Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • TO BOETTKE ON HAYEK AND MISES’ FAILURES Peter, I have spent years on this questi

    TO BOETTKE ON HAYEK AND MISES’ FAILURES

    Peter,

    I have spent years on this question and I am fairly certain now that Mises’ work, like Bridgman’s was an unsuccessful attempt at developing operationalism.

    Both Mises and Popper can best be understood as cosmopolitan intellectuals bringing their pseudoscientific allegorical culture to their work, just as Kant brought continental duty and authority to his – both rebelling against anglo empiricism.

    Hayek could not solve the problem of the social sciences either. He correctly intuits that the problem exists, but he can only offer us laments, criticisms, and classical liberal solutions. Unfortunately he did not have decades of computer science to provide him with an alternative conceptual framework and terminology to replace his classical liberalism and moral psychology.

    Post mainstream economists cannot yet solve the relationship between mathematics, logic, ethics and economics. And Austrians should have. But the sad state of our ranks and the distraction of philosophers by the marxist, socialist, and postmodern programs misallocated intellectual capital in pursuit of the impossible. So when hayek says the 20th century will be remembered as an era of reemergent mysticism, he only knows something is wrong : endemic pseudoscience – but he does not know why or how to fix it.

    He was a herald and a critic but he did not solve it. So did Poincare, Mandelbrot, Bridgman, the mathematical Intuitionists. So did mises.

    The interesting insight that I have only recently understood, is that the ither disciplines succeeded but their scope was narrower than that of economics. And had mises not failed. Had popper not failed. Had Hayek not failed, then the missing argument would have been available to the less complicated fields of math, logic and science, as well as economics.

    The insight that the only truth that can exist is performative, and the only possible claim to sufficient knowledge necessary to make a truth claim, is the demonstration if construction by operational means and measures. Ie: the problem is ethical.

    I am fairly certain now, that I have solved that mussing bit -by accident. And that the necessary insights exist in the multiple attempts at articulating operationalism in multiple fields – thereby solving, finally, the nature and definition of truth.

    This allows us to repair praxeology as an empirical research program whose theoretical constructs are reducible to operational statements, each of which is sympathetically testable by human perception, as to the rationality and volition of those statements. Ie: truth.

    Mises was too much on a mission, too arrogant, too culturally biased, and too ignorant of mathematics, science and philosophy to solve the problem. But he came closer than anyone else had to date.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-30 06:55:00 UTC

  • (PRIVATE ON TRUTH AND TESTIMONY) Archive for reference. Hmmm…. number of rando

    (PRIVATE ON TRUTH AND TESTIMONY) Archive for reference.

    Hmmm…. number of random thoughts on this paper….

    1) The mechanism that serves to help us identify similarities is not rational, but intuitive – pre-rational (System 1) that performs searches of our memories. The mechanism that we use to deduce the reason for the similarities we have intuited, is rational (System 2). Critical observations from System 2, once committed to memory, then add to System 1.

    I can’t think of anything that doesn’t follow the process of System 2 instructing(loading) System 1 “searches for patterns.” But the operation of System 1 (intuition) is invisible to us. Largely I believe, we verbally justify the instruction of intuition as the application of reason – but that is impossible as far as I know.

    2) Once we have constructed a theory through this combination of intuition(searching) and direction (reason), we then start to try to confirm this theory and falsify it. I think the major difference between individual behavior comes from whether we search for refutations, or confirmations, and how exhaustively (depth+breadth search) we attempt to refute it.

    3) Now, it’s possible to state those two paragraphs above (1+2) in language that is more precise, albeit using a lot more terminology, but as far as I know, that is what actually occurs when we hypothesize and test.

    4) In the spectrum deduction (sufficient information), induction (insufficient information), and abduction(sparse information), only deductions can be claimed to be true. That does not mean that we cannot guess – only that we cannot claim that our guesses are true. Long division works by the process of organized guessing. Repeating sequences are proof that the information is not present to produce an information without the arbitrary decision of choosing a limit to the precision of the decimal expansion. So the information to conduct division in the absence of contextual precision still faces the problem of sufficient determination of truth. This problem is also true of all statements about the dimensions of circles. But it is not true of the properties of rectangles. Without context we possess insufficient information to make a deduction without the arbitrary introduction of human choice to limit precision.

    5) —“We have just seen that universal statements cannot be justified or confirmed by observation-statements.”—

    Isn’t this just a verbalism? When we communicate we reduce reality to a set of selected symbols (words) that reduce the information content to communicable and useful form that humans can make use of. We make expressions in a context, just as we make measurements in a context. We can never make universal statements that are non-tautological for this reason. Non-tautological, True statements REQUIRE the absence of information. No? Deductive (tautological) answers are proofs. Truth requires testimony that the work done exhausts the standards of demonstration available to us. Ultimate truth is never attainable any more than an infinite limit is attainable. At the point the ultimate truth, or limit is reached, we achieve the construction of a tautology, not a testimony to the exhaustive proof of one’s statements given currently available knowledge.

    More in a bit.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-27 06:25:00 UTC

  • Demand For Authority : Suppressing Retribution For Anti-Social, Unethical, and Immoral Actions

    THE PURPOSE OF AN AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT IS TO SUPPRESS RETRIBUTION FOR ANTI-SOCIAL, UNETHICAL AND IMMORAL ACTIONS. (and it’s genocidal) [T]he purpose of an investigatory police, is to concentrate knowledge of troublesome individuals and groups into the hands of specialists. So that crime can be investigated and reduced if not eliminated, by the suppression of, control of, and elimination of troublesome individuals and groups. We require, an investigatory police force, in the case of anonymous crimes, we cannot all of us possess such intimate knowledge of the minority who engage in career criminality. The more immoral the society, the more unethical the society, the more anti-social a society, the more need for various kinds of police to suppress retaliation against those who we KNOW, who are NOT anonymous, and who have committed anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. When we cannot use the courts to sue for restitution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions, the state must suppress our retribution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. The state currently punishes retribution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions – whereas in history, the job of all men, was to punish violations of anti-social, unethical, and immoral norms. [S]o instead, the state has LICENSED AND ADVOCATED anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions, by forbidding and punishing retribution for, and suppression of, anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. The state is the manufacturer of anti-social, unethical and immoral action. Why? In America, it is the conquest of conservative protestantism (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Britain it is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Europe is is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Canada it is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples (the french, and now the immigrants). In Russia they are trying to prohibit the conquest of their low trust people, by even lower trust peoples. REVERSE COLONIZATION We are being colonized so that statists can free ride, and the lower classes can live off the productivity of the middle classes and prevent the middle classes from breeding in sufficient numbers to retain their economic competitiveness and their high trust norms. If colonialism was immoral then surely reverse colonialism is immoral. It is certainly genocide.

  • Demand For Authority : Suppressing Retribution For Anti-Social, Unethical, and Immoral Actions

    THE PURPOSE OF AN AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT IS TO SUPPRESS RETRIBUTION FOR ANTI-SOCIAL, UNETHICAL AND IMMORAL ACTIONS. (and it’s genocidal) [T]he purpose of an investigatory police, is to concentrate knowledge of troublesome individuals and groups into the hands of specialists. So that crime can be investigated and reduced if not eliminated, by the suppression of, control of, and elimination of troublesome individuals and groups. We require, an investigatory police force, in the case of anonymous crimes, we cannot all of us possess such intimate knowledge of the minority who engage in career criminality. The more immoral the society, the more unethical the society, the more anti-social a society, the more need for various kinds of police to suppress retaliation against those who we KNOW, who are NOT anonymous, and who have committed anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. When we cannot use the courts to sue for restitution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions, the state must suppress our retribution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. The state currently punishes retribution for anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions – whereas in history, the job of all men, was to punish violations of anti-social, unethical, and immoral norms. [S]o instead, the state has LICENSED AND ADVOCATED anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions, by forbidding and punishing retribution for, and suppression of, anti-social, unethical, and immoral actions. The state is the manufacturer of anti-social, unethical and immoral action. Why? In America, it is the conquest of conservative protestantism (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Britain it is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Europe is is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples. In Canada it is the conquest of the conservative protestant (aristocratic egalitarians) by the less moral peoples (the french, and now the immigrants). In Russia they are trying to prohibit the conquest of their low trust people, by even lower trust peoples. REVERSE COLONIZATION We are being colonized so that statists can free ride, and the lower classes can live off the productivity of the middle classes and prevent the middle classes from breeding in sufficient numbers to retain their economic competitiveness and their high trust norms. If colonialism was immoral then surely reverse colonialism is immoral. It is certainly genocide.

  • A HIGHER STANDARD OF TRUTH (reposted for archival purposes) I’m arguing about ne

    A HIGHER STANDARD OF TRUTH

    (reposted for archival purposes)

    I’m arguing about necessary properties of truth (knowledge claims) not mere utility (correspondence), which are two different things. Determining Truth is a matter of testing our knowledge of use (external correspondence), of knowledge of internal consistency, and knowledge of construction. I don’t think I’m really addressing the problem of hypothesis creation (conjecture). I’m addressing the problem of truth. I think ultimate truth is addressed already: unknowable, ultimately parsimonious, proof of knowledge of correspondence, consistency and construction, for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. Since we cannot know this we can only testify to the truth of the most currently most parsimonious, proof of knowledge, correspondence, consistency and construction for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. These two definitions are often conflated: truth we can currently testify to, and the truth we aspire to one day testify to.

    For me to succeed in quashing postmodernism, mysticism, and even ‘continental and cosmopolitan rationalist empty verbalisms’ in political and legal speech, then I have to get to the (unsolved) nature of truth. Which I think I have. (above)

    All other variations on truth are simply analogies for proofs that make use of fewer properties of necessary truth. LIke “numbers” we use the word “truth”, imprecisely, as an analogy in multiple contexts.

    Only one ‘truth’ can be demonstrated to exist: performative truth. Everything else is a rough analogy. And almost all is proof not truth. And most of those proofs are limited to very narrow conditions.

    I find it terribly interesting that the problem of truth was not solved, despite all the work on it. And the reason it was not solved, is that all statements are ethically contingent. And that is a troublesome thing to tell a scientist or logician trying to escape the false ethics of religious mysticism and that tradition, rather than the objective ethics and morality of propertarianism

    Maybe this is a greater change in conventional thought than appears to me. I know that for mathematicians the idea that they’re utilitarian traditions and contrivances are unethical (untrue) appears absurd. But I’m sure to most critical rationalists, the idea of using analogies as truth claims as immoral and unethical might seem absurdly burdensome. And I know that for Austrians, the idea that apriorism is immoral and unethical is not only absurd but extremely burdensome. I know that for average speakers, the fact that using the word “is” for other than existence, set membership or location (specifically for properties) is extremely cognitively burdensome.

    But there is a vast difference between internal dialog, and public speech. And while internal dialog can suffice for utilitarian purposes, and places no criminal, ethical or moral constraint upon others, the moment we speak , write or publish to others, we have entered into an ethical and moral realm, and are engaged in unethical and immoral action if we make truth claims that we cannot demonstrate we have the knowledge to make. If we must state the truth in public, or hypothesis in public, or rumour in public, or myth in public, is it not immoral and unethical to misrepresent one’s statement?

    Only under very rare conditions may we make truth claims. In the most part we are communicating rough analogies, others we are hypothesizing, and rarely are we engaged theorizing – and almost never are we capable of making truth claims.

    Under performative truth, we are making a promise. That promise is implied. Most of the time, we are not making a truth claim. But an hypothetical claim. And that is implied too. The question is, do we know when we are doing one or the other.

    And I think not.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-26 04:22:00 UTC

  • MORAL INTUITION IS JUST YOUR GENES TALKING That’s it. You might be able to intui

    MORAL INTUITION IS JUST YOUR GENES TALKING

    That’s it. You might be able to intuit very simple common moral values, but your gender, social class, economic class, and family structure are reflections of your genes, genetic history, and are simple expressions of those genes.

    And your genes are competing with other genes – either with more numerous “worse” genes, or less numerous “better” genes, for higher status, better allies, and better mates. And as such we advocate if not outright demand adherence to our moral code in order to cooperate with others. We offer cooperation to those who benefit our genes, and deny it to those who compete with our genes.

    And what little reason we can muster, and struggle to put under the discipline of our will, is subject to the multitudinous whispers of those genes as they influence our intuition (subconscious), and our intuition influences our perception (consciousness), and our consciousness influences our reason.

    Our will is vastly outnumbered by an invisible hierarchy of secret police that conspires to serve our genes regardless of our reason and will.

    And so we cannot rely upon our moral intuition to determine what is best for anything other than ourselves. We require measures of everyone else’s moral intuitions – the voices of their genes.

    But even if we possess such data does that mean that there is some optimum moral code for all of us to adhere to? Not really. We are optimistic cooperators, and constant competitors.

    While we cannot agree upon ends, since that would mean the willing sacrifice of some of our genes for those of others, and result in dysgenic devolution, which cannot be cast as ‘good’, we can agree to cooperate on means, such that we do not constrain one another’s genes, nor assume we have the wisdom to choose which genes best suit human reality.

    PROPERTARIANISM IS CALCULABLE – THE LOGICAL ARTICULATION OF INTUITIONS TO RATIONAL FORM

    Propertarianism, the missing logic of cooperation, the missing logic of ethics, the missing logic of politics, allows us to discuss all moral systems in transparent, rational terms.

    Praxeology was a failure. But it doesn’t have to be. Propertarianism repairs praxeology.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-26 02:51:00 UTC

  • HOW TO RAPIDLY BECOME A BILLIONAIRE? (seriously) (worth reading) Its been done.

    HOW TO RAPIDLY BECOME A BILLIONAIRE?

    (seriously) (worth reading)

    Its been done. Secret? Threaten a big company’s revenue stream or customer base, by providing a service better than they do.

    Why is that possible? Internal incompetence of bureaucracies. Why? Because brands always seek to facilitate the brand with tangential value rather than deliver a product or service in the most excellent way possible for consumers regardless of brand. Almost all companies make this mistake, Apple and Microsoft included.

    Dropbox should never have had a chance. But every other large organization failed by trying to “leverage”. That is a fallacy.

    Beats threatened Apple. Multiple companies threatened Facebook.

    Unfortunately management falsely understands the leverage as risk mitigation rather than risk amplification.

    Make it excellent. Threaten them over their mistakes.

    That is how you become a billionaire in short fashion.

    Thankfully I don’t care to be more than a millionaire. I do my threatening of paradigmatic fallacies with political philosophy and for me that is a greater reward. 🙂

    (Please Share so we see what people say. ;). )

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-25 05:59:00 UTC

  • IN SEARCH OF APHORISMS – CREATING AND REPEATING ORDERED SETS. It is incredibly d

    IN SEARCH OF APHORISMS – CREATING AND REPEATING ORDERED SETS.

    It is incredibly difficult to take novel ideas, especially revolutionary ideas, and reduce them from intuitions, to analogies, to causal relations, to communicable narratives, to something close to an aphorism that is self evident and easily digestible by its mere construction as overlapping sets.

    One technique I’ve used extensively is to try to articulate and enumerate, all ideas as a spectrum rather than as an ‘ideal type’ – a single term. This tends to solve most problems of conveying novel or complex ideas. It’s more burdensome to write and argue, because it requires a lot of repetition of sequences, but it’s much more effective to compare points on a line (ordered set), with points on another line (ordered set), than to rely upon less precise terminological ‘blobs’ open wide to interpretation – which is what most ideal types are: uselessly imprecise.

    When comparing concepts you can generally talk in supply-demand curves, even if the reader doesn’t understand that’s what you’re doing. But he can understand the intersection of two concepts using two lines, arcs, or distributions as CAUSAL rather than as analogistic, if you give him the tools to.

    It’s just brutally hard work. I’ve been sort of keeping track and it takes me at least ten attempts at writing to do it, sometimes many more.

    If you write empathically that’s one thing. But if you’re whole endeavor is to not rely on intuition, then you have to write in some way that contains information without relying on experience external to the argument. The relationship between members of an ordered set (sequence of term) tends to do that for you. Comparing two or more ordered sets is much more effective than any narrative. The mind does the work for us, that reason would have to do otherwise.

    Back to breaking verbal rocks…. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-22 04:59:00 UTC

  • CONSTRUCTION VS ANALOGY = TRUTH VS COMMUNICATION If you haven’t stated a constru

    CONSTRUCTION VS ANALOGY = TRUTH VS COMMUNICATION

    If you haven’t stated a construction, even if you stated it as a function (summary) then you have merely stated an analogy. An analogy is merely that and nothing more. Analogies are useful for the purpose of communication. They function as useful means of transferring properties between entities. However, if you cant state your analogy as a construction, then you cannot make a truth claim about it, since you cannot demonstrate that you possess the knowledge that you claim to. Analogies are informative but they are not equivalent to truth claims. Truth, as in performative truth: your testimony, requires that you possess knowledge of construction. Otherwise you’re just communicating your level of understanding, not truth.

    People should ask a lot more questions, and fewer statements. This is the theory of performative truth. We should assume that the majority of statements are merely questions, structured as statements, for the purpose of brevity, and avoiding the accusatory implications of declarations that are an unfortunate and distorting challenge to all debates.

    ( I need to write a bit more about the problem of ‘good manners’ in debate (avoiding accusation and blame) as an accidental cause of a great deal of obscurantism. )

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-22 04:31:00 UTC

  • DEHUMANIZING BUT INTELLECTUALLY LIBERATING – HUMANS ARE COOL. Once you understan

    DEHUMANIZING BUT INTELLECTUALLY LIBERATING – HUMANS ARE COOL.

    Once you understand that human existence is reducible to acquisitiveness, and that all emotions are merely chemical reactions to changes in state of our extant acquisitions, our anticipated acquisitions, and our potential acquisitions, then you readily adopt the habit of ignoring your intuitions in a search for meaning, and simply looking at all of human experience economically: as cooperation for the purpose of acquisition.

    What people think say, believe and justify becomes meaningless verbalism – negotiation both honest and deceptive, and nothing else. Everyone’s purpose is some form of acquisition. Even if it takes the form of acquiring time to relax that is not spent in material acquisition. Thinking of humans so mechanistically, with our emotions as mere reward-machines, is somehow dehumanizing. But on the other hand it’s intellectually liberating. The world is much more comprehensible.

    I tend to see our existence as a reasonably successful struggle against the dark forces of time and ignorance. And I celebrate our ability to miraculously cooperate in large numbers, despite the fact that we are all super predators entirely capable of simply killing and eating each other if we choose to.

    I don’t know what else in the universe is more amazing than that. And I don’t need the vastness of space, the mystery of physical science or some abstract mysticism to feel spiritually about it: Humans awe me. 🙂

    Humans are cool. 🙂

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-22 03:39:00 UTC