Form: Quote Commentary

David Gordon pretty much eviscerates Lester’s argument on Lester’s terms – which is perhaps the most gracious way of doing so. I have a better understanding of Popper’s arguments than David so I’m producing my own criticism, not just of lester but of all cosmopolitan thinkers in the space, Lester included. It’s just odd to see someone so graceful about it.

What I like about David’s criticism, is it shows just why non-operational, non-testimonial arguments are so open to deception. I suppose that, from Lester’s writing (and my few conversations with him) that he merely applies the ideas of popper in an autistic but uncomprehending attempt to justify libertarianism, while at the same time claiming he does not practice justification. But as Gordon points out, he uses falsification as a means of distraction in the marxist tradition rather than as a means of hardening his theories.

Further, Popper’s arguments are warnings against the excessive use of certainty in science, where general descriptions of very causally dense theories an appear to be true (Keynesian and post-keynesian economic theory, Freudian Psychology, Cantorian Logic) but are merely useful allegories for conveying meaning. They are not scientific and therefore should not be used for the purpose of persuasion only for the purpose of conveying MEANING. Popper commits this sin everywhere. He conveys meaning, not necessity. ie: he creates meaningful narratives but rarely if ever constructs necessary arguments. Even his Critical Preference is logically but it appears not empirically true. Part of the verbalist era of logic in the early twentieth century: it is not clear that that many of our theories are erroneous, rather that they are as precise as the information we have, and that we seem to be fairly good at increasing precision via testing, even if we are not very good at increasing precision via modeling.

More later.

The problem is, we don’t have people in the libertarian movement capable of making these arguments. I think they exist in math and physics, but I kind of suspect that in the libertarian movement we just don’t have the talent.