of what happens to any particular species: Logos, Sheepdog, the natural advantages available given sentience. Again, I agree that for personal sanity and maximized success across larger scales, a focus on what is in our control (demonstrating value) is a better frame for considering the odds, than to consider them primarily for how bad they seem (a result affected by our actions, but ultimately beyond our absolute control). Excuses for not taking the best shot is weak in the micro and macro sense, especially in terms of survivability and aesthetics. Again, I suppose the counter aesthetic is parasitism (not bothering to strengthen the ecosystem from which you come) and that’s home how valid too (producing alienation, evasion, and excess fragility in the macro and micro)? Maybe it’s bias to prefer the pole that corresponds to the in built non-psychopath intuition (as poorly as we stick to it at times) – but it seems justified describing the empirical realities of each pole (high and low trust).
     
    There are a few versions of this list, but these are essentially the 6-8 standards of measurement referred to in
     
    Testimonialism:
     
    https://propertarianinstitute.com/2016/03/10/q-do-you-have-a-concise-definition-for-testimonialism/
     
    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-adjective-form-of-truth/answer/Curt-Doolittle

  • Testimonialism

    by Alain Kassabian PART 1: “Testimonilaism is a series of standards including operational language, often applied to law, social systems, and incentives. The main (meta) incentive such analysis gives access to is described in Sheepdog, Logos, Stoicism, etc – technically the incentive is net agency. Testimonialism operationalizes operational epistemology: in order to facilitate that sort of high science you seem to need a high trust culture. The act of testimony is fundamental to high trust society, military, law, science, markets, and personal matters. Testimony (ideal application of speech) creates all the advantages of these institutions, that emerged by necessity when the West chose sovereignty as an organizing principle to maximize agency. Recognizing the connections here re-frames human speech, detailing the magnitude of the processes we evoke with our words and our actions. The institutions and norms we use to further our values are built out of the incentives we’ve faced and how we’ve integrated them. As intuitive as refining our speech is, it is also intuitive to obscure our speech to indulge vices and pettiness. Reducing anything, especially values down to just information and not bias is by it’s very nature going to dig at what people value. So, to the extent each of us undermines this norm, we enable the continuing parasitization and atrophying of our commons (presently: western civilization). We slim down our chances for positive Black Swans and become ever more vulnerable to the negatives Black Swans. Holding the inverse position (antifragility) seems attainable and highly useful (as in negative common law removing exposure to negative black swans and opening up the various goods and positive black swans), so again, no guarantee – but maybe altering stress response to serve rather than undercut agency by knowing the value of and how to use what we have remaining. Completing the task of optimization is all we can guarantee, investing ourselves beyond that is spiting nature (stoics make it obvious how this makes you fragile and petty). All language is motivated, and motivations promote symbiosis or they do not. Incentives can thus be divided into two catagories: incentives for net agency (Sheepdog, Logos, Law, Empiricism) and incentives that sacrifice the ideal for more immediate gain (every time any of us obscure our testimony wittingly or otherwise). Seems Biohistory’s C would be the biological conditions required to recognize/measure/optimize conditions for this incentive and V would be the conditions required to defend such an incentive. In an atrophying society perhaps the window for those higher incentives is more narrow, and the costs greater for opposing malincentives baked into leviathan like social structures, although the ultimate cost of abandoning healthy, pro-net-agency incentives is obviously greater if you frame it honestly. The precision Testimonialism affords for stoic analysis of how incentives stack and run through micro and macro social operating systems (norms) seems to reduce cognitive load. It doesn’t solve everything but it addresses the meta question of how to measure and optimize available responses (Doolittle’s “efficient capture of calories”as in Testimonialism, Propertarianism, Sheepdog, Antifragility, etc.). It shifts the focus to questions of agency and sovereignty (the conditions that underlie the various goods we pursue). On the micro level, the macro framing and organized elimination of fallacies makes shorter work of life planning, selecting information, and training your fast thinking. It’s not hard to detect when yourself or someone else is bringing your attention to something other than evidence – appealing to loading etc. Part of the micro optimization resulting from and reinforcing Testimonilaism as a norm is that removing loading and solving for agency shifts the focus to improving rather than squabbling over primordial struggles (stoicism again). This affects physical health and offers an extremely integrated sense of meaning (ie. clear definition of symbiosis across scales). You mentioned in another thread that part of the aesthetic of bothering at all against such odds, is that demonstrating value as best we can, is worth it regardless of if those odds are overcome. I agree, and consider the counter aesthetic/value system to be parasitism (not strengthening the ecosystem from which you come), which in terms of objective usefulness and my own bias provides no legitimate alternative. The first signs I usually notice of downward drag and misintegrated incentives are usually myself or someone else choosing loading and overloading over parsimony, the better one can recognize striking directly at the truth, the more obvious evasive substitutes become (hence military reporting is loud and direct, asking for only the facts). It’s a que that someone is skipping over something or semi to un-consciously avoiding information they perceive as counter to their incentives. To some degree (might depend on specifics), animosity can be inferred when incentives are guarded with deception, whether or not the person admits or realizes the incentives they answer to by operating in willful ignorance. In my mind, it stands out if I think, write, or speak something with loading – and that seems to be habituation of my fast thinking systems, so there’s less of a knee-jerk response to use careless loading (although it takes energy to realize the amount of loading people use, and then to discern when it’s appropriate – when it clarifies and transfers notions that survive empiricism). I also think letting empirical descriptions of incentives speak for themselves rather than telling people outright what to do, makes one appear more trustworthy – not to be confused with hiding one’s own biases. People seem to intuitively mistrust loading against their own biases whereas they actively look for information regarding their incentives. Although, inflating language isn’t always a bad idea, Curt had a post about how inflationary speech can actually be used to lower costs of communication and therefore further the expression of operational language, as long as we’re packaging realities to the best of our ability. Limits are also a key concept that Operational Epistemology and Sheepdog underscore the importance of, and by their very nature, grate against value systems… it’s very easy to not want to find the limit of a “beloved” notion. Yet, every statement has a limit and any view of the of the world is disjointed without sufficient emphasis on limits – this seems a common sub-optimal adaption (people refer to where their notions apply, not where they don’t – no complete testing or even guarantee it’s testable).” PART 2: “The closest thing to criticism I see for Testimonialism, Sheepdog, Logos (symbiosis raising agency) is regarding the practical access the higher tiers of incentives. I see potential pitfalls as sensible considerations for optimal application, not as contrary to the notion of Testimonilaism, ie.: 1 The idea of solving everything with words is absurd (strawman of Logos) – in reality we can use precise language to shift conditions towards the net agency (meta-incentive) 2 The idea of society not collapsing under prosperity seems far fetched and challenging (strawman of Sheepdog) – in reality solving for agency, c, v, etc. using testimonialism offers value as an optimization, not a guarantee 3 The idea of to more ideal institutions (martial societies, due diligence, warranties, honest prosecution) seems like brutal and far fetched LARPING to the modern mind (strawman of Testimonialism/Propertarianism) – in reality these are descriptions of the norms we cycle through from high to low trust The reason I don’t see these as criticism is that the process discussed is a natural one with historical precedence. People are naturally intolerant of slights against their own interests and we have produced high levels of key items like precise law, high trust, c, and v. Additionally, the fragility of modernity and of successful civilizations in general is obvious. So to criticize a map of the biological and social systems detailing what happens as you either build up or tear down pro-trust norms as some impossible ideal is to miss the point. Things will never be perfect but we can incrementally suppress predation, parasitism, and the negative sides of co-operation, and at higher levels of Agency, C, and V, it should start looking about as ideal as it gets in reality. Again, a stoic shifting of attention to optimization rather than searching for some imaginary guarantee of success is more useful and therefore congruent with any value system you have that actually represents striving for good (symbiosis). So these measures that further testimonialism by sustaining high trust (symbiosis) are the point and throwing away the tools of measurement because “life is really hard” and “that’s impossible” is clearly not as useful. There isn’t even technically a requirement to do anything any harder, picking up better tools can make it easier to do what you already do (especially if they’re built around empiricism, operational epistemology, incentives, clarity, parsimony). The other potential criticism that jumps out is for testimonialism is that “it’s censorship”, although, I see it as assumed (and Curt has also stated) that reserving access to free truthful speech is important. So, it might seem overbearing and authoritarian, but the fact is we have been and should continue to suppress deceptive behaviour that undermines our agency, sovereignty, and antifragility. This is the idea of preserving and expressing natural authority over arbitrary authority because it aligns with a meta incentive (agency gives you more of whatever you value). I sometimes wonder if this sort of adaption is innate to being or sentience regardless of what happens to any particular species: Logos, Sheepdog, the natural advantages available given sentience. Again, I agree that for personal sanity and maximized success across larger scales, a focus on what is in our control (demonstrating value) is a better frame for considering the odds, than to consider them primarily for how bad they seem (a result affected by our actions, but ultimately beyond our absolute control). Excuses for not taking the best shot is weak in the micro and macro sense, especially in terms of survivability and aesthetics. Again, I suppose the counter aesthetic is parasitism (not bothering to strengthen the ecosystem from which you come) and that’s home how valid too (producing alienation, evasion, and excess fragility in the macro and micro)? Maybe it’s bias to prefer the pole that corresponds to the in built non-psychopath intuition (as poorly as we stick to it at times) – but it seems justified describing the empirical realities of each pole (high and low trust). There are a few versions of this list, but these are essentially the 6-8 standards of measurement referred to in Testimonialism: https://propertarianinstitute.com/2016/03/10/q-do-you-have-a-concise-definition-for-testimonialism/ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-adjective-form-of-truth/answer/Curt-Doolittle

  • Testimonialism

    by Alain Kassabian PART 1: “Testimonilaism is a series of standards including operational language, often applied to law, social systems, and incentives. The main (meta) incentive such analysis gives access to is described in Sheepdog, Logos, Stoicism, etc – technically the incentive is net agency. Testimonialism operationalizes operational epistemology: in order to facilitate that sort of high science you seem to need a high trust culture. The act of testimony is fundamental to high trust society, military, law, science, markets, and personal matters. Testimony (ideal application of speech) creates all the advantages of these institutions, that emerged by necessity when the West chose sovereignty as an organizing principle to maximize agency. Recognizing the connections here re-frames human speech, detailing the magnitude of the processes we evoke with our words and our actions. The institutions and norms we use to further our values are built out of the incentives we’ve faced and how we’ve integrated them. As intuitive as refining our speech is, it is also intuitive to obscure our speech to indulge vices and pettiness. Reducing anything, especially values down to just information and not bias is by it’s very nature going to dig at what people value. So, to the extent each of us undermines this norm, we enable the continuing parasitization and atrophying of our commons (presently: western civilization). We slim down our chances for positive Black Swans and become ever more vulnerable to the negatives Black Swans. Holding the inverse position (antifragility) seems attainable and highly useful (as in negative common law removing exposure to negative black swans and opening up the various goods and positive black swans), so again, no guarantee – but maybe altering stress response to serve rather than undercut agency by knowing the value of and how to use what we have remaining. Completing the task of optimization is all we can guarantee, investing ourselves beyond that is spiting nature (stoics make it obvious how this makes you fragile and petty). All language is motivated, and motivations promote symbiosis or they do not. Incentives can thus be divided into two catagories: incentives for net agency (Sheepdog, Logos, Law, Empiricism) and incentives that sacrifice the ideal for more immediate gain (every time any of us obscure our testimony wittingly or otherwise). Seems Biohistory’s C would be the biological conditions required to recognize/measure/optimize conditions for this incentive and V would be the conditions required to defend such an incentive. In an atrophying society perhaps the window for those higher incentives is more narrow, and the costs greater for opposing malincentives baked into leviathan like social structures, although the ultimate cost of abandoning healthy, pro-net-agency incentives is obviously greater if you frame it honestly. The precision Testimonialism affords for stoic analysis of how incentives stack and run through micro and macro social operating systems (norms) seems to reduce cognitive load. It doesn’t solve everything but it addresses the meta question of how to measure and optimize available responses (Doolittle’s “efficient capture of calories”as in Testimonialism, Propertarianism, Sheepdog, Antifragility, etc.). It shifts the focus to questions of agency and sovereignty (the conditions that underlie the various goods we pursue). On the micro level, the macro framing and organized elimination of fallacies makes shorter work of life planning, selecting information, and training your fast thinking. It’s not hard to detect when yourself or someone else is bringing your attention to something other than evidence – appealing to loading etc. Part of the micro optimization resulting from and reinforcing Testimonilaism as a norm is that removing loading and solving for agency shifts the focus to improving rather than squabbling over primordial struggles (stoicism again). This affects physical health and offers an extremely integrated sense of meaning (ie. clear definition of symbiosis across scales). You mentioned in another thread that part of the aesthetic of bothering at all against such odds, is that demonstrating value as best we can, is worth it regardless of if those odds are overcome. I agree, and consider the counter aesthetic/value system to be parasitism (not strengthening the ecosystem from which you come), which in terms of objective usefulness and my own bias provides no legitimate alternative. The first signs I usually notice of downward drag and misintegrated incentives are usually myself or someone else choosing loading and overloading over parsimony, the better one can recognize striking directly at the truth, the more obvious evasive substitutes become (hence military reporting is loud and direct, asking for only the facts). It’s a que that someone is skipping over something or semi to un-consciously avoiding information they perceive as counter to their incentives. To some degree (might depend on specifics), animosity can be inferred when incentives are guarded with deception, whether or not the person admits or realizes the incentives they answer to by operating in willful ignorance. In my mind, it stands out if I think, write, or speak something with loading – and that seems to be habituation of my fast thinking systems, so there’s less of a knee-jerk response to use careless loading (although it takes energy to realize the amount of loading people use, and then to discern when it’s appropriate – when it clarifies and transfers notions that survive empiricism). I also think letting empirical descriptions of incentives speak for themselves rather than telling people outright what to do, makes one appear more trustworthy – not to be confused with hiding one’s own biases. People seem to intuitively mistrust loading against their own biases whereas they actively look for information regarding their incentives. Although, inflating language isn’t always a bad idea, Curt had a post about how inflationary speech can actually be used to lower costs of communication and therefore further the expression of operational language, as long as we’re packaging realities to the best of our ability. Limits are also a key concept that Operational Epistemology and Sheepdog underscore the importance of, and by their very nature, grate against value systems… it’s very easy to not want to find the limit of a “beloved” notion. Yet, every statement has a limit and any view of the of the world is disjointed without sufficient emphasis on limits – this seems a common sub-optimal adaption (people refer to where their notions apply, not where they don’t – no complete testing or even guarantee it’s testable).” PART 2: “The closest thing to criticism I see for Testimonialism, Sheepdog, Logos (symbiosis raising agency) is regarding the practical access the higher tiers of incentives. I see potential pitfalls as sensible considerations for optimal application, not as contrary to the notion of Testimonilaism, ie.: 1 The idea of solving everything with words is absurd (strawman of Logos) – in reality we can use precise language to shift conditions towards the net agency (meta-incentive) 2 The idea of society not collapsing under prosperity seems far fetched and challenging (strawman of Sheepdog) – in reality solving for agency, c, v, etc. using testimonialism offers value as an optimization, not a guarantee 3 The idea of to more ideal institutions (martial societies, due diligence, warranties, honest prosecution) seems like brutal and far fetched LARPING to the modern mind (strawman of Testimonialism/Propertarianism) – in reality these are descriptions of the norms we cycle through from high to low trust The reason I don’t see these as criticism is that the process discussed is a natural one with historical precedence. People are naturally intolerant of slights against their own interests and we have produced high levels of key items like precise law, high trust, c, and v. Additionally, the fragility of modernity and of successful civilizations in general is obvious. So to criticize a map of the biological and social systems detailing what happens as you either build up or tear down pro-trust norms as some impossible ideal is to miss the point. Things will never be perfect but we can incrementally suppress predation, parasitism, and the negative sides of co-operation, and at higher levels of Agency, C, and V, it should start looking about as ideal as it gets in reality. Again, a stoic shifting of attention to optimization rather than searching for some imaginary guarantee of success is more useful and therefore congruent with any value system you have that actually represents striving for good (symbiosis). So these measures that further testimonialism by sustaining high trust (symbiosis) are the point and throwing away the tools of measurement because “life is really hard” and “that’s impossible” is clearly not as useful. There isn’t even technically a requirement to do anything any harder, picking up better tools can make it easier to do what you already do (especially if they’re built around empiricism, operational epistemology, incentives, clarity, parsimony). The other potential criticism that jumps out is for testimonialism is that “it’s censorship”, although, I see it as assumed (and Curt has also stated) that reserving access to free truthful speech is important. So, it might seem overbearing and authoritarian, but the fact is we have been and should continue to suppress deceptive behaviour that undermines our agency, sovereignty, and antifragility. This is the idea of preserving and expressing natural authority over arbitrary authority because it aligns with a meta incentive (agency gives you more of whatever you value). I sometimes wonder if this sort of adaption is innate to being or sentience regardless of what happens to any particular species: Logos, Sheepdog, the natural advantages available given sentience. Again, I agree that for personal sanity and maximized success across larger scales, a focus on what is in our control (demonstrating value) is a better frame for considering the odds, than to consider them primarily for how bad they seem (a result affected by our actions, but ultimately beyond our absolute control). Excuses for not taking the best shot is weak in the micro and macro sense, especially in terms of survivability and aesthetics. Again, I suppose the counter aesthetic is parasitism (not bothering to strengthen the ecosystem from which you come) and that’s home how valid too (producing alienation, evasion, and excess fragility in the macro and micro)? Maybe it’s bias to prefer the pole that corresponds to the in built non-psychopath intuition (as poorly as we stick to it at times) – but it seems justified describing the empirical realities of each pole (high and low trust). There are a few versions of this list, but these are essentially the 6-8 standards of measurement referred to in Testimonialism: https://propertarianinstitute.com/2016/03/10/q-do-you-have-a-concise-definition-for-testimonialism/ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-adjective-form-of-truth/answer/Curt-Doolittle