Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • The Central Argument: Western Testimonial Truth vs Platonic Truth

    (the central argument)( profound)

    [T]he central argument regarding truth:

    1) … is that giving witness to one’s observations, is testable by reproduction of a set of operational definitions. That operational definitions produce the equivalent of names, just as positional numbering provides quantities with names. Such names are insulated from deception, distraction, loading, framing and overloading. Theories are not. While we cannot demonstrate the absolute parsimony of a theory (that we know of), we can demonstrate that we truthfully conveyed our observations. In other words, we can testify truthfully to an ordered set of facts, even if we cannot testify truthfully to parsimony of a theory.

    2) … that physical science is a narrow and special case of human activity, and popper was defining truth for that special case – a definition which is not applicable outside of the special case, and even inside the special case, he made questionable use of the term in order to retain its moral loading for purely social reasons. Justifiable social reasons, but social reasons none the less.

    3) ….that it is possible to state instead that all outputs of scientific investigation are true, if they are truthfully represented – where ‘scientific investigation” refers to the use of the scientific method, regardless of field of inquiry. But that we seek the most parsimonious statement of a theory, and we can never know that we have obtained it, we can only develop consensus that we cannot cause it to fail. This is, as far as I know, the best non-platonic description of truth available. Everything else is a linguistic contrivance for one purpose or another – possibly to obscure ignorance, and possibly to load ideas with moral motivation. Scientists load their contrivance of truth, and mathematicians load their contrivance of numbers, limits, and a dozen other things – most of which obscure linguistic ‘cheats’ to give authority to that which is necessary for the construction of general rules. (ie: the problem of arbitrary precision).

    4) … that popper did no investigation into science or the history of science prior to making his argument, and that as yet, we do not have a systematic account of the history of science. However, what history we do have, both distant and recent, is that science operates as I have suggested: by criticism upon failure via overextension. The reason being that it is economically inefficient (expensive) to pursue criticism rather than to extend a theory to its point of failure then criticize it. And as far as we know, this is how science works, and must work, because it is how all human endeavors must work. Because while a small number of scientists may seek the ‘truth’ whatever a platonist means, what scientists try to do is solve problems – ie: to manufacture recipes for useful cognition.

    5) … that popper’s advice was merely moral given that the scale of inquiry in all human fields had surpassed that of human scale, where tests are subjectively verifiable. (I think this is an important insight because it occurred in all fields.) Einstein for example, operationalized observations (relative simultaneity for example) over very great distances approaching the speed of light using Lorenz transformations. And as Bridgman demonstrated, the reason Einstein’s work was novel was because prior generations had NOT been operationalizing statements ,and as such, more than a generation and perhaps two were lost to failure of what should have been an obvious solution. (See the problem of length, which I tend to refer to often as the best example.) I addressed this in a previous post, and what popper did was give us good advice, and while he made an argument that appears logical, like most rational arguments, unsupported by data, it is not clear he was correct, and in fact, it appears that he was not. The question is not a rational but empirical one.

    6) … and I am not terribly interested in criticizing popper, any more than criticizing any other philosopher I admire, since popper unlike Misesian Pseudoscience, or Rothbardian Immoral Verbalisms, was engaged in a moral attempt both in politics and in science, and perhaps in science as a vehicle for politics, to prevent the pseudoscientific use of science – particularly by fascist and communists, to use the findings of science as a replacement for divine authority by which to command man. What popper did, particularly with his platonism, was to remove the ability for the findings of science to be used as justification for the removal of human choice. Popper, Mises, and Hayek were responsible for undermining pseudoscientific authoritarianism. Of the three popper is perhaps less articulate (possibly to obscure his objective), but certainly not wrong, so to speak. While mises’ appeal to authoritarianism (which is part and parcel of jewish culture) was entirely pseudoscientific, by claiming that economics was deductive rather than empirical, and justifying it under apriorism, instead of as I’ve stated, understanding that he was merely trying to apply operationalism to economic activity, which would merely demonstrate that Keynesian economics was immoral, not unscientific.

    But Popper, Mises, Hayek, Bridgman and Brouwer, did not find a solution to restoring the western aristocratic conditions for public speech.
    They too were a lost in platonism a bit. Bridgman and Brouwer did understand that something was wrong, and were very close,b ut they could not make the moral argument. We have had a century now of attacks by verbal contrivance and we can demonstrate the destruction of our civilization by way of it. So the moral argument is no longer one of undemonstrated results. WE have the results. And we have a generation of men, myself included, trying to repair it.

    One must speak truthfully, because no other truth is knowable. Intellectual products that are brought to market must be warrantied just as are all other products that are brought to market, and the warranty that you can provide is operational definitions (recipes, experience), not theories (psychologism, projections). And if you are not willing to stand behind your product then you should not bring it to market. Because you have no right to subject others to harm.

    Intellectuals produce ideas (myself included), that is our product. We are paid in measly terms most of the time, for our product, but that is what we do. But it is no different from hot coffee or dangerous ladders, or defective gas tanks.

    And given that one particularly prolific group of people has created marxism, socialism, postmodernism, libertine-libertarianism, and neoconservatism, it is about time we stopped allowing them to ship lousy products into society.

    And rather than regulate them by government, the common law and universal standing will allow punishment of those who bring bad products to market.

    OBSCURITY
    I am entirely capable (as above) of writing clearly, but it is tedious when most logical connections appear to be obvious to the informed person. I will cop out to being lazy, particularly when I have no idea whether the others involved in the debate will be worthwhile. But it’s not that I can’t drill down to necessary arguments. OK? It’s just a lot more work than incrementally testing an idea and making sure that others follow the breadcrumbs….

    CLOSING
    I am pretty sure the above analysis is correct. It’s going to be very hard to demonstrate otherwise: that popper used a pragmatic theory of truth, just like all of us do. But there is only one possible extant truth, and that is testimony. All else is but moral rule, not logical necessity. OK? That’s just how it is. Period, end of story.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Philosophy of Aristocracy
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • The Irony Of Austrian Apriorism

    THE IRONY OF AUSTRIAN APRIORISM
    (profound) (reformation of libertarianism)

    [F]rom my position as a scientific realist, understanding that praxeology is and must be an operational discipline, the advocates of apriorism and the universal deducibility of economics appear humorously ironic – whenever they are not exasperatingly frustrating.

    SUBJECTIVE TESTING
    We cannot deduce economic phenomenon (laws) from fist principles. We have not. We do not. We will not. The matter is settled by the evidence that we did not deduce sticky prices, consumer irrationality, the extraordinary impact of morality on economics, and the multitude of cognitive biases that incorrectly inform our intuitions.

    But, what we CAN do, given an empirically, instrumentally observed phenomenon, is to deduce the incentives to act, and therefore the actions that produce economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, once they are empirically observed.

    And conversely, we can test the rationality of incentives, and the voluntary or involuntary transfer of property, of economic propositions, if they are stated in operational language: as a SERIES OF HUMAN ACTIONS. (ie: operationalism)

    We can perform this test because human incentives sufficient for the voluntary organization of production are marginally indifferent. If they were not marginally indifferent then the voluntary organization of production in a polity of humans would be if not impossible, at least far more difficult.

    We do experience this level of difficulty whenever the difference in the portfolio of property rights used in any two polities are sufficiently different that trade must be reduced to the lowest common denominator. This is the case for trade barriers.

    Trade barriers compensate for differences in local purchasing power, but also for differences in local property rights – for example, when the export of natural resources are subject to tariffs for redistribution to the polity. But the more common example is trade with primitive societies in which intertemporal contract and property do not exist.

    OPERATIONALISM = HUMAN ACTION
    Operationalism is the requirement that we express statements as a series of actions. Operationalism requires that we demonstrate knowledge of construction, because one cannot make operational statements without knowledge of construction.

    Human action is an operationalist discipline. It a contradiction to state that the study of human actions differs from the study of operations in sequence. These terms are synonymous. The logic of describing the world in terms of human actions.

    Kant invented his philosophy to construct obscurantism in an effort to restore authority lost by religion in the enlightenment. It is an anti-scientific, anti-anglo empiricist philosophy of social rebellion. Cognitive science has come down on the Anglo side of the argument. The study of economics is, like all human investigation into phenomenon, one requiring the scientific method.

    The scientific method is not particular to science. It only emerged in that discipline and therefore bears the name of that discipline. The scientific method is the only known means of organized, intentional, investigation of reality.

    The scientific method is the universal epistemological method. It is the best one that we have found.

    SCIENCE VS EMPIRICISM, POSITIVISM, AND FALSIFICATION
    One of the most common fallacies of libertarian arguments is the conflation of science and the scientific method with either empiricism or positivism or both.

    Science as it is practiced states that we never know the most parsimonious theory with the greatest explanatory power that explains causal relations and changes in state. And, that any model we construct whether verbal, operational, or logical and axiomatic rests upon a network of concepts that can be restructured at any point forward. This is a skeptical position and science has taught us it is correct to be skeptical. But in economics and politics, this uncertainty is not a weakness. It is a strength. We do not need greater certainty to act. We need greater certainty only to compel others to action. And in libertarian theory we should never seek to compel others to action except through fully informed voluntary exchange.

    -Context and Precision-
    Some of the time our theories are entirely false (phlogiston theory) some of which are limited by precision (newton’s theory of gravity). Both theories are false. But phlogiston theory is false in all circumstances, and newton’s theory of gravity is only false outside of the boundaries of “human scale” (the very small and the very large). Economic theories, referring to aggregates, are almost always false for any given case within the aggregate, but not for the aggregate expression itself. So theories, correspondence with reality, always and everywhere, are context dependent.

    -Math and Logic-
    Now, the same is true for most mathematical theories. The goal of mathematics is to create context independent general rules. So rules of arbitrary precision. And mathematics has had terrible difficulty in maintaining deductive certainty while trying to create rules independent of context. ie: with arbitrary precision. They solved it with the axiom of choice and maintaining the law of the excluded middle. Both of which are logical violations necessary to construct rules using arbitrary precision independent of context

    -Falsification-
    Falsification only requires that a statement be both falisifiable and that we can no longer identify new tests. It does not say that we need to repeat tests. Just the opposite. It says that we must create more precise, narrower tests, to further harden a theory if we wish to further test it. In fact, confirmation (repeating a test) is, under falsification, a fallacy. Since it merely confirms the prior test, and says nothing about the theory itself.

    -Sufficiency For Voluntary Action-
    *The Only Form Of Scientific Certainty Is The Level Sufficient For Voluntary Action*: Science states that we can never know enough to be certain, only that we can know enough to willingly ACT using the best of our knowledge at any given point; and that our confidence in those actions must be limited by the durability of a theory.

    The important point for libertarians being, that unlike the ironic fallacies put forth by Mises, the scientific argument is that there is NEVER a case where if you are not convinced of something, that you may be deprived of your property for political purposes – unless you are free riding.

    Some theories are very durable. We call them laws. A law is a theory that we cannot figure out how to disprove, and whose precision and explanatory power we do not yet know how to increase.

    Most theories that describe economic aggregates are imprecise, time variant, and open to additional precision, and externalities. In fact, it is nearly impossible to make statements about economic phenomenon that are not imprecise, time variant, and open to additional precision and externalities.

    So as general, imprecise, time variant, rules, open to increases in precision, for the description of aggregates, most ‘laws’ are not useful for the ascertainment of any individual case within that aggregate. We can make a general statement about aggregates, but we cannot make particular statements about cases.
    In other words, economics is a young, immature, scientific discipline, consisting of observations both external and internal, logical instrumentation to prove the internal, physical to measure the external, and reason to judge the sufficiency of correspondence.

    The question of whether or not state manipulation of information carried by the pricing system as a means of producing incentives to increase consumption and employment, is one not of scientific validity – but whether one uses false claims of certainty to justify the immorality of stealing from people by various means of involuntarily transfer for the purpose of conducting experiments that produce negative externalities equal to or worse than the benefits of consumption and employment.

    REFORMATION OF LIBERTY
    Three cultures: the anglo transparent and empirical, german continental obscurant and authoritarian rational, and the jewish cosmopolitan separatist obscurant pseudo-rational, were all different reactions to the enlightenment that attempted to preserve group evolutionary and competitive strategy in their arguments.

    However, only one of those three strategies is true, transparent, operational, and scientific: the anglo empirical. Anglos were an homogenous outbred polity on an island. Germans a semi-homogenous semi-outbred polity holding borders. Jews where an unlanded, unwanted, outcast polity held in isolation within host countries. The evolutionary, competitive, cultural and therefore philosophical needs of these groups reflected their circumstances. Anglo transparency is evidence of a lack of fear of conflict of interest.

    So, liberty must be resurrected from the failed Continental and Cosmopolitan programs, and, like all other disciplines, restated scientifically such that it can evolve into the 21st century, and lose it’s cultish and archaic dogma. Without that reformation, it is impossible to engage the majority polities, that do rely on scientific language in rational arguments. And if we are to escape the justified criticism of dogmatic and false misesian and rothbardian arguments, then to escape ridicule and fallacy alone we must make this transformation.

    Jewish Cosmopolitanism attempted to preserve group cohesion by adapting their cult language and philosophy to rely upon secular arguments. Cult language and philosophy creates barriers to cooperation outside the group and increases utility of cooperation within the group. Science instead, is an attempt to create a universal language independent of group esotericists designed for group cohesion. (Against religions in particular.) And that attempt to create a universal language, succeeded. Science has won. The universal language, grammar, and process consist of scientific realism, and the scientific method, and it’s inclusion of empiricism, instrumentalism, operationalism, and falsificationism.

    Misesians and Rothbardians and their ‘Austrian’ offshoots, all engage in loading, framing and overloading. Loading is the act of adding moral and emotional content to an argument. Framing is a form of fraud by omission, in which only preferred causes and effects are used for the argument, usually in support of some form of loading. Overloading is a form of deception, and exaggerated form of framing, where you construct a great body of information and argument using framed and loaded (selective) arguments in order to overwhelm the listener’s ability to conduct truth tests against it. And the reduction of statements to operations on the exchange of property eliminates this ability to conduct deception by loading, framing, and overloading.

    THE ETHICS OF OPERATIONALISM
    Science, by use of the scientific method, tries to solve the problem of causal density by breaking the the infinite causal density of the universe into discreet statements of cause and effect. The use of Operationalism in ethics, is an attempt to solve the problem of obscurantism, which is deceptive or self deceptive construction of artificial causal density for the purpose of persuasion.

    If you cannot state something in operational language that demonstrates knowledge of construction,then you cannot make a truth claim about it, because you do not possess knowledge upon which to make such a truth claim. Moreover, since any true statement can be made operationally and therefore transparently and subject to subjective testing for rationality, then the only reason to NOT make a statement in operational language is to construct obscurant deception. Once aware of this fact, then you are by definition and necessity violating the ethics of debate by relying on other than transparent and operational arguments.

    Libertarians are laughable for good reason. If we are to reform libertarianism we must restore liberty to anglo empirical aristocracy, and pull it from german continental authoritarian obscurantism, and jewish cosmopolitan hermeneutic ghetto obscurantism. Libertarianism must evolve so that honest transparent debate in rational and scientific terms can be conducted in favor of liberty and against collectivism in all its forms.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    The Philosophy of Aristocracy
    Kiev Ukraine

  • The Irony Of Austrian Apriorism

    THE IRONY OF AUSTRIAN APRIORISM
    (profound) (reformation of libertarianism)

    [F]rom my position as a scientific realist, understanding that praxeology is and must be an operational discipline, the advocates of apriorism and the universal deducibility of economics appear humorously ironic – whenever they are not exasperatingly frustrating.

    SUBJECTIVE TESTING
    We cannot deduce economic phenomenon (laws) from fist principles. We have not. We do not. We will not. The matter is settled by the evidence that we did not deduce sticky prices, consumer irrationality, the extraordinary impact of morality on economics, and the multitude of cognitive biases that incorrectly inform our intuitions.

    But, what we CAN do, given an empirically, instrumentally observed phenomenon, is to deduce the incentives to act, and therefore the actions that produce economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, once they are empirically observed.

    And conversely, we can test the rationality of incentives, and the voluntary or involuntary transfer of property, of economic propositions, if they are stated in operational language: as a SERIES OF HUMAN ACTIONS. (ie: operationalism)

    We can perform this test because human incentives sufficient for the voluntary organization of production are marginally indifferent. If they were not marginally indifferent then the voluntary organization of production in a polity of humans would be if not impossible, at least far more difficult.

    We do experience this level of difficulty whenever the difference in the portfolio of property rights used in any two polities are sufficiently different that trade must be reduced to the lowest common denominator. This is the case for trade barriers.

    Trade barriers compensate for differences in local purchasing power, but also for differences in local property rights – for example, when the export of natural resources are subject to tariffs for redistribution to the polity. But the more common example is trade with primitive societies in which intertemporal contract and property do not exist.

    OPERATIONALISM = HUMAN ACTION
    Operationalism is the requirement that we express statements as a series of actions. Operationalism requires that we demonstrate knowledge of construction, because one cannot make operational statements without knowledge of construction.

    Human action is an operationalist discipline. It a contradiction to state that the study of human actions differs from the study of operations in sequence. These terms are synonymous. The logic of describing the world in terms of human actions.

    Kant invented his philosophy to construct obscurantism in an effort to restore authority lost by religion in the enlightenment. It is an anti-scientific, anti-anglo empiricist philosophy of social rebellion. Cognitive science has come down on the Anglo side of the argument. The study of economics is, like all human investigation into phenomenon, one requiring the scientific method.

    The scientific method is not particular to science. It only emerged in that discipline and therefore bears the name of that discipline. The scientific method is the only known means of organized, intentional, investigation of reality.

    The scientific method is the universal epistemological method. It is the best one that we have found.

    SCIENCE VS EMPIRICISM, POSITIVISM, AND FALSIFICATION
    One of the most common fallacies of libertarian arguments is the conflation of science and the scientific method with either empiricism or positivism or both.

    Science as it is practiced states that we never know the most parsimonious theory with the greatest explanatory power that explains causal relations and changes in state. And, that any model we construct whether verbal, operational, or logical and axiomatic rests upon a network of concepts that can be restructured at any point forward. This is a skeptical position and science has taught us it is correct to be skeptical. But in economics and politics, this uncertainty is not a weakness. It is a strength. We do not need greater certainty to act. We need greater certainty only to compel others to action. And in libertarian theory we should never seek to compel others to action except through fully informed voluntary exchange.

    -Context and Precision-
    Some of the time our theories are entirely false (phlogiston theory) some of which are limited by precision (newton’s theory of gravity). Both theories are false. But phlogiston theory is false in all circumstances, and newton’s theory of gravity is only false outside of the boundaries of “human scale” (the very small and the very large). Economic theories, referring to aggregates, are almost always false for any given case within the aggregate, but not for the aggregate expression itself. So theories, correspondence with reality, always and everywhere, are context dependent.

    -Math and Logic-
    Now, the same is true for most mathematical theories. The goal of mathematics is to create context independent general rules. So rules of arbitrary precision. And mathematics has had terrible difficulty in maintaining deductive certainty while trying to create rules independent of context. ie: with arbitrary precision. They solved it with the axiom of choice and maintaining the law of the excluded middle. Both of which are logical violations necessary to construct rules using arbitrary precision independent of context

    -Falsification-
    Falsification only requires that a statement be both falisifiable and that we can no longer identify new tests. It does not say that we need to repeat tests. Just the opposite. It says that we must create more precise, narrower tests, to further harden a theory if we wish to further test it. In fact, confirmation (repeating a test) is, under falsification, a fallacy. Since it merely confirms the prior test, and says nothing about the theory itself.

    -Sufficiency For Voluntary Action-
    *The Only Form Of Scientific Certainty Is The Level Sufficient For Voluntary Action*: Science states that we can never know enough to be certain, only that we can know enough to willingly ACT using the best of our knowledge at any given point; and that our confidence in those actions must be limited by the durability of a theory.

    The important point for libertarians being, that unlike the ironic fallacies put forth by Mises, the scientific argument is that there is NEVER a case where if you are not convinced of something, that you may be deprived of your property for political purposes – unless you are free riding.

    Some theories are very durable. We call them laws. A law is a theory that we cannot figure out how to disprove, and whose precision and explanatory power we do not yet know how to increase.

    Most theories that describe economic aggregates are imprecise, time variant, and open to additional precision, and externalities. In fact, it is nearly impossible to make statements about economic phenomenon that are not imprecise, time variant, and open to additional precision and externalities.

    So as general, imprecise, time variant, rules, open to increases in precision, for the description of aggregates, most ‘laws’ are not useful for the ascertainment of any individual case within that aggregate. We can make a general statement about aggregates, but we cannot make particular statements about cases.
    In other words, economics is a young, immature, scientific discipline, consisting of observations both external and internal, logical instrumentation to prove the internal, physical to measure the external, and reason to judge the sufficiency of correspondence.

    The question of whether or not state manipulation of information carried by the pricing system as a means of producing incentives to increase consumption and employment, is one not of scientific validity – but whether one uses false claims of certainty to justify the immorality of stealing from people by various means of involuntarily transfer for the purpose of conducting experiments that produce negative externalities equal to or worse than the benefits of consumption and employment.

    REFORMATION OF LIBERTY
    Three cultures: the anglo transparent and empirical, german continental obscurant and authoritarian rational, and the jewish cosmopolitan separatist obscurant pseudo-rational, were all different reactions to the enlightenment that attempted to preserve group evolutionary and competitive strategy in their arguments.

    However, only one of those three strategies is true, transparent, operational, and scientific: the anglo empirical. Anglos were an homogenous outbred polity on an island. Germans a semi-homogenous semi-outbred polity holding borders. Jews where an unlanded, unwanted, outcast polity held in isolation within host countries. The evolutionary, competitive, cultural and therefore philosophical needs of these groups reflected their circumstances. Anglo transparency is evidence of a lack of fear of conflict of interest.

    So, liberty must be resurrected from the failed Continental and Cosmopolitan programs, and, like all other disciplines, restated scientifically such that it can evolve into the 21st century, and lose it’s cultish and archaic dogma. Without that reformation, it is impossible to engage the majority polities, that do rely on scientific language in rational arguments. And if we are to escape the justified criticism of dogmatic and false misesian and rothbardian arguments, then to escape ridicule and fallacy alone we must make this transformation.

    Jewish Cosmopolitanism attempted to preserve group cohesion by adapting their cult language and philosophy to rely upon secular arguments. Cult language and philosophy creates barriers to cooperation outside the group and increases utility of cooperation within the group. Science instead, is an attempt to create a universal language independent of group esotericists designed for group cohesion. (Against religions in particular.) And that attempt to create a universal language, succeeded. Science has won. The universal language, grammar, and process consist of scientific realism, and the scientific method, and it’s inclusion of empiricism, instrumentalism, operationalism, and falsificationism.

    Misesians and Rothbardians and their ‘Austrian’ offshoots, all engage in loading, framing and overloading. Loading is the act of adding moral and emotional content to an argument. Framing is a form of fraud by omission, in which only preferred causes and effects are used for the argument, usually in support of some form of loading. Overloading is a form of deception, and exaggerated form of framing, where you construct a great body of information and argument using framed and loaded (selective) arguments in order to overwhelm the listener’s ability to conduct truth tests against it. And the reduction of statements to operations on the exchange of property eliminates this ability to conduct deception by loading, framing, and overloading.

    THE ETHICS OF OPERATIONALISM
    Science, by use of the scientific method, tries to solve the problem of causal density by breaking the the infinite causal density of the universe into discreet statements of cause and effect. The use of Operationalism in ethics, is an attempt to solve the problem of obscurantism, which is deceptive or self deceptive construction of artificial causal density for the purpose of persuasion.

    If you cannot state something in operational language that demonstrates knowledge of construction,then you cannot make a truth claim about it, because you do not possess knowledge upon which to make such a truth claim. Moreover, since any true statement can be made operationally and therefore transparently and subject to subjective testing for rationality, then the only reason to NOT make a statement in operational language is to construct obscurant deception. Once aware of this fact, then you are by definition and necessity violating the ethics of debate by relying on other than transparent and operational arguments.

    Libertarians are laughable for good reason. If we are to reform libertarianism we must restore liberty to anglo empirical aristocracy, and pull it from german continental authoritarian obscurantism, and jewish cosmopolitan hermeneutic ghetto obscurantism. Libertarianism must evolve so that honest transparent debate in rational and scientific terms can be conducted in favor of liberty and against collectivism in all its forms.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    The Philosophy of Aristocracy
    Kiev Ukraine

  • A Propertarian Solution To Getting Consumers Money To Spend

    A PROPERTARIAN SOLUTION TO THE COMING MOBS OF PITCHFORKS – A BETTER WAY OF GETTING PEOPLE MINIMUM INCOME (READ THIS) (IMPORTANT PIECE) See http://topinfopost.com/2014/06/30/ultra-rich-mans-letter-to-my-fellow-filthy-rich-americans-the-pitchforks-are-coming (regardless of your political persuasion, you should read this. because it’s the best existing answer to the social problem of post-agrarian capitalism). [T]his might sound like a criticism, but it’s not: he “gets it” sentimentally, he doesn’t get it economically, or institutionally, because he’s not knowledgeable enough to ‘get it’ economically or institutionally. But the fact that he expresses his ideas sentimentally, is more USEFUL than expressing them economically or institutionally. Because people will not understand the importance of the economic and institutional arguments. The institutional problem we face with engaging in systematic dependency-creating redistribution is giving everyone the right incentives, rather than those that encourage the expansion of the government, which is a parasite on consumers and producers alike. The economic problem we face with creating institutionalized redistribution is doing it without doing more damage to the complex system of information provided by prices and wages. We forget too easily that capitalism refers to the *voluntary organization of production* in contrast to the various involuntary means of organizing production. The reason why capitalism produces prosperity and socialism doesn’t is because under the voluntary organization of production people have both the incentive to work and producers the ability to make rational plans under ever-changing conditions. Under socialism, people have the incentive not to work, or to work as little as possible, and it is impossible to rationally organize production to serve the desires of other producers and consumers. So capitalism isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of necessity. But here is the rub – and the solution. [W]hen our governments were invented, people worked in an agrarian society where our productivity was marginally indifferent, and determined not so much by our abilities, but whether we controlled our breeding, and whether we had the discipline to work hard. Today, disconnected from the productivity of the land, no longer farmers, no longer farm workers, even if we want to work, many of us cannot, because we can do nothing productive enough to participate in production under the voluntary organization of production. But this is logical a mistake we’ve inherited from our agrarian past. The most important part of making the voluntarily organization of production possible, is respecting other people’s property rights, and respecting the commons, and not increasing the expenses that others must bear for your existence in the world. That is why the west is wealthier than the rest – the high trust society. But respecting property – forgoing pleasures, and policing other so that they also forgo pleasures that would make the voluntary organization of production difficult and expensive if not impossible – is a form of work. If you respect property, the commons, and do not increase the costs that others must bear to support you, and police the behavior of others so that they respect property rights too, then you are in fact, working in production. You are working to produce the law, order and property rights that make the voluntary organization of production possible. The high trust society is just as important to the voluntary organization of society as are the resources that go into that production. As such, we must pay people for that work that they do, or we are failing to pay them for their participation in the production of the necessary conditions under which we can voluntarily organize production using the information provided by the pricing system, and our individual incentives to work in order to increase our consumption. [T]his is the “missing” moral argument for redistribution that is economically sound, and institutionally sound, that we have been searching for since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1700’s in England (and which Marx got terribly wrong at the cost of 100M lives, and which Keynes also got terribly wrong, which has cost us again, possibly, the economic health of western civilization.) The economically sound, and institutionally safe method of accomplishing this wage payment for constructing the social order that is necessary for the voluntary organization of production under the pricing system is to (a) redistribute money directly from the treasury to consumers via debit cards (b) base the amount of the distribution on monthly sales taxes collected, and eliminate as much of the income tax structure as possible, if not all of it, and (c) construct that payment as a non-guaranteed commission such that the more people in the work force, the less there is to go around (d) give it to everyone. (e) remove all employment laws, discrimination laws, minimum wage laws and the like (f) make it as much as we can economically tolerate (f) eliminate all other redistributive and controlling government programs and organizations and add that to the payment. (g) and lastly, and perhaps equally as importantly, use direct-from-treasury lending on all single-home single-owner mortgages, and single owner business properties at zero interest rate over 15 years. (g) As Galbraith and I both argued before his death, refinance and write down all mortgages against the treasury and pay them off over 30 years. There is no reason that an investor has the long term right to the interest on a mortgage at public expense. (And yes I have worked through the consequences to institutional investors. This bypasses institutional investors by eliminating the need for them.) Why this set of solutions? Because this (1) makes employment a preference not a necessity, and therefore not subject to regulation, (2) encourages everyone to limit the scope of government and maximize personal take home giving producers and consumers the same interest in keep ing the parasitic state as small as possible (3) doesn’t interfere with the pricing structure by artificially pricing labor and distorting the international price of american products and services. The macro economic importance of this point is greater than the importance of the first two. (4) also this solution would force the population to resist all immigration other than that which increases productivity, and depress the current fictionalization. (5) eliminates the class warfare in government by giving us exactly the same interest. (6) most importantly, it eliminates the majority of the financial sector, by pushing money directly to consumers and causing the banks to compete for consumer savings, rather than construct predatory consumer credit schemes, as we distribute money from the treasury down through the banking system. The impact of this on dismantling the influence of the financial sector on political and world affairs is something that if understood is more profound than the evolution of fiat currency in the first place. I wish I had time to give this the treatment it’s worthy of, but it will have to do for now. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • A Propertarian Solution To Getting Consumers Money To Spend

    A PROPERTARIAN SOLUTION TO THE COMING MOBS OF PITCHFORKS – A BETTER WAY OF GETTING PEOPLE MINIMUM INCOME (READ THIS) (IMPORTANT PIECE) See http://topinfopost.com/2014/06/30/ultra-rich-mans-letter-to-my-fellow-filthy-rich-americans-the-pitchforks-are-coming (regardless of your political persuasion, you should read this. because it’s the best existing answer to the social problem of post-agrarian capitalism). [T]his might sound like a criticism, but it’s not: he “gets it” sentimentally, he doesn’t get it economically, or institutionally, because he’s not knowledgeable enough to ‘get it’ economically or institutionally. But the fact that he expresses his ideas sentimentally, is more USEFUL than expressing them economically or institutionally. Because people will not understand the importance of the economic and institutional arguments. The institutional problem we face with engaging in systematic dependency-creating redistribution is giving everyone the right incentives, rather than those that encourage the expansion of the government, which is a parasite on consumers and producers alike. The economic problem we face with creating institutionalized redistribution is doing it without doing more damage to the complex system of information provided by prices and wages. We forget too easily that capitalism refers to the *voluntary organization of production* in contrast to the various involuntary means of organizing production. The reason why capitalism produces prosperity and socialism doesn’t is because under the voluntary organization of production people have both the incentive to work and producers the ability to make rational plans under ever-changing conditions. Under socialism, people have the incentive not to work, or to work as little as possible, and it is impossible to rationally organize production to serve the desires of other producers and consumers. So capitalism isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of necessity. But here is the rub – and the solution. [W]hen our governments were invented, people worked in an agrarian society where our productivity was marginally indifferent, and determined not so much by our abilities, but whether we controlled our breeding, and whether we had the discipline to work hard. Today, disconnected from the productivity of the land, no longer farmers, no longer farm workers, even if we want to work, many of us cannot, because we can do nothing productive enough to participate in production under the voluntary organization of production. But this is logical a mistake we’ve inherited from our agrarian past. The most important part of making the voluntarily organization of production possible, is respecting other people’s property rights, and respecting the commons, and not increasing the expenses that others must bear for your existence in the world. That is why the west is wealthier than the rest – the high trust society. But respecting property – forgoing pleasures, and policing other so that they also forgo pleasures that would make the voluntary organization of production difficult and expensive if not impossible – is a form of work. If you respect property, the commons, and do not increase the costs that others must bear to support you, and police the behavior of others so that they respect property rights too, then you are in fact, working in production. You are working to produce the law, order and property rights that make the voluntary organization of production possible. The high trust society is just as important to the voluntary organization of society as are the resources that go into that production. As such, we must pay people for that work that they do, or we are failing to pay them for their participation in the production of the necessary conditions under which we can voluntarily organize production using the information provided by the pricing system, and our individual incentives to work in order to increase our consumption. [T]his is the “missing” moral argument for redistribution that is economically sound, and institutionally sound, that we have been searching for since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1700’s in England (and which Marx got terribly wrong at the cost of 100M lives, and which Keynes also got terribly wrong, which has cost us again, possibly, the economic health of western civilization.) The economically sound, and institutionally safe method of accomplishing this wage payment for constructing the social order that is necessary for the voluntary organization of production under the pricing system is to (a) redistribute money directly from the treasury to consumers via debit cards (b) base the amount of the distribution on monthly sales taxes collected, and eliminate as much of the income tax structure as possible, if not all of it, and (c) construct that payment as a non-guaranteed commission such that the more people in the work force, the less there is to go around (d) give it to everyone. (e) remove all employment laws, discrimination laws, minimum wage laws and the like (f) make it as much as we can economically tolerate (f) eliminate all other redistributive and controlling government programs and organizations and add that to the payment. (g) and lastly, and perhaps equally as importantly, use direct-from-treasury lending on all single-home single-owner mortgages, and single owner business properties at zero interest rate over 15 years. (g) As Galbraith and I both argued before his death, refinance and write down all mortgages against the treasury and pay them off over 30 years. There is no reason that an investor has the long term right to the interest on a mortgage at public expense. (And yes I have worked through the consequences to institutional investors. This bypasses institutional investors by eliminating the need for them.) Why this set of solutions? Because this (1) makes employment a preference not a necessity, and therefore not subject to regulation, (2) encourages everyone to limit the scope of government and maximize personal take home giving producers and consumers the same interest in keep ing the parasitic state as small as possible (3) doesn’t interfere with the pricing structure by artificially pricing labor and distorting the international price of american products and services. The macro economic importance of this point is greater than the importance of the first two. (4) also this solution would force the population to resist all immigration other than that which increases productivity, and depress the current fictionalization. (5) eliminates the class warfare in government by giving us exactly the same interest. (6) most importantly, it eliminates the majority of the financial sector, by pushing money directly to consumers and causing the banks to compete for consumer savings, rather than construct predatory consumer credit schemes, as we distribute money from the treasury down through the banking system. The impact of this on dismantling the influence of the financial sector on political and world affairs is something that if understood is more profound than the evolution of fiat currency in the first place. I wish I had time to give this the treatment it’s worthy of, but it will have to do for now. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • THE CONQUEST OF PROGRESSIVE PSEUDOSCIENCE IS A SISYPHEAN TASK Thanks to postmode

    THE CONQUEST OF PROGRESSIVE PSEUDOSCIENCE IS A SISYPHEAN TASK

    Thanks to postmodernist indoctrination, this kind of nonsensical argument is as difficult to suppress as that of your average rothbardian dogma.

    —“Given how much difference there is from individual to individual within the same ethnic group, drawing broad general conclusions about individuals because they’re part of a particular ethnic group borders on ridiculous.”—

    (NOTE: Dave is wrong on the first half of the sentence, and right on the second half. You cannot generalize from a group to its members, but you an generalize from members to a group. The problem is that this has absolutely nothing to do with the first half, which is nonsense. And I do like and support dave’s sentimental arguments. So this post is more about the useful idiot that follows.)

    Your statement is fallacious albeit common. People universally ACT with racial preferences, and differences in distributions of reproductively immaterial alleles is not the the same as variations in distributions of reproductively significant alleles. But then if you knew enough about genetics to understand that basic principle you would not venture to make such statements.

    Read jayman’s blog.

    >>Dave Kozak

    Curt, its always somewhat cryptic and unconvincing with you, bud, you gotta adopt some clearer communication methods

    >>Curt Doolittle. Sorry man. Language of morality is intuitionist, while language of science is not, it is empirical, and requires specific knowledge of the domain.

    Meaning that unless you have mastery of a field like genetics you should not use it in argument and thus prove Dunning Kreuger that unconscious incompetence is endemic to man.

    >>USEFUL IDIOT<< —“People universally ACT with racial preferences”—

    (1) Experiments with babies have shown some slight preferences for strangers of their own race vs strangers of other races. Perhaps caused by degree of resemblance to the mother? But those are only slight preference, and only in babies.

    (2) Childhood experiences (and sometimes indoctrination) can lead to extreme racial preferences, or to no racial preferences.

    (3) There may be a genetic factor that causes people to have more empathy for their “tribe” than for outsiders. But one of the main causes of human progress has been the expansion of what is considered one’s “tribe.” Due to experience (both individual and social) and reason, more and more people are acting more and more like their “tribe” is the whole human race. (Personally, I also include bonobos in my tribe.)

    (4) Furthermore, the expansion of empathy is only a small part of the expansion of the “tribe.” By using their highly evolved brains, people have discovered that trade is more beneficial than war and that you don’t have to like somebody to trade with them. Civilization is the art of trading with people you don’t like.

    >>CURT<<

    1) A great example of poor reasoning based upon ignorance of the material. The reason people have an affinity in-group is because of the desirability of individuals in-group vs out group, and the hierarchy of desirability between groups. Second, status signals within group are ‘cheaper’ than out group or cross group signals so except at the margins we benefit from the cost of ingroup signals in selecting mates. Third, is that groups possess materially different norms and behaviors and trends (particularly impulsivity) and that familiarity with signals discounts the cost of mating opportunities and the ability to select possible mates.

    I know the data, and I have it down pretty cold. This is how it is. It’s in our reproductive interests in all but marginal cases, to mate in group. That’s why we do it. It’s not because we are stupid and conservative. It’ s because by and large it’s good.

    For example, look at high genetic collision areas of the globe and you will find more asymmetry, and therefore less desirability. That is because there is a maximum amount of outbreeding just like a maximum amount of inbreeding that preserves desirability and fitness. Otherwise (which you can see in germanic versus slavic and scandinavian groups) selection does not preserve desirable traits.

    So the error in the first example, is confusing the distribution of alleles and tendencies, with the reproductive VALUE of different distributions of alleles to each individual actor in the process of selection.

    2) The second point is another example of a logical fallacy. The fact that sometimes portions of the sky are pink, does not mean it is truthful to say that the sky is not blue. Exceptions demonstrate the rule, they do not falsify it. In the example you give, it is ADVANTAGEOUS to associate within group, that’s why people do it. That’s why even in teh states, minorities (including the white minority now) congregate in neighborhoods – because they prefer to, and because economically, our races are largely stratified in demonstrated abilities, as well as reproductive desirability.

    3) —“But one of the main causes of human progress has been the expansion of what is considered one’s “tribe.” “—

    That is true. That does not mean tribes are infinitely expandable, or that it is in our genetic interests, reproductive interests, or social interests to expand them infinitely – since they would just splinter as they do in hispanic/black groups which are divided into status layers by the whiteness of their skin. and new tribes would emerge, as always do, or that we wold form castes as we currently are in the west, and that the Hindus have done, and to some degree the chinese have done. A caste is just a tribal hierarchy under a single government, rather than a tribal peerage under separate governments. The difference is merely one of word games. Word games that attempt to justify an expansionary state.

    We cannot fight our genes. We can merely work with them. Organisms that try to fight their genes do not survive. Just as westerners are being colonized and exterminated – apparently our genes are unfit for survival.

    5) —“Furthermore, the expansion of empathy”—

    this is another verbal fallacy. What is extended is not empathy, but trust, and that trust is extended by the enforcement of property rights and the prohibition on cousin marriage. Neither of which are enforced in the muslim world for example, and only some of which are enforced in Asia.

    It is incredibly disconcerting that even educated folk are the victims of pervasive pseudoscience. It’s not your fault really. The postmodernists did it to you on purpose. The millennials and their institutionalized ignorance are the culmination of the progressive pseudoscientific experiment.

    Thankfully science has been dismantling progressive and postmodern pseudoscience since 2001, and if it continues it will be erased almost as fast as it was created.

    >>USEFUL IDIOT<<<

    Curt, do you want to return to mandatory sterilizations of “genetically inferior” people?

    Do you want to outlaw interracial marriages?

    Do you want mandatory racial segregation?

    Cousin marriages?

    Charles Darwin married his cousin. And there were many cousin marriages in their illustrious family tree.

    Cousin marriages were extremely common throughout the world for most of history.

    >>CURT<<

    Ray,

    Sigh. Another progressive postmodernist using postmodern argumentative technique. Works on the idiots, but not on non-idiots. So, yet again, lets look at your two (dishonest and fallacious) responses. Because as a moral man, it is my responsibility to clean the intellectual commons, just as it is to clean the ecosystem. Both types of pollution are ones responsibility.

    1) If you were to read, (I know that is hard work) but to study the evolution of marriage, we started out in consanguineous bands without prohibitions on inbreeding, and slowly increased the prohibitions on inbreeding. As much as 40% of muslim marriages are to first cousins, representing a disproportionate number of birth defects in the UK for example. But more importantly, low trust societies do not extend familial (kinship) trust to non-kin, while high trust societies prohibit inbreeding (in the west, as far out as eight generations). The church did this to interrupt the inheritance of land, and break up the noble families so that it could purchase land more cheaply and easily, but the net consequence was the high trust of western civilization – at least above the Hanjal line (protestant europe). When everyone in your city is a potential family member, you treat them as such. When only cousins are potential family members you do not treat non family members as such. Now, it turns out, that breeding with your cousins, or at least outside of first cousins, is pretty good genetic practice, but doesn’t produce high trust. The slavs are in general better looking people than germans for this reason. Sufficient inbreeding and sufficient outbreeding. SO it is trust and min/max genetics that are in your interest. The balance is best achieved in the small scandinavian countries that are fully outbred, but are small enough that they’re all effectively cousins. This allows universalism, while maintaining genetic homogeneity sufficient for selection pressures to function. or it did until recently. But the most important is, that people will not redistribute across racial and cultural lines (as we see in the EU). And so the less diverse the population the higher the trust and the more willingness (in fact, enthusiasm for) redistribution. So effectively we can choose freedom and redistribution and homogeneity(Scandinavia), or diversity and totalitarianism and intolerance for redistribution(USA).

    2) –“Mandatory sterilizations”—

    Well, aside from the fact that this is a dishonest argumentation tactic in the categories of (a) distraction from your failure to answer the argument (b) rallying and shaming which is an attempt to accuse your opponent of immorality, which is a variation of an ad hominem (c) fallacy of extremes which is to use an extreme case to answer a general case – and that these tactics are usually limited to freshmen college girls – or at least girls with a lousy education – I will respond anyway, and point out that.

    That I point out the fallacy of your denial of the universal demonstration of racial preferences and the pseudoscientific arguments that you rely upon, does not mean I advocate either (a) sterilization or (b) behavior-mandating laws. Quite the contrary, it means that you are merely engaged in propagandizing, lying, or ignorance, and doing harm to society by propagating falsehoods that ENCOURAGE the institution of immoral laws such as those currently used to punish white males in particular, but whites in general by giving favorable treatment to non-whites. You may attempt to point the figure of blame at me, but it is merely another example of the success that postmodernists have had in indoctrinating Stalins’ “useful idiots” into the postmodern cause.

    I don’t really know if you are propagandizing, lying, ignorant or stupid, but in any case, you are still incorrect, and engaging in deception, whatever the reason.

    Just how it is.

    READING LIST FOR THE ANTI-PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT

    Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans

    John Keegan: A History Of Warfare

    Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey

    Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation

    William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization

    Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology

    Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe

    Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom

    Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism

    Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms

    Matt Ridley: The Red Queen

    Dale Petersen: Demonic Males

    Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature

    Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

    Francis Fukuyama: Trust

    Sam Harris : Lying

    Steven Pinker : The Blank Slate

    Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind

    Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism

    Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-04 12:47:00 UTC

  • INTRODUCTION (draft) I set out to provide a vehicle for conservatives to discuss

    INTRODUCTION

    (draft)

    I set out to provide a vehicle for conservatives to discuss their aristocratic egalitarian social model in rational rather than historical, metaphorical and moral terms.

    That mission led me (over a decade) to develop Propertarianism: the logic and ethics of the high trust society. The logic and ethics of aristocratic egalitarians. The logic of the incorrectly attributed ‘protestant ethic’ – the highest trust ethic man has ‘yet’ developed.

    The side effect of developing Propertarianism, was that it allowed the rational expression of *ALL* political preferences in commensurable terms. I had believed it was possible I just never intended to discover it by simply starting with Hoppe’s ethics of private property.

    So, rather than treat propertarianism as a prescriptive philosophy, I left it as a universal language for the articulation of ethical and moral codes. And added the voluntary contract for property rights (mutual insurance of property rights) and high trust ethics as Aristocratic Egalitarianism. Leaving Propertarianism as the logical means of describing the ethics of all political philosophies by how much free riding was suppressed by the moral code. This system of measurement creates a single universal scale for describing criminal ethical and moral behavior in objective terms.

    Once I made enough progress beyond Propertarianism and Aristocratic egalitarianism, I understood that I had a bigger challenge, if I wanted to arm conservatives and libertarians, and that was undermining progressive and postmodern fallacies.

    And I struggled for most of last year with whether it was necessary or not. And I almost gave up – I think two or three times. But in the end I decided, or maybe only intuited, that I needed to include that capacity in order to demonstrate that all postmodernism is merely lying, and nothing more. Postmodernism – progressivism – is a new age mysticism meant to replace the old age mysticism – judeo-christianity. It’s just stated in verbally obscurant and highly loaded and framed form rather than mystically obscurant and framed form. But regardless of the form of obscurantism, whether mystical or linguistic, it’s still just deception.

    That led me to performative truth (only humans can act, and therefore only extant truths are testimonies). And then to the understanding that the underlying problem plaguing philosophy in all fields: Philosophy proper, economics, ethics, politics, logic, math and science is the definition of truth, and moreover the purpose of truth.

    You would think this was something people figured out, but if you research the topic truth is a highly contested thing. By researching truth in all fields, I was able to solve that problem and then explain why Mises, and the Austrians, as well as the progressives and Rawlsians, but more importantly the scientists, mathematicians and logicians all failed to both solve their internal conflict over the nature of truth, and why political economists and moral philosophers in particular, had failed.

    I’d read a draft paper by Rafe Champion I think in the early 2000’s that described how the Austrians and Popperians had failed to solve the problem of the social sciences. And in that paper, Rafe framed the question for me pretty clearly. It stuck in the back of my mind as the underlying problem and a constant subconscious irritant. What is the logic of cooperation? Why have all these thinkers failed?

    And, like all other scientifically biased folk, I had thought it was a problem of an inadequacy of mathematics or logic. But it wasn’t. It was an inadequacy of general understanding: what does it mean to claim something is true? Was the reason that none of these people solved the problem a history of philosophy saturated with platonism, an over-fascination with science, and an under-fascination with ethics, metaphysics and human action?

    Joel Mokyr wrote a wonderful book called “The Gifts of Athena”. In that text he divides knowledge into “knowledge of how” and “knowledge of what”. Which I intuited was somehow not quite right or possibly unscientific. But somehow his work was taking us in the right direction. But I also intuited that it was somehow wrong for the same reason Mises was wrong. I just couldn’t figure out why I felt that intuition.

    Once I realize that the fallacy of Cantorial sets as a substitution of frequency for quantity and perpetuated the fallacies of infinity and infinities had damaged the philosophy of math and that Turing’s solutions were superior, I started to understand that Marx, Freud, Cantor, Gödel, Mises, Einstein, Popper, the Socialists, Marxists, Postmodernists and Rothbard, shared a similar error originated by the Cosmopolitan Enlightenment, and that only Mises and Einstein had partly managed to escape. But an error that Poincare, Brouwer, Bridgman and Bishop seemed to intuit, but could not seem to solve.

    The scientists rather than the verbalists understood something was wrong. They understood that sophisticated but empty verbalism is a means of obscuring ignorance of causality, while merely justifying correspondence, without substance. And that there is very great difference between knowledge of correlation (knowledge of use) and knowledge of causation (knowledge of construction).

    But these more technical and less verbal authors had no answer to the utility and correspondence of classical mathematics despite its platonism, the internal consistency of formal logic despite it’s tautological constraint, the postwar utility of Keynesian economics, or the expansion of mathematical physics into what appear to be magical realms that could not be disproved. Physicists did manage to mature their discipline into one of information, and psychologists did managed to adopt Operationism thereby saving the discipline from its status as a psuedoscience. But by and large, philosophers proper failed to provide a unifying structure across all fields, and none solved the problem of the social sciences – economics in particular.

    The counter intuitive and missing reason being simply that while it is ethical to state that some theory merely works, it is unethical to make a truth claim when one is ignorant of causality, and immoral to perpetuate platonism or obscurantism in any of its forms, in any discipline. To do so is a moral hazard, innocent deception, and white lie, that en masse, produce the same insidious effect on a population as the 12th century work of Islamic philosopher _____ had on muslim civilization by dooming it to the rejection of science and thereby permanently institutionalizing ignorance justified by mysticism.[Citation] Or Justinian’s forcible institution of Christianity and the closure of the schools of Greek Stoicism – the western equivalent of buddhism that taught disciplined individual character and action rather than disciplined disengagement from reality of buddhism or the mystical obedience to authority of Christianity. Worst of all, when Stoicism was in retrospect, the only religion whose widespread practice results in the creation of a productive and ethical civic society, and as such the most important religion ever developed by man.

    The statement that truth is an ethical proposition that constrains politics, ethics, science, logic and mathematical claims may seem silly and unnecessarily burdensome to contemporary audiences – and it may forever seem silly and burdensome to audiences – because much of linguistic obscurantism concentrated in the verb “to-be”, is merely convenience – reduction of cognitive effort in an already precise and cognitively expensive english language. But on the other hand, it is fairly obvious once we realize that we are just simply lying unless we are at least trying hard to tell the truth. And telling the truth is the cure not only for ancient religious mysticism, but for new linguistic mysticism, and the constant subjugation of the populace to propaganda and deception from all disciplines both economic, political and scientific.

    Hayek stated that while he himself could not solve the problem that like Bridgman he had intuited, he believed that the twentieth century would be remembered as an era of reemergent mysticism.[Citation] In this work, I hope to demonstrate that Hayek was correct in his accusation, explain why Mises came closest to the answer but failed, and to provide the reasoning with which to rescue moral, ethical, political and economic discourse from the mysticism of the late 19th through early 21st centuries.

    And while I do not have terribly great hopes that I will be successful en large, since the value of obscurantism, empty verbalism, pseudoscience and outright deception, are so politically valuable, I do have some hope that like the discipline of science has managed to increase its ethical content considerably, if not entirely, that over time, what I have written here may assist those of us of more moral ambitions, in improving our institutions, and our discourse, so that morality, ethics, politics and law, are conducted scientifically: which logically equates to ‘ethically’. The reader and the passage of time will be the judge.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    Kiev Ukraine

    June 2014

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-24 05:46:00 UTC

  • Mises' Praxeology As The Failure To Develop Economic Operationalism

    (important)(profound) [I] have been working to reform anarcho capitalist arguments by translating them from troublesome Kantian rationalism, into the transparent common language of science: ratio-empiricism. And, at least for the past few months, I’ve been struggling to develop a narrative structure that would allow me to easily demonstrate the solution to the promise of praxeology as a failed version of the same problems addressed by Intuitionism, Operationalism and Constructivism in mathematics and science. Mises’ work was another example of the multi-disciplinary failure to provide a solution to the common intuition that there is a problem with science and mathematics, and our application of science and math to other fields – particularly to economics and ethics. That is the conclusion that I have come to – it’s the logical positioning of Mises’ praxeology in the development of 20th century thought – albeit he was even less successful in economics than peers were in physics, math, logic and psychology. They were able to identify the solution but not able to convince peers to implement it, because it was burdensome. This narrative, positioning Misesian thought as a failed attempt at Operationalism in human cooperation, provides a vehicle whereby I can describe Misesian arguments in the same context as those in physics, psychology, logic and mathematics. All of them as failed experiments in operationalism only because the authors did not and possibly could not look across disciplines and discover that they were merely adding or removing the properties desirable or not for their field of inquiry – but that while they were seeking a logical solution, that they were all making similar arguments – ethical arguments: And that the problem they intuited, that Poincaré criticized them for, was an ethical one: recreating mysticism through the use of verbalism to obscure causality that they did not understand. All the major disciplines went through a somewhat failed transformation and only psychology, which was most in need of reformation, fully adopted operationalism as “operationism”. And the result was a wealth of research in experimental psychology and the success of experimental psychology versus the pseudoscience that dominated the field before hand. [W]hy is this important? Because the requirements for construction and operational language, are not only logical but ethical. And while ethics has limited place in mathematical principles, and physical laws, it has a great significance to the promise that one is advocating a truth in mathematical and physical propositions – and therefore not ‘polluting’ the intellectual domain with fallacies that might impact others’ work. But in the logic of cooperation we call ethics it is inseparable both from the promise that one is advocating a truth AND in the articulation of its principles and the laws that enforce those principles. If we had discovered operationalism in ethics first, then perhaps, we would have had an easier time justifying the additional burden that operationalism places upon physics, science, psychology math and logic – and we might have saved a century of pseudoscientific inquiry, just as Bridgman worried; and just as we have seen in a century of fallacious and immoral economics. As Bridgman noted, the only reason Einstein was innovative, was because he operationalized the problem of measurement of bodies – something that had we done earlier would have saved a generation or more of wasted effort in science – just as we have wasted a generation or more in the pursuit of a logic of cooperation leading to liberty. The issue for us, in economics, politics and in ethics, is that the problem of arbitrary precision in the construction of general rules – hypothesis, theories and laws – affects only the precision of economic laws in time, but not our ability to state those laws. However, unlike say, mathematics or logic, we never run into decidability in the logic of cooperation, because all phenomenon are reducible to human actions that are open to subjective testing (sympathetic experience). Unlike axiomatic systems such as math and logic, we are never short of information necessary for decidability. Humans are marginally indifferent in their preferences – which is why we can experience shared intent, cooperate, and empathize. As such we can always decide. Buridan’s Ass never starves. Information is always sufficient. It may not be sufficient for the choice of preference, but it is sufficient for rational choice. Again, arguments that someone versed in mathematical philosophy might have understood. Although, with decades of computer science, we have learned that it’s computer science that is more trustworthy than mathematics, because computers are constrained by operational rules of necessity, and unlike mathematics we cannot use imagination and ‘fudging’ obscured by verbalism. Operations must be open to performance and results must be computable. To counter the problem of imagination adding information to arguments, and the problem of using verbalism to obscure ignorance, under operationalism and constructivism, **truth is replaced by (algorithmic) proof as a primitive notion, and existence requires demonstration of constructibility.** This statement is possible to translate into the axiom that moral (ethical) propositions must be reducible to a series of human actions, open to subjective testing (sympathetic verification). This is the argument that mises was looking for, and could not construct, possibly because (a) he lacked sufficient understanding of mathematics, (b) he lacked a demonstrably insufficient understanding of the terms ‘scientific’ and ‘logical’, because he conflated them with abandon, despite their opposite properties, and (c) because an ethical constraint was insufficient to provide an authoritative response to the moral arguments of statists and socialists alike. Whether he understood the ethical constraint not the logical one was all that a solution to praxeological analysis would provide, or simply, like most cosmopolitans, because preferred an authoritarian, verbalist, and pseudoscientific argument is something it is impossible to answer in our era. Since Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises and Rothbard all make the same error of constructing verbal pseudosciences, it’s hard to imagine that it’s intentional rather than a cultural bias or strategy. (Something I have written about elsewhere under the heading of competing uses of truth.) The problem I face, and the work I must do, to help others understand Mises’ position in intellectual history, and his failure, and then to construct a logic of cooperation, where Mises mistakenly tries to construct a logic of ‘action’ is to enumerate examples of axioms and laws in different fields and thereby demonstrate the problem of the sufficiency of information for deduction under arbitrary precision in the construction of hypotheses, theories, laws, and axioms; and then placing Mises’ work in the context of all fields struggling with the definition of truth (as ultimately performative – and therefore ethical). So positioning economics and ethics using performative truth, operationalism and constructivism will help demonstrate the concept across ALL domains of inquiry, rather than just within economics, ethics, physics, psychology, mathematics and logic. And thus eliminate the objections to performative truth, intuitionism, constructivism, and operationalism by demonstrating that all philosophical and logical disciplines rest upon the action that one claims to have demonstrated a an action that he can testify truthfully to have observed (rather than imagined, or used verbalisms to obscure that he has not. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover ethics first – perhaps had Mises solved the problem in ethics, other fields would have grasped the significance. Although, other fields have addressed ethics with softer variants of operationalism and construction – particularly science. They have never reformed ’truth’ as performative: as testimony, or ‘true witness’, as evidenced by that which is operational and constructible. At least in the discipline of law, strict construction, original intent, and deliberate modification of law is an understood if not obeyed principle. Operationalism may allow us to make truthful testimony, and truthful testimony is the only truth that humans are capable of creating. All else is imaginary, as is infinity. But whether we retain the approximation of classical reasoning as a practical matter of utility, or adopt construction and operation as a requirement for attestable truth in other disciplines really doesn’t matter as much as it does in ethics, politics and law. Physics, science, psychology, math and logic are luxury goods and rarely involve involuntary transfer and provide an incentive for conflict. But, cooperation is a necessary good. Politics and law are necessary goods. Strict construction is necessary and beneficial since it permits the rational resolution of conflicts, and as such prevents them. Strict construction makes it impossible to use empty verbalisms to advocate involuntary transfers as ‘moral’. Operational definitions make it much harder to lie, cheat and steal. Under operationalism, performative truth, constructivism, the field of ethics, including the domains of criminal, unethical, immoral and conspiratorial, and conquest prohibitions, can be described as an objective uniform logic as Mises suggested it might be. We can construct a formal logic of cooperation – ethics. And, we can do it using ratio-scientific language, via operational and constructive means. We can do it in the common universal and transparent language of science using hypothesis, theory and law, and model our laws using axioms constrained by correspondence to this empirical laws. We do not need false authoritarianism, pseudoscientific obscurant terminology, or a cult or obscure continental language to do it. An irony perhaps that Mises did not grasp that he was justifying the logic of human action, which is by definition operational and constructive in an argumentative structure that was not operational nor constructive. In hindsight this approach is either humorous or tragic. While we are not sure yet, it is possible that Popper was correct, and that we can never know if we possess the most parsimonious description of any phenomenon – what we call ‘truth’ or ‘ultimate truth’ – we can, instead of spending our lives in a quest for the non-existant and logically unknowable, instead, publish recipes that we can testify truthfully to the construction of, and performance of, as correspondent with reality. This is the difference between european commitment to always speaking the truth, and producing many, many technological successes, versus academic publishing a welfare queens, never responsible for our words, and never accountable for the consequences. This is the difference between anglo empirical truth, and cosmopolitan pragmatic truth. [T]he 20th century’s failed quest for a definition of truth, is the narrative structure that I’ve been searching for. Until recently, I just couldn’t find a way of talking about Mises’ work in the broader context of intellectual development. He clearly intuited the problem, as did those in other fields, but besides having the Jewish obsession with words-as-reality, and the German obsession with authority, he did not understand math and science well enough, and certainly had no exposure to computer science and the problem of computability. Why he proceeded onward and constructed an elaborate nonsensical pseudoscience in the Cosmopolitan tradition is something that only he could answer. And why subsequent generations have created a cult out of this pseudoscience, complete with typical cosmopolitan saturation of the informational commons with propaganda supporting of the pseudosicence, including heroic figure worship, and heaping unworthy praise at every opportunity, is up to those still living to explain. It is worth noting that Popper too largely relied on narrative verbalisms, such as his ‘three worlds’ hypothesis, and we know that he resorted to Krugman-like distortion of facts in his criticisms of the left. And we know that Popper’s real purpose was not about science it self, but his agenda to undermine scientific certainty, much as did Mises, by rendering truth in to platonic form, removing responsibility from the scientist for true testimony, and casting cosmopolitan Critique, originated in hermeneutic interpretation of scripture, as the means of scientific social organization, rather than the previous anglo saxon and german requirement for truthful testimony. ALl these thinkers failed to stem the tide of marx’s socialism, rothbardian libertinism, and Straussian neoconservatism, because all tried to counter pseudoscience with pseudoscience, and empty verbalism with empty verbalism. However the manner of correcting those people was always available to us, and had been for centuries if not millennia: a requirement that we tell the truth, and persecution under law for not doing so. As Hoppe states, Hayek failed as well, both to make this connection with performative truth as a means of social order, and to move from the classical liberal and therefore psychological school of thought to the calculative rigor of logic by identifying property as the first and necessary object or unit of commensurability. He did understand the law and the common law, clearly, as the institutional means for resolving conflicts – better than anyone else as far as I know. But he did not grasp the difference between legal REASON (approximation necessary for discovery) and logical CALCULATION (precision necessary for truth). Nor between knowledge of use (correspondence as truth) and knowledge of construction (truth in existence). (Although I’m willing to admit that I might be one of the few people who currently does.) Later in life Mises appears to waffle a bit, if not reverse himself. But because of what appears to be his fascination with Kantian a priorism, he didn’t see the parallel between his (inarticulate) argument that economics was both empirical and logical, and reverse mathematics, in which one constructs necessary axioms one can testify to as extant, after using empirical and logical means by which to approximate the solution to a problem. My original goal was to provide conservatives a vehicle for argument using what I saw as libertarian rationalism. Conversely, I wanted to make it impossible to conduct deceptive arguments in the religious, progressive and postmodern forms, but in doing so I found an answer to a century or more old conflict in the history of thought. And I think I can rescue Mises and Hoppe from the ‘fruitcake fringe’ of rationalist argument. Which is helpful. Since I want, like most, a plan to obtain liberty in my lifetime. And while any value Mises had has been already incorporated into economic thought, only fringe groups have incorporated Hoppe’s criticism of democracy and use of competing private insurance organizations to replace monopoly bureaucracy in the production of regulation. Unfortunately, Hoppe appears too entrenched and committed to praxeology as pseudoscience, the fallacy of aggression which is merely a means of licensing fraud by verbal means and creating a parasitic class immune from both physical and legal punishment. And has merely adopted the marxist ‘commune’ as his model of rebellion. Which just because we desire liberty, is just as economically impossible as it is if we desire communism. Wishful thinking is not action. Its wishing others will do the work for you. Liberty was created only by europeans, because of rare ancient circumstances, whereby warriors granted one another insurance against theft of their property obtained from their cattle raids, and required equality of one another because of their battle tactics requiring independent financing, action and maneuver, at high risk. These people built an ethic that would give birth to science, reason, property and liberty, because it forces man to use his mind in terms which accurately correspond to reality: Tell the truth, and only the truth. Fulfill your commitments at risk of life. Construct a brotherhood of property owners two whom familial trust is extended. And force all free riding out of society so that all persons must participate in production, and none can resort to parasitism. Liberty is obtained at the point of metal object, by denying others access to power. Everything else is merely wishful thinking, or an attempt to free ride on the efforts of those who do construct liberty. The natural aristocracy is not created by a small population. It is created by every living soul willing to bear arms to prevent the accumulation of sufficient power to deny others sovereignty over their property: For one and all, to deny one and all, access to the property of one and all by other than voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, exchange free of externality. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine LINKSConstructive Mathematics:Mathematical Intuitionism: Operationalism:Praxeology

  • Mises’ Praxeology As The Failure To Develop Economic Operationalism

    (important)(profound) [I] have been working to reform anarcho capitalist arguments by translating them from troublesome Kantian rationalism, into the transparent common language of science: ratio-empiricism. And, at least for the past few months, I’ve been struggling to develop a narrative structure that would allow me to easily demonstrate the solution to the promise of praxeology as a failed version of the same problems addressed by Intuitionism, Operationalism and Constructivism in mathematics and science. Mises’ work was another example of the multi-disciplinary failure to provide a solution to the common intuition that there is a problem with science and mathematics, and our application of science and math to other fields – particularly to economics and ethics. That is the conclusion that I have come to – it’s the logical positioning of Mises’ praxeology in the development of 20th century thought – albeit he was even less successful in economics than peers were in physics, math, logic and psychology. They were able to identify the solution but not able to convince peers to implement it, because it was burdensome. This narrative, positioning Misesian thought as a failed attempt at Operationalism in human cooperation, provides a vehicle whereby I can describe Misesian arguments in the same context as those in physics, psychology, logic and mathematics. All of them as failed experiments in operationalism only because the authors did not and possibly could not look across disciplines and discover that they were merely adding or removing the properties desirable or not for their field of inquiry – but that while they were seeking a logical solution, that they were all making similar arguments – ethical arguments: And that the problem they intuited, that Poincaré criticized them for, was an ethical one: recreating mysticism through the use of verbalism to obscure causality that they did not understand. All the major disciplines went through a somewhat failed transformation and only psychology, which was most in need of reformation, fully adopted operationalism as “operationism”. And the result was a wealth of research in experimental psychology and the success of experimental psychology versus the pseudoscience that dominated the field before hand. [W]hy is this important? Because the requirements for construction and operational language, are not only logical but ethical. And while ethics has limited place in mathematical principles, and physical laws, it has a great significance to the promise that one is advocating a truth in mathematical and physical propositions – and therefore not ‘polluting’ the intellectual domain with fallacies that might impact others’ work. But in the logic of cooperation we call ethics it is inseparable both from the promise that one is advocating a truth AND in the articulation of its principles and the laws that enforce those principles. If we had discovered operationalism in ethics first, then perhaps, we would have had an easier time justifying the additional burden that operationalism places upon physics, science, psychology math and logic – and we might have saved a century of pseudoscientific inquiry, just as Bridgman worried; and just as we have seen in a century of fallacious and immoral economics. As Bridgman noted, the only reason Einstein was innovative, was because he operationalized the problem of measurement of bodies – something that had we done earlier would have saved a generation or more of wasted effort in science – just as we have wasted a generation or more in the pursuit of a logic of cooperation leading to liberty. The issue for us, in economics, politics and in ethics, is that the problem of arbitrary precision in the construction of general rules – hypothesis, theories and laws – affects only the precision of economic laws in time, but not our ability to state those laws. However, unlike say, mathematics or logic, we never run into decidability in the logic of cooperation, because all phenomenon are reducible to human actions that are open to subjective testing (sympathetic experience). Unlike axiomatic systems such as math and logic, we are never short of information necessary for decidability. Humans are marginally indifferent in their preferences – which is why we can experience shared intent, cooperate, and empathize. As such we can always decide. Buridan’s Ass never starves. Information is always sufficient. It may not be sufficient for the choice of preference, but it is sufficient for rational choice. Again, arguments that someone versed in mathematical philosophy might have understood. Although, with decades of computer science, we have learned that it’s computer science that is more trustworthy than mathematics, because computers are constrained by operational rules of necessity, and unlike mathematics we cannot use imagination and ‘fudging’ obscured by verbalism. Operations must be open to performance and results must be computable. To counter the problem of imagination adding information to arguments, and the problem of using verbalism to obscure ignorance, under operationalism and constructivism, **truth is replaced by (algorithmic) proof as a primitive notion, and existence requires demonstration of constructibility.** This statement is possible to translate into the axiom that moral (ethical) propositions must be reducible to a series of human actions, open to subjective testing (sympathetic verification). This is the argument that mises was looking for, and could not construct, possibly because (a) he lacked sufficient understanding of mathematics, (b) he lacked a demonstrably insufficient understanding of the terms ‘scientific’ and ‘logical’, because he conflated them with abandon, despite their opposite properties, and (c) because an ethical constraint was insufficient to provide an authoritative response to the moral arguments of statists and socialists alike. Whether he understood the ethical constraint not the logical one was all that a solution to praxeological analysis would provide, or simply, like most cosmopolitans, because preferred an authoritarian, verbalist, and pseudoscientific argument is something it is impossible to answer in our era. Since Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises and Rothbard all make the same error of constructing verbal pseudosciences, it’s hard to imagine that it’s intentional rather than a cultural bias or strategy. (Something I have written about elsewhere under the heading of competing uses of truth.) The problem I face, and the work I must do, to help others understand Mises’ position in intellectual history, and his failure, and then to construct a logic of cooperation, where Mises mistakenly tries to construct a logic of ‘action’ is to enumerate examples of axioms and laws in different fields and thereby demonstrate the problem of the sufficiency of information for deduction under arbitrary precision in the construction of hypotheses, theories, laws, and axioms; and then placing Mises’ work in the context of all fields struggling with the definition of truth (as ultimately performative – and therefore ethical). So positioning economics and ethics using performative truth, operationalism and constructivism will help demonstrate the concept across ALL domains of inquiry, rather than just within economics, ethics, physics, psychology, mathematics and logic. And thus eliminate the objections to performative truth, intuitionism, constructivism, and operationalism by demonstrating that all philosophical and logical disciplines rest upon the action that one claims to have demonstrated a an action that he can testify truthfully to have observed (rather than imagined, or used verbalisms to obscure that he has not. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover ethics first – perhaps had Mises solved the problem in ethics, other fields would have grasped the significance. Although, other fields have addressed ethics with softer variants of operationalism and construction – particularly science. They have never reformed ’truth’ as performative: as testimony, or ‘true witness’, as evidenced by that which is operational and constructible. At least in the discipline of law, strict construction, original intent, and deliberate modification of law is an understood if not obeyed principle. Operationalism may allow us to make truthful testimony, and truthful testimony is the only truth that humans are capable of creating. All else is imaginary, as is infinity. But whether we retain the approximation of classical reasoning as a practical matter of utility, or adopt construction and operation as a requirement for attestable truth in other disciplines really doesn’t matter as much as it does in ethics, politics and law. Physics, science, psychology, math and logic are luxury goods and rarely involve involuntary transfer and provide an incentive for conflict. But, cooperation is a necessary good. Politics and law are necessary goods. Strict construction is necessary and beneficial since it permits the rational resolution of conflicts, and as such prevents them. Strict construction makes it impossible to use empty verbalisms to advocate involuntary transfers as ‘moral’. Operational definitions make it much harder to lie, cheat and steal. Under operationalism, performative truth, constructivism, the field of ethics, including the domains of criminal, unethical, immoral and conspiratorial, and conquest prohibitions, can be described as an objective uniform logic as Mises suggested it might be. We can construct a formal logic of cooperation – ethics. And, we can do it using ratio-scientific language, via operational and constructive means. We can do it in the common universal and transparent language of science using hypothesis, theory and law, and model our laws using axioms constrained by correspondence to this empirical laws. We do not need false authoritarianism, pseudoscientific obscurant terminology, or a cult or obscure continental language to do it. An irony perhaps that Mises did not grasp that he was justifying the logic of human action, which is by definition operational and constructive in an argumentative structure that was not operational nor constructive. In hindsight this approach is either humorous or tragic. While we are not sure yet, it is possible that Popper was correct, and that we can never know if we possess the most parsimonious description of any phenomenon – what we call ‘truth’ or ‘ultimate truth’ – we can, instead of spending our lives in a quest for the non-existant and logically unknowable, instead, publish recipes that we can testify truthfully to the construction of, and performance of, as correspondent with reality. This is the difference between european commitment to always speaking the truth, and producing many, many technological successes, versus academic publishing a welfare queens, never responsible for our words, and never accountable for the consequences. This is the difference between anglo empirical truth, and cosmopolitan pragmatic truth. [T]he 20th century’s failed quest for a definition of truth, is the narrative structure that I’ve been searching for. Until recently, I just couldn’t find a way of talking about Mises’ work in the broader context of intellectual development. He clearly intuited the problem, as did those in other fields, but besides having the Jewish obsession with words-as-reality, and the German obsession with authority, he did not understand math and science well enough, and certainly had no exposure to computer science and the problem of computability. Why he proceeded onward and constructed an elaborate nonsensical pseudoscience in the Cosmopolitan tradition is something that only he could answer. And why subsequent generations have created a cult out of this pseudoscience, complete with typical cosmopolitan saturation of the informational commons with propaganda supporting of the pseudosicence, including heroic figure worship, and heaping unworthy praise at every opportunity, is up to those still living to explain. It is worth noting that Popper too largely relied on narrative verbalisms, such as his ‘three worlds’ hypothesis, and we know that he resorted to Krugman-like distortion of facts in his criticisms of the left. And we know that Popper’s real purpose was not about science it self, but his agenda to undermine scientific certainty, much as did Mises, by rendering truth in to platonic form, removing responsibility from the scientist for true testimony, and casting cosmopolitan Critique, originated in hermeneutic interpretation of scripture, as the means of scientific social organization, rather than the previous anglo saxon and german requirement for truthful testimony. ALl these thinkers failed to stem the tide of marx’s socialism, rothbardian libertinism, and Straussian neoconservatism, because all tried to counter pseudoscience with pseudoscience, and empty verbalism with empty verbalism. However the manner of correcting those people was always available to us, and had been for centuries if not millennia: a requirement that we tell the truth, and persecution under law for not doing so. As Hoppe states, Hayek failed as well, both to make this connection with performative truth as a means of social order, and to move from the classical liberal and therefore psychological school of thought to the calculative rigor of logic by identifying property as the first and necessary object or unit of commensurability. He did understand the law and the common law, clearly, as the institutional means for resolving conflicts – better than anyone else as far as I know. But he did not grasp the difference between legal REASON (approximation necessary for discovery) and logical CALCULATION (precision necessary for truth). Nor between knowledge of use (correspondence as truth) and knowledge of construction (truth in existence). (Although I’m willing to admit that I might be one of the few people who currently does.) Later in life Mises appears to waffle a bit, if not reverse himself. But because of what appears to be his fascination with Kantian a priorism, he didn’t see the parallel between his (inarticulate) argument that economics was both empirical and logical, and reverse mathematics, in which one constructs necessary axioms one can testify to as extant, after using empirical and logical means by which to approximate the solution to a problem. My original goal was to provide conservatives a vehicle for argument using what I saw as libertarian rationalism. Conversely, I wanted to make it impossible to conduct deceptive arguments in the religious, progressive and postmodern forms, but in doing so I found an answer to a century or more old conflict in the history of thought. And I think I can rescue Mises and Hoppe from the ‘fruitcake fringe’ of rationalist argument. Which is helpful. Since I want, like most, a plan to obtain liberty in my lifetime. And while any value Mises had has been already incorporated into economic thought, only fringe groups have incorporated Hoppe’s criticism of democracy and use of competing private insurance organizations to replace monopoly bureaucracy in the production of regulation. Unfortunately, Hoppe appears too entrenched and committed to praxeology as pseudoscience, the fallacy of aggression which is merely a means of licensing fraud by verbal means and creating a parasitic class immune from both physical and legal punishment. And has merely adopted the marxist ‘commune’ as his model of rebellion. Which just because we desire liberty, is just as economically impossible as it is if we desire communism. Wishful thinking is not action. Its wishing others will do the work for you. Liberty was created only by europeans, because of rare ancient circumstances, whereby warriors granted one another insurance against theft of their property obtained from their cattle raids, and required equality of one another because of their battle tactics requiring independent financing, action and maneuver, at high risk. These people built an ethic that would give birth to science, reason, property and liberty, because it forces man to use his mind in terms which accurately correspond to reality: Tell the truth, and only the truth. Fulfill your commitments at risk of life. Construct a brotherhood of property owners two whom familial trust is extended. And force all free riding out of society so that all persons must participate in production, and none can resort to parasitism. Liberty is obtained at the point of metal object, by denying others access to power. Everything else is merely wishful thinking, or an attempt to free ride on the efforts of those who do construct liberty. The natural aristocracy is not created by a small population. It is created by every living soul willing to bear arms to prevent the accumulation of sufficient power to deny others sovereignty over their property: For one and all, to deny one and all, access to the property of one and all by other than voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, exchange free of externality. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine LINKSConstructive Mathematics:Mathematical Intuitionism: Operationalism:Praxeology

  • Mises' Praxeology As The Failure To Develop Economic Operationalism

    (important)(profound) [I] have been working to reform anarcho capitalist arguments by translating them from troublesome Kantian rationalism, into the transparent common language of science: ratio-empiricism. And, at least for the past few months, I’ve been struggling to develop a narrative structure that would allow me to easily demonstrate the solution to the promise of praxeology as a failed version of the same problems addressed by Intuitionism, Operationalism and Constructivism in mathematics and science. Mises’ work was another example of the multi-disciplinary failure to provide a solution to the common intuition that there is a problem with science and mathematics, and our application of science and math to other fields – particularly to economics and ethics. That is the conclusion that I have come to – it’s the logical positioning of Mises’ praxeology in the development of 20th century thought – albeit he was even less successful in economics than peers were in physics, math, logic and psychology. They were able to identify the solution but not able to convince peers to implement it, because it was burdensome. This narrative, positioning Misesian thought as a failed attempt at Operationalism in human cooperation, provides a vehicle whereby I can describe Misesian arguments in the same context as those in physics, psychology, logic and mathematics. All of them as failed experiments in operationalism only because the authors did not and possibly could not look across disciplines and discover that they were merely adding or removing the properties desirable or not for their field of inquiry – but that while they were seeking a logical solution, that they were all making similar arguments – ethical arguments: And that the problem they intuited, that Poincaré criticized them for, was an ethical one: recreating mysticism through the use of verbalism to obscure causality that they did not understand. All the major disciplines went through a somewhat failed transformation and only psychology, which was most in need of reformation, fully adopted operationalism as “operationism”. And the result was a wealth of research in experimental psychology and the success of experimental psychology versus the pseudoscience that dominated the field before hand. [W]hy is this important? Because the requirements for construction and operational language, are not only logical but ethical. And while ethics has limited place in mathematical principles, and physical laws, it has a great significance to the promise that one is advocating a truth in mathematical and physical propositions – and therefore not ‘polluting’ the intellectual domain with fallacies that might impact others’ work. But in the logic of cooperation we call ethics it is inseparable both from the promise that one is advocating a truth AND in the articulation of its principles and the laws that enforce those principles. If we had discovered operationalism in ethics first, then perhaps, we would have had an easier time justifying the additional burden that operationalism places upon physics, science, psychology math and logic – and we might have saved a century of pseudoscientific inquiry, just as Bridgman worried; and just as we have seen in a century of fallacious and immoral economics. As Bridgman noted, the only reason Einstein was innovative, was because he operationalized the problem of measurement of bodies – something that had we done earlier would have saved a generation or more of wasted effort in science – just as we have wasted a generation or more in the pursuit of a logic of cooperation leading to liberty. The issue for us, in economics, politics and in ethics, is that the problem of arbitrary precision in the construction of general rules – hypothesis, theories and laws – affects only the precision of economic laws in time, but not our ability to state those laws. However, unlike say, mathematics or logic, we never run into decidability in the logic of cooperation, because all phenomenon are reducible to human actions that are open to subjective testing (sympathetic experience). Unlike axiomatic systems such as math and logic, we are never short of information necessary for decidability. Humans are marginally indifferent in their preferences – which is why we can experience shared intent, cooperate, and empathize. As such we can always decide. Buridan’s Ass never starves. Information is always sufficient. It may not be sufficient for the choice of preference, but it is sufficient for rational choice. Again, arguments that someone versed in mathematical philosophy might have understood. Although, with decades of computer science, we have learned that it’s computer science that is more trustworthy than mathematics, because computers are constrained by operational rules of necessity, and unlike mathematics we cannot use imagination and ‘fudging’ obscured by verbalism. Operations must be open to performance and results must be computable. To counter the problem of imagination adding information to arguments, and the problem of using verbalism to obscure ignorance, under operationalism and constructivism, **truth is replaced by (algorithmic) proof as a primitive notion, and existence requires demonstration of constructibility.** This statement is possible to translate into the axiom that moral (ethical) propositions must be reducible to a series of human actions, open to subjective testing (sympathetic verification). This is the argument that mises was looking for, and could not construct, possibly because (a) he lacked sufficient understanding of mathematics, (b) he lacked a demonstrably insufficient understanding of the terms ‘scientific’ and ‘logical’, because he conflated them with abandon, despite their opposite properties, and (c) because an ethical constraint was insufficient to provide an authoritative response to the moral arguments of statists and socialists alike. Whether he understood the ethical constraint not the logical one was all that a solution to praxeological analysis would provide, or simply, like most cosmopolitans, because preferred an authoritarian, verbalist, and pseudoscientific argument is something it is impossible to answer in our era. Since Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises and Rothbard all make the same error of constructing verbal pseudosciences, it’s hard to imagine that it’s intentional rather than a cultural bias or strategy. (Something I have written about elsewhere under the heading of competing uses of truth.) The problem I face, and the work I must do, to help others understand Mises’ position in intellectual history, and his failure, and then to construct a logic of cooperation, where Mises mistakenly tries to construct a logic of ‘action’ is to enumerate examples of axioms and laws in different fields and thereby demonstrate the problem of the sufficiency of information for deduction under arbitrary precision in the construction of hypotheses, theories, laws, and axioms; and then placing Mises’ work in the context of all fields struggling with the definition of truth (as ultimately performative – and therefore ethical). So positioning economics and ethics using performative truth, operationalism and constructivism will help demonstrate the concept across ALL domains of inquiry, rather than just within economics, ethics, physics, psychology, mathematics and logic. And thus eliminate the objections to performative truth, intuitionism, constructivism, and operationalism by demonstrating that all philosophical and logical disciplines rest upon the action that one claims to have demonstrated a an action that he can testify truthfully to have observed (rather than imagined, or used verbalisms to obscure that he has not. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover ethics first – perhaps had Mises solved the problem in ethics, other fields would have grasped the significance. Although, other fields have addressed ethics with softer variants of operationalism and construction – particularly science. They have never reformed ’truth’ as performative: as testimony, or ‘true witness’, as evidenced by that which is operational and constructible. At least in the discipline of law, strict construction, original intent, and deliberate modification of law is an understood if not obeyed principle. Operationalism may allow us to make truthful testimony, and truthful testimony is the only truth that humans are capable of creating. All else is imaginary, as is infinity. But whether we retain the approximation of classical reasoning as a practical matter of utility, or adopt construction and operation as a requirement for attestable truth in other disciplines really doesn’t matter as much as it does in ethics, politics and law. Physics, science, psychology, math and logic are luxury goods and rarely involve involuntary transfer and provide an incentive for conflict. But, cooperation is a necessary good. Politics and law are necessary goods. Strict construction is necessary and beneficial since it permits the rational resolution of conflicts, and as such prevents them. Strict construction makes it impossible to use empty verbalisms to advocate involuntary transfers as ‘moral’. Operational definitions make it much harder to lie, cheat and steal. Under operationalism, performative truth, constructivism, the field of ethics, including the domains of criminal, unethical, immoral and conspiratorial, and conquest prohibitions, can be described as an objective uniform logic as Mises suggested it might be. We can construct a formal logic of cooperation – ethics. And, we can do it using ratio-scientific language, via operational and constructive means. We can do it in the common universal and transparent language of science using hypothesis, theory and law, and model our laws using axioms constrained by correspondence to this empirical laws. We do not need false authoritarianism, pseudoscientific obscurant terminology, or a cult or obscure continental language to do it. An irony perhaps that Mises did not grasp that he was justifying the logic of human action, which is by definition operational and constructive in an argumentative structure that was not operational nor constructive. In hindsight this approach is either humorous or tragic. While we are not sure yet, it is possible that Popper was correct, and that we can never know if we possess the most parsimonious description of any phenomenon – what we call ‘truth’ or ‘ultimate truth’ – we can, instead of spending our lives in a quest for the non-existant and logically unknowable, instead, publish recipes that we can testify truthfully to the construction of, and performance of, as correspondent with reality. This is the difference between european commitment to always speaking the truth, and producing many, many technological successes, versus academic publishing a welfare queens, never responsible for our words, and never accountable for the consequences. This is the difference between anglo empirical truth, and cosmopolitan pragmatic truth. [T]he 20th century’s failed quest for a definition of truth, is the narrative structure that I’ve been searching for. Until recently, I just couldn’t find a way of talking about Mises’ work in the broader context of intellectual development. He clearly intuited the problem, as did those in other fields, but besides having the Jewish obsession with words-as-reality, and the German obsession with authority, he did not understand math and science well enough, and certainly had no exposure to computer science and the problem of computability. Why he proceeded onward and constructed an elaborate nonsensical pseudoscience in the Cosmopolitan tradition is something that only he could answer. And why subsequent generations have created a cult out of this pseudoscience, complete with typical cosmopolitan saturation of the informational commons with propaganda supporting of the pseudosicence, including heroic figure worship, and heaping unworthy praise at every opportunity, is up to those still living to explain. It is worth noting that Popper too largely relied on narrative verbalisms, such as his ‘three worlds’ hypothesis, and we know that he resorted to Krugman-like distortion of facts in his criticisms of the left. And we know that Popper’s real purpose was not about science it self, but his agenda to undermine scientific certainty, much as did Mises, by rendering truth in to platonic form, removing responsibility from the scientist for true testimony, and casting cosmopolitan Critique, originated in hermeneutic interpretation of scripture, as the means of scientific social organization, rather than the previous anglo saxon and german requirement for truthful testimony. ALl these thinkers failed to stem the tide of marx’s socialism, rothbardian libertinism, and Straussian neoconservatism, because all tried to counter pseudoscience with pseudoscience, and empty verbalism with empty verbalism. However the manner of correcting those people was always available to us, and had been for centuries if not millennia: a requirement that we tell the truth, and persecution under law for not doing so. As Hoppe states, Hayek failed as well, both to make this connection with performative truth as a means of social order, and to move from the classical liberal and therefore psychological school of thought to the calculative rigor of logic by identifying property as the first and necessary object or unit of commensurability. He did understand the law and the common law, clearly, as the institutional means for resolving conflicts – better than anyone else as far as I know. But he did not grasp the difference between legal REASON (approximation necessary for discovery) and logical CALCULATION (precision necessary for truth). Nor between knowledge of use (correspondence as truth) and knowledge of construction (truth in existence). (Although I’m willing to admit that I might be one of the few people who currently does.) Later in life Mises appears to waffle a bit, if not reverse himself. But because of what appears to be his fascination with Kantian a priorism, he didn’t see the parallel between his (inarticulate) argument that economics was both empirical and logical, and reverse mathematics, in which one constructs necessary axioms one can testify to as extant, after using empirical and logical means by which to approximate the solution to a problem. My original goal was to provide conservatives a vehicle for argument using what I saw as libertarian rationalism. Conversely, I wanted to make it impossible to conduct deceptive arguments in the religious, progressive and postmodern forms, but in doing so I found an answer to a century or more old conflict in the history of thought. And I think I can rescue Mises and Hoppe from the ‘fruitcake fringe’ of rationalist argument. Which is helpful. Since I want, like most, a plan to obtain liberty in my lifetime. And while any value Mises had has been already incorporated into economic thought, only fringe groups have incorporated Hoppe’s criticism of democracy and use of competing private insurance organizations to replace monopoly bureaucracy in the production of regulation. Unfortunately, Hoppe appears too entrenched and committed to praxeology as pseudoscience, the fallacy of aggression which is merely a means of licensing fraud by verbal means and creating a parasitic class immune from both physical and legal punishment. And has merely adopted the marxist ‘commune’ as his model of rebellion. Which just because we desire liberty, is just as economically impossible as it is if we desire communism. Wishful thinking is not action. Its wishing others will do the work for you. Liberty was created only by europeans, because of rare ancient circumstances, whereby warriors granted one another insurance against theft of their property obtained from their cattle raids, and required equality of one another because of their battle tactics requiring independent financing, action and maneuver, at high risk. These people built an ethic that would give birth to science, reason, property and liberty, because it forces man to use his mind in terms which accurately correspond to reality: Tell the truth, and only the truth. Fulfill your commitments at risk of life. Construct a brotherhood of property owners two whom familial trust is extended. And force all free riding out of society so that all persons must participate in production, and none can resort to parasitism. Liberty is obtained at the point of metal object, by denying others access to power. Everything else is merely wishful thinking, or an attempt to free ride on the efforts of those who do construct liberty. The natural aristocracy is not created by a small population. It is created by every living soul willing to bear arms to prevent the accumulation of sufficient power to deny others sovereignty over their property: For one and all, to deny one and all, access to the property of one and all by other than voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, exchange free of externality. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine LINKSConstructive Mathematics:Mathematical Intuitionism: Operationalism:Praxeology