Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Sorry That My Work On Truth Isn’t All That Interesting To You. 🙂

    (the importance of the work)

    [I] realize that I have spent a lot of time over the past twelve months on Truth. And that this appears (falsely) to be a rat-hole, that is not as interesting as attacking the argumentative follies of the political extremes.

    But I am working at an institutional solution to the restoration of truth telling and suppressing the problem of intentional deception and ignorance, and acting as a vector for deception and ignorance. This hasn’t been done before. It’s hard work.

    The degree to which we justify our investment in ‘meaning’ and justify our reproductive (moral) biases was something that I wasn’t prepared for. Nor was the level of sophistication that can be accomplished by using ‘meaning’ as a means of manufacturing ignorance.

    A rationalist says “but it’s useful for understanding” (a justification). A mathematician says “but it works” (a justification). A logician says “but it largely works” (a justification). A lawyer says “but we have tradition” (a justification). A politician says “The people will not understand that” (a justification). An economist says “We try only to solve this problem, not that one” (a justification). A physicist says “that’s unscientific”, without understanding what the ethics of science demand of him, and why (a justification).

    All of these justifications (fallacies) manufacture ignorance. All of them impede truth. They provide incentive to continue to justify what we know, rather than reform what we know. Over time they calcify by the mere accumulation of the cost of learning an alternative: transaction costs and conformity costs.

    I think this specializing at justification is the underlying reason that civilizations calcify and fail.

    But even if that problem is farther out than the one we face today, prohibiting deception in economics, politics(government) and law, so that the people who speak the truth may prosper, dragging humanity along with them, is still the central problem that I face.

    And to institutionally expand prohibition on immoral action (negative externalities) thereby increasing transaction (and conformity) costs[1], on an activity that is currently assumed to be harmless (free of negative externality), and expanding that prohibition by law, requires that we have some criteria sufficient to test statements for due diligence against the production of that externality – even if the cost of producing that common (the truth) requires all of us pay costs in both material, intellectual, and of forgone opportunities.

    ***That sufficiency consists of due diligence and warranty, where the form of due diligence was discovered by scientists, and while inarticulately expressed, requires not just internal consistency, external consistency and the 20th century innovation: the requirement for falsification, but the 21st century innovation: the requirements for operational definitions as proof of existential possibility and the requirement for moral constraint: free of imposed costs that we call negative externalities – stated positively as a requirement for productive, diligent(truthfully stated), fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of all negative externality under the same recursive criterion.***

    So that is why I must solve the problem of truth, uniting law, morality, philosophy, science and economics into a single system of thought: the art of truth telling, the means of due diligence, and the provision of warranty to our testimony to the jury of our peers.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

    —–
    [1] Technically speaking a transaction costs (material), opportunity costs(consequences), forgone opportunity costs (norms) and conformity costs(psychological and behavioral costs), are categorized differently – however, I tend to suggest that emphasis on the form of cost is a means of imposing value judgements on what are merely ‘costs’. As such I tend to use ‘transaction cost’ similar to ‘information’: that which is necessary to change state, regardless of whether the cost is material(physical property), physical(body, action and time), or mental(psychological).

  • 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

  • If You Can Name A Thing You Can Kill A Thing

    [T]here is an ancient myth that has more than a grain of truth to it: if you can name a demon you can kill, control of dispel it.

    We all have true names. Meaning if we are fully understood we lose the power of deception.

    I am hot on the trail of a conceptual demon – the obscurant, lie that appeals to cognitive bias through suggestion.

    I think it may take me another year or more to discover it’s true name.

    But when I do, I will kill it. Or at least arm others who will kill it.

    I made progress with truth: I know how to cage that demon using the common law.

    Now I must understand how lies are constructed.  Because then I can kill it.

  • If You Can Name A Thing You Can Kill A Thing

    [T]here is an ancient myth that has more than a grain of truth to it: if you can name a demon you can kill, control of dispel it.

    We all have true names. Meaning if we are fully understood we lose the power of deception.

    I am hot on the trail of a conceptual demon – the obscurant, lie that appeals to cognitive bias through suggestion.

    I think it may take me another year or more to discover it’s true name.

    But when I do, I will kill it. Or at least arm others who will kill it.

    I made progress with truth: I know how to cage that demon using the common law.

    Now I must understand how lies are constructed.  Because then I can kill it.

  • 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

  • 2014 As Evidence Of Insurrection Under Complex Modern States

    [F]or those who have asked me about how difficult it is to create a revolution, it should be obvious from the evidence of 2014, just how easy it is to bring the state and the economy to its knees by the simple act of individual aggression against state enforcers.

    But one must have something for insurrectionists to demand. A solution that the public will prefer to further degeneration into chaos.

    Demands must be actionable.

  • 2014 As Evidence Of Insurrection Under Complex Modern States

    [F]or those who have asked me about how difficult it is to create a revolution, it should be obvious from the evidence of 2014, just how easy it is to bring the state and the economy to its knees by the simple act of individual aggression against state enforcers.

    But one must have something for insurrectionists to demand. A solution that the public will prefer to further degeneration into chaos.

    Demands must be actionable.

  • Deception: The Test of Aggression Instead of The Test of an Imposition of Costs

    —“Depending upon one’s conception of rights and what they logically entail or are incompatible with, it’s not difficult to see, for example, that the corpus of the libertarian program, in logical terms cannot countenance “add-ons” in so far as they are obligations that legitimate the use of force. The shortest, most concise illustration of how this follows from the premise that there is only one negative right, namely to not be aggressors against. Philosophers, such as Roderick Tracy Long argue that this positive thesis of one negative right entails a second negative thesis that logically denies and additional positive rights. If the former is granted, the latter follows, in virtue of the logical character of the obligations it entails.”— Skye Stewart

    [O]k, so, the reason it’s a nonsense argument is because the definition is circular. More precisely, “petitio principii”, or less precisely, “begging the question”. Like many cosmopolitan, authoritarian, questions-that-are-not-questions, aggression is a conclusion, not a premise. It is a justification. And like many cosmopolitan arguments it is reinforced by the use of in-group guilt (shaming), despite the fact that it is an out-group argument (attempt to preserve separatism.)

    So lets look at it….

    The term “Aggress” is like “Good”. It means nothing without context. And that is the first deceptive use of the term aggression. One must aggress against something. So we must know what that something is. Otherwise it is, like all obscurant verbal deceptions in incomplete sentence – left incomplete as a means of deception. Just as use of the verb ‘to-be’ is nearly always a means of obscuring one’s ignorance, or one’s intentional obfuscation of causal relations.

    It is impossible to define aggression without defining property. So the principle deception involved when most moral intuitionists state their position is that they rely on the INTUITIVE definition of property of the audience, while assuming a narrower definition of property themselves. In the Rothbard Hoppe case, they refer to physical property – intersubjectively verifiable property. However, this eliminates all possible commons, and licenses all unethical and immoral action.

    Then, when questioned, Rothbardians give one of the following excuses:

    (a) people can make contracts for that. But if they did, then what would the basis of that law be? and would they not ostracize all non-adherents in order to reduce transaction costs and increase compliance? Isn’t that the rational and demonstrated action – everywhere?

    (b) “the market will take care of it through competition.” Except that we can prove empirically that it doesn’t. In fact, we need extraordinary levels of suppression of immoral and unethical behavior for market competition to form.

    (c) “It’s meant only to be a guiding principle, not a basis for law.” Well then why not just use the definition of property necessary for a basis of law or morality?

    I could also just say that do we not force people to pay restitution in the case of accidents? Are accidents aggression? No.

    They are violations of property. Are immoral and unethical actions that cause loss to others mutually productive? (No) So are they rational to tolerate? (no). Do we retaliate against others for immoral and unethical actions? (yes) So aggression is insufficient for describing necessary conditions of human cooperation (Yes). And aren’t all attempts to justify defining these things as aggression — even though they are not — just verbal deceptions? They are ’caused losses’, right? So don’t we retaliate against caused losses, and isn’t retaliation what we seek to eliminate – just as much as seeking to eliminate caused losses?

    Well a rothbardian then attempts another deception: “Well that would mean competition is a ‘bad’, since it imposes losses.” But the honest man says, “No, in fact people do treat price competition as immoral (although not quality competition) and we have merely trained one another out of objecting to it by explaining that it is a cost of producing the incentive to innovate.”

    [W]hy is it that Rothbard picked aggression, out of all the possible criteria for moral definitions? Why does no other group select this argument?

    When, I could just as easily ask,” How can we prevent retaliation for immoral and unethical actions – how can we license parasitism?” And conclude aggression.

    Or I could ask “How can we free ride upon another’s expensive-to-produce commons?” And come to aggression.

    Or I could ask, “What defines both criminal, ethical, and moral, conduct?” And come to aggression.

    Or I could ask, “How can I define ethical, moral and just using the terms of prohibited actions between states (aggression), between internal polities (separatism), and just ignore the fact that internal polities pay the costs of defense?” And I would come to aggression.

    Why would anyone in the world pick aggression as a definition, UNLESS the purpose of picking aggression was to justify the conclusions contained in it?

    Why, if aggression is not sufficient for law, and not sufficient for ethics and morality, is it meaningful? If you start with the presumption of aggression, WHY start with it?

    [I]n propertarianism, I start with the question: “Why should I not kill you and take your women and your stuff? Oh? Cooperation might be more beneficial? Under what conditions would cooperation be more beneficial than killing you and taking your things? I see! As long as it’s mutually beneficial. As long as I get more than I would if I killed you and took your women and your things.” That would be the evolutionary attempt to solve the problem.

    I could also start with the question: “What incentives make it possible for the rational formation of a voluntary polity?” In that case, transaction costs prohibit the rational formation of a voluntary polity under aggression; and furthermore, other polities demonstrably exterminate such low trust competitors. That would be the rational solution to the problem.

    I could also start with the question “Under what definitions of property has liberty demonstrably evolved?” In which case I would see that only under total prohibition on immoral and unethical as well as criminal actions. That would be the empirical approach to the question.

    I could ask the question, “How can morality and law be constructed synonymously?” That would be the institutional approach to the problem.

    I could ask a lot of possible questions that are much more obvious, and NOT circular. So why is it that I would make a circular argument?

    [T]he only logical reasons to start with aggression are (a) to justify prohibition on retaliation for immoral and unethical actions, (b) to justify non-contribution to the commons (free-riding separatism). Aggression is a means of defining low trust, parasitic, separatist ghetto ethics as ‘good’ despite the fact that all empirical evidence suggests that it makes a people unable to hold land, dependent upon a host population, and open to perpetual attempts at extermination.

    So, why would an honest person start with something as arbitrary as the rather elaborate concept of ‘aggression’?

    Well the answer is, he wouldn’t. Which is why no honest person ever has.

    The libertarian is unaware that any argument sufficiently complex to overwhelm reason must be resolved through intuition – and that libertarian moral intuition is false (incomplete). In other words, libertarians are suckers for certain categories of lies.

    Just like all humans are suckers for certain categories of lies – all for the same reason.

    (ASIDE: This overloading, suggestion, and appeal to intuition as a means of using internal biases to deceive the audience is the secret to the cosmopolitan and rationalist verbalisms. My goal over the next year or two is to fully undermine the cosmopolitan and german rationalist argument structures and demonstrate them for what they are: lies. The anglo enlightenment argument is wrong: universalism, aristocracy of everyone, the rational actor. But it isn’t a lie. And that’s what science does for us: it unmasks lies.)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv (City of The Lions) Ukraine.