Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Another Nail In Rothbard’s Abuses of Praxeology

    [P]raxeology: is Mises’ failed attempt at discovering Operationalism in economics, as it was discovered in psychology (Operationism), Intuitionism (mathematics) and Operationalism (physics). Regardless of field it is reducible to the statement that we cannot know whether we are discussing (or whether one testifies to) the imaginary or the existential unless it can be described as a set of operations – even if limited to measurements.

    All knowledge is theoretical because all premises other than the reductio are theoretical. The construction of a theory is immaterial. It is whether we can operationalize that theory that determines whether we can claim it is stated truthfully. This is how scientists function and have functioned – and is the reason for their success.

    And the discipline of Science is misunderstood: it is the only known technique for speaking truthfully regardless of subject matter. If one cannot speak scientifically, then one is not speaking truthfully – only analogically – in allegory and metaphors. Only operationally demonstrable statements refer to the existential. All others are allegorical, not existential. They may be meaningful, and meaning may be helpful – but they are not TRUE.

    Mises was unfortunately not enough of a scientist or mathematician, and was too much fascinated by German verbalism to make the leap that Anglos and Netherlander’s did. He would have been easily corrected by someone like myself earlier, if he had not been so firmly associated with Rothbard and his reputation damaged so severely by that association.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • Intellectual Property (IP) In Propertarianism

    [H]ere is where I end up. And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.
    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.
    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature are a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.  Artists and writers will do their work regardless of compensation, and without compensation those who lack are will be dis-incentivized from producing it.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the rational voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” – and those criteria are violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another.

    While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory.)

    I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.
    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent to call it patenting. But the idea of funding off-book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly in medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Intellectual Property (IP) In Propertarianism

    [H]ere is where I end up. And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.
    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.
    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature are a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.  Artists and writers will do their work regardless of compensation, and without compensation those who lack are will be dis-incentivized from producing it.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the rational voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” – and those criteria are violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another.

    While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory.)

    I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.
    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent to call it patenting. But the idea of funding off-book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly in medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

  • An Alternative Biological Theory, to Sowell’s of The Vision of The Anointed

    [T]he progressive pre-cognitive need for false consensus bias confuses them into thinking that everyone else is likewise as susceptible to false consensus bias. But that is a female genetic ‘defect’ – an adaptation necessary for primitive survival, and one that evolved in concert with ‘gossip’, which is meant to appeal to (take advantage of) false consensus bias. Secondly, need for consensus (feeling part) that drives false consensus bias, and the impulse to use gossip as an exertion of power, are amplified by the status signaling that we obtain from achievement of that power (and negative that we get from seeing our efforts frustrated).


    I think this is a superior, simpler theory of causation over Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed. It is one thing (and he is right) to describe their point of view. But it is another to describe why they should be so constantly drawn that point of view.


    In case my meaning is not clear: I am on message. We humans can make use of voluntary exchange as our information system, and we cannot aggregate our preferences by any other means that corresponds to material reality – in particular we cannot claim rational political or moral opinion except as demonstrations of our individual genetic biases.


    We are far less rational than we think. Democracy cannot work as other than despotism of the underclasses leading to tyranny of an elite. The only possible moral government is one that is analogous to the market, in which both collect information and conduct exchanges. And the groups that must conduct those exchanges are those who have common interests in the production of commons: genders, classes and tribes.


    We were mistaken. We confused the fact that while laws must be made for the individual actor, but commons must be made for the family regardless of class. But when the family is the minority, and individuals express genetic interests not inside the family, but by voting, we ended the ability of the democratic government to conduct exchanges between families of different wealth (class), and set loose our genetic interests in a ‘brawl’ that is played out in words, over very long periods. But it is nothing but a genetic brawl. It is a slow cascade of violence not cooperative exchange.

    Curt Doolittle 
    The Propertarian Institute 
    Kiev Ukraine


  • An Alternative Biological Theory, to Sowell’s of The Vision of The Anointed

    [T]he progressive pre-cognitive need for false consensus bias confuses them into thinking that everyone else is likewise as susceptible to false consensus bias. But that is a female genetic ‘defect’ – an adaptation necessary for primitive survival, and one that evolved in concert with ‘gossip’, which is meant to appeal to (take advantage of) false consensus bias. Secondly, need for consensus (feeling part) that drives false consensus bias, and the impulse to use gossip as an exertion of power, are amplified by the status signaling that we obtain from achievement of that power (and negative that we get from seeing our efforts frustrated).


    I think this is a superior, simpler theory of causation over Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed. It is one thing (and he is right) to describe their point of view. But it is another to describe why they should be so constantly drawn that point of view.


    In case my meaning is not clear: I am on message. We humans can make use of voluntary exchange as our information system, and we cannot aggregate our preferences by any other means that corresponds to material reality – in particular we cannot claim rational political or moral opinion except as demonstrations of our individual genetic biases.


    We are far less rational than we think. Democracy cannot work as other than despotism of the underclasses leading to tyranny of an elite. The only possible moral government is one that is analogous to the market, in which both collect information and conduct exchanges. And the groups that must conduct those exchanges are those who have common interests in the production of commons: genders, classes and tribes.


    We were mistaken. We confused the fact that while laws must be made for the individual actor, but commons must be made for the family regardless of class. But when the family is the minority, and individuals express genetic interests not inside the family, but by voting, we ended the ability of the democratic government to conduct exchanges between families of different wealth (class), and set loose our genetic interests in a ‘brawl’ that is played out in words, over very long periods. But it is nothing but a genetic brawl. It is a slow cascade of violence not cooperative exchange.

    Curt Doolittle 
    The Propertarian Institute 
    Kiev Ukraine


  • Propertarianism’s Testimonial Truth

    [T]he Question:
    How do we warranty that we speak the truth, given any subset of properties of reality? Testimonial truth is a promise, a warranty.  But a warranty of what?  All knowledge is theoretical; and all non-tautological, non-trivial premises and propositions are theoretical.  Therefore how to we know our theories can be warrantied?

    We can warranty that our statement somewhere in this spectrum:

    And we can state what criteria any proposition tested on this spectrum satisfied. And we can conversely state whether a proposition is required to satisfy each criteria. 

    All disciplines are subject to this list, and to testimony.  All that differs is whether the properties are necessary for application of the theory to the context (scale) at hand.

    Only such statements made under this warranty, are classifiable as moral: consisting of Truthful, fully informed, productive, voluntary exchange free of negative externality.

    The Warranty that we give is that:

    • I. A statement is stated *TRUTHFULLY*: satisfying the criteria for such a warranty to be made.
    • II. A statement is *TRUE*: Assuming that we eliminated the barriers of time, space, scale, and observability, we warranty that one would come to the same conclusion if equally truthful in his actions.

    We can never state whether a statement is “Absolutely True”, as in satisfying Platonic truth. And rarely can we state that we have satisfied analytic truth, and only at human scale can we testify that we have satisfied Perceivable Truth – original experience.  But we can always state whether we have stated something truthfully.

    The question is only *whether we truly desire to*.

    Criticism of Intellectual History:
    We have been obsessed with science and math rather than seeing them as simple subsets of the more complex problem. And in the west, we took truth telling for granted, when it is the first principle upon which all other western advances were made.

    (Next. Information Differences Necessary in Verbal Expression)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Propertarianism’s Testimonial Truth

    [T]he Question:
    How do we warranty that we speak the truth, given any subset of properties of reality? Testimonial truth is a promise, a warranty.  But a warranty of what?  All knowledge is theoretical; and all non-tautological, non-trivial premises and propositions are theoretical.  Therefore how to we know our theories can be warrantied?

    We can warranty that our statement somewhere in this spectrum:

    And we can state what criteria any proposition tested on this spectrum satisfied. And we can conversely state whether a proposition is required to satisfy each criteria. 

    All disciplines are subject to this list, and to testimony.  All that differs is whether the properties are necessary for application of the theory to the context (scale) at hand.

    Only such statements made under this warranty, are classifiable as moral: consisting of Truthful, fully informed, productive, voluntary exchange free of negative externality.

    The Warranty that we give is that:

    • I. A statement is stated *TRUTHFULLY*: satisfying the criteria for such a warranty to be made.
    • II. A statement is *TRUE*: Assuming that we eliminated the barriers of time, space, scale, and observability, we warranty that one would come to the same conclusion if equally truthful in his actions.

    We can never state whether a statement is “Absolutely True”, as in satisfying Platonic truth. And rarely can we state that we have satisfied analytic truth, and only at human scale can we testify that we have satisfied Perceivable Truth – original experience.  But we can always state whether we have stated something truthfully.

    The question is only *whether we truly desire to*.

    Criticism of Intellectual History:
    We have been obsessed with science and math rather than seeing them as simple subsets of the more complex problem. And in the west, we took truth telling for granted, when it is the first principle upon which all other western advances were made.

    (Next. Information Differences Necessary in Verbal Expression)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Postmodernism is Pointless, Viscious and Destructive

    (Guest post by Michael Phillip)

    Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.