Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Yes, Reforming Austrian Economics Is Necessary

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    [G]abriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.
    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth-telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine

  • Yes, Reforming Austrian Economics Is Necessary

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    [G]abriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.
    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth-telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine

  • YES, REFORMING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS IS NECESSARY —“Calling Mises pseudoscientifi

    YES, REFORMING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS IS NECESSARY

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    Gabriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.

    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 01:07:00 UTC

  • The 80/20 Rule of Western Genius

    [T]he Left’s Hatred of Dead White European Male (DWEM) Genius

    —“Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray (2003) makes clear that world-historical, genius level accomplishment is – or rather, was – numerically and proportionately a Dead White-European Male (DWEM) thing.”—

    Yes but I am pretty sure that I have stated WHY it was a DWEM thing: TRUTH.

    The question is how much of truth telling is genetic and how much is cultural. I tend to nearly ignore genetics in my arguments, and focus on distributions and norms – which is the opposite of the approach of the NRx movement per se.

    However, it is possible that europeans’ reduced impulsivity and aggression, plus our rather unique rather uniform mix of verbal and spatial intelligence produced some specific genetic advantage; or it is possible that we self-selected for lower impulsivity and aggression out of

    Watch how naturally white people work in formation. I don’t know if we selected for it or evolved it. But one way or another it’s part of us – combined risk. So that is what tends to make me think that western achievement is not entirely normative.

    But I am still with the 80/20 proposition, that while as individuals our behavior is 80% genetic and 20% emergent, that western uniqueness is 20% genetic and 80% dependent upon the emergent effects of truth-telling and outbreeding.

    Curt

  • The 80/20 Rule of Western Genius

    [T]he Left’s Hatred of Dead White European Male (DWEM) Genius

    —“Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray (2003) makes clear that world-historical, genius level accomplishment is – or rather, was – numerically and proportionately a Dead White-European Male (DWEM) thing.”—

    Yes but I am pretty sure that I have stated WHY it was a DWEM thing: TRUTH.

    The question is how much of truth telling is genetic and how much is cultural. I tend to nearly ignore genetics in my arguments, and focus on distributions and norms – which is the opposite of the approach of the NRx movement per se.

    However, it is possible that europeans’ reduced impulsivity and aggression, plus our rather unique rather uniform mix of verbal and spatial intelligence produced some specific genetic advantage; or it is possible that we self-selected for lower impulsivity and aggression out of

    Watch how naturally white people work in formation. I don’t know if we selected for it or evolved it. But one way or another it’s part of us – combined risk. So that is what tends to make me think that western achievement is not entirely normative.

    But I am still with the 80/20 proposition, that while as individuals our behavior is 80% genetic and 20% emergent, that western uniqueness is 20% genetic and 80% dependent upon the emergent effects of truth-telling and outbreeding.

    Curt

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • GETTING EASIER TO GET ACROSS THE MAIN MESSAGE (reposted from elsewhere) The scie

    GETTING EASIER TO GET ACROSS THE MAIN MESSAGE

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    The scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify. Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).

    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law

    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)

    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.

    (d) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)

    ii) correspondent (correlative)

    iii) empirical (observable)

    iv) operational (existentially possible)

    v) falsifiable

    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.

    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-01 14:03:00 UTC

  • REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE OF PROPERTARIANISM Now that I have shown that: 1) Scien

    REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE OF PROPERTARIANISM

    Now that I have shown that:

    1) Science is a name for the discipline of truthfully speaking, regardless of subject;

    2) And that physical science merely ignores cost and morality (making it easier to speak the truth against political convention); but that cost and morality can be added to the method of truthfully speaking – yielding the universal means of warrantable, insurable, and therefore truthful speech.

    3) And that all disciplines must adhere to the art of truthful speech for their statements to be warrantable (and therefore their work products distributable);

    I must now return to one of the arguments the Critical Rationalist group attacked me with such hostility for:

    4) That the epistemic cycle of the scientific method is the universal method, and that consumers producers, engineers, and scientists merely attribute preferential value to different inputs and outputs of that methodological process. But this process is the universal method that man has evolved and must follow. And somehow I must find a way of talking about that so that it’s not so confusing. And I think that way of talking requires a few pictures.

    5) That if we account for costs and morality, then justification is no longer illogical, but merely an earlier, lower-cost, technology – just as repetition and imitation were earlier least-cost technologies, just as memory, was the lowest possible cost technology after genetic memory (evolution).

    IF ONLY THEY HAD LISTENED TO WEBER

    Mises got his idea of economic calculation from Weber, and Weber was right – as he was about many things. Which is why Minsky is ‘right’ – which Ludwig van den Hauwe managed to get through my rather thick skull this weekend with his new paper on crises. I had never paid Minsky much attention, but he is closer to an operational analysis of the problem than the Austrians were. So I’m going to have to revisit Weber, Poincaré, Schumpeter, and Minsky and see if I can put the problem of calculability in terms familiar to the history of economic thought.

    And maybe then I can work on calculability, law, and constitutions.

    I DON’T THINK ONE CAN IMPROVE MUCH ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

    I think the improvements are in warranty (falsification), and in insurance (law), which will assist us in preventing error, bias and deception.

    BECAUSE WE CANNOT TOLERATE ANOTHER CHRISTIANIZATION, COUNTER ENLIGHTENMENT(RATIONALISM), PSEUDOCIENTIFIC CONQUEST(COSMOPOLITANISM), OR POSTMODERN/NEO-PURITANIZATION SUICIDE OF THE WEST.

    Our struggle goes on. The constant struggle to resist the seduction that the rest of the world fell into – the comfort of lies.

    **The seduction by the words of priests rather than adaptation to the actions of heroes.**

    Because truth, trust, production, and commons are the west’s competitive advantage against the untruthful, untrusting, unproductive, and parasitic peoples.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-28 05:06:00 UTC

  • THE REFORMATION OF WESTERN THOUGHT Science as we understand it is an attempt to

    THE REFORMATION OF WESTERN THOUGHT

    Science as we understand it is an attempt to create a discipline of truthful speech.

    Science as we understand it does not ‘recognize’ this attribute of science.

    Science as we understand it does not include those properties we call costs.

    Science as we understand it does not include those properties we call moral.

    Science as we understand it can be extended to include those properties we call costs and morality.

    Science as we understand it can then be restated as the discipline of constructing moral truthful speech.

    Science then is identical to epistemology in philosophy, and philosophy en toto as a discipline is begun, as its first purpose, with ethics (morality), not metaphysics.

    Law can now be scientifically constructed.

    Truth, science, law, morality are now identical.

    All else currently masquerading as philosophy, is no longer categorizable as philosophy, but as theology, psychology, or deception.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-27 02:57:00 UTC