Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • NUMBERS: POSITIONAL NAMES OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. MATH: THE SCIENCE OF MEASUREMEN

    NUMBERS: POSITIONAL NAMES OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. MATH: THE SCIENCE OF MEASUREMENT OF RELATIONS BY THE USE OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. EXTENSIONS OF ORDINARY LANGUAGE

    Nouns are names. Numbers are names. Numbers are nouns. Numbers evolved as positional names: Nouns.

    We use many positional names: none, one, and some, short medium and tall; small, medium, and large; front, middle, and back; right center and left; port and starboard; daughter, mother, and grandmother;

    Numbers differ from ordinary nouns only in that we produce them by positional naming. Whereas early positional names varied from one two and many, to base ten, or base twelve, or in the twenties, or sixties, each which increases the demand on the human mind; the decimal system of positional naming

    Positional names are produced by a series of consistent operations. We call those series of consistent operations ‘functions’. By analogy we (unfortunately) called all such functions numbers: a convenient fiction.

    Because of positional naming all positional names (numbers) are context independent, scale independent, constant relations, descriptively parsimonious and closed to interpretation.

    So unlike other nouns (names), they are almost impossible to misinterpret by processes of conflation (adding information), and are impossible to further deflate (removing information).

    Any other information we desire to add to the noun,( by which we mean name, positional name, number) must be provided by analogy to a context: application.

    Numbers exist as positional names of constant relations. Those constant relations are scale independent, context dependent, informationally parsimonious, and nearly impossible to conflate with information that will allow for misinterpretation or deception.

    As such, numbers allow us to perform DEDUCTIONS that other names, that lack constant relations, scale independence, context dependence, parsimony, immutability, and incorruptibility do not. Because deduction is possible wherever constant relations, parsimony, immutability, and incorruptibility are present.

    As such, numbers serve as as a method of verbal reasoning within and beyond the limits of human imagination (cognition), short term memory, and ordinary reason.

    Numbers then are simply a very clean set of nouns(positional names), verbs (operations and functions), including tests of positional relations (comparison operators) that allow us to describe, reason and discourse about that which is otherwise beyond our ordinary language, and mental capacity.

    As such we distinguish language, reason, and logic from numbers and measurement, and deduction both artificially and practically. Since while they consist of the same processes, the language of numbers, measurements, and deductions is simply more precise than the language of ordinary language, reason, and logic, if for no other reason that it is nearly closed to ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, deceit, and the fictionalism of superstition, pseudorationalsm, pseudoscience.

    Unfortunately, since to humans, that which allows them to perform such ‘seeming miracles’ that are otherwise beyond comprehension, must be justified, we invented various fictionalisms – primarily idealisms, or what philosophers refer to as platonisms – (mythologies) to explain our actions. To attribute comprehension to that which we did not comprehend. To provide authority by general rule to that which we could only demonstrate through repeated application. So mathematics maintains much of it’s ‘magical language’ and philosophers persist this magical language under the pseudo-rational label of ‘idealism’ or ‘abstraction’. Which roughly translates to “I don’t understand”.

    Perhaps more unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the addition of statistics and the application of mathematics to the inconstant relations of heuristic systems: particularly probability, fiat money, economics, finance, banking and commercial and tax accounting, this language no longer retains informational parsimony, and deducibility, and has instead evolved into a pseudoscience under which ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism and deceit are pervasive.

    Math is a very simple thing. It’s just ordinary language with positional names that allow us to give names and describe transformations to, that which is otherwise beyond our ability to imagine and recall, and therefore describe or reason with.

    Like everything else, if you make up stories of gods, demons, ghosts and monsters, or ‘abstractions’ or ‘ideals’ you can obscure the very simple causality that we seek to discover through science: the systematic attempt to remove error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our language of testimony about the world we perceive, cognate, remember, hypothesize within, act, advocate, negotiate, and cooperate within.

    Numbers are positional names of context independent, scale independent, informationally parsimonious, constant relations and mathematics consists of the grammar of that language.

    In other words, Math is an extension of ordinary language, ordinary reason, and ordinary science: the attempt by which we attempt to obtain information about our world within, above, and below human scale, by the use of rational and physical instrumentation, to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, and deceit from our descriptions, and as a consequence our language, and as a consequence our collective knowledge.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 09:43:00 UTC

  • WE CAN IMPROVE OUR INDIVIDUAL SENSES AND NOT IMPROVE ACTIONABILITY OR WE CAN IMP

    WE CAN IMPROVE OUR INDIVIDUAL SENSES AND NOT IMPROVE ACTIONABILITY OR WE CAN IMPROVE OUR ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION AND IMPROVE ACTIONABILITY

    We process what we can act upon nearly all of the texture, tasted, smell, temperature, physical vibration, sound vibration, electromagnetic ‘vibration’ we can act upon. Like most animals we evolved a distributed ability to ‘sense’ through our physical distribution, communication and territorial monitoring.

    Evolution was ‘smart’ in the sense that we cannot sense information we cannot act upon. There was little value to us in increased precision of any of our senses, because it would interfere with decidability, and decidability is limited to to that which is actionable.

    Conversely, we can augment our senses mechanically and we are able to generalize almost infinitely, and so with sound, smell, vibration, taste, sight, and speed enhancements there is no evidence that we could not process the information. All it would do is reduce our need for numbers to distribute the acts of perception over distance.

    So I’m hinting here at the error of individualism when judging our senses, perceptions, calculations, and decisions. And that ones judgement of our senses is determined by ones preference for social and political order. And ones preference of social and political order, is a reflection of one’s experiential, reproductive, cooperative, strategy.

    So if one is hopeful for liberty in a heterogeneous order one sees the limits of senses being the individual. If one sees homogenous kinship order at scale, one sees the limit of the senses being the band, tribe, polity, or nation.

    If one desires to circumvent an order, or to dominate an order, he may desire additional senses beyond that which he can act upon, and which others can act upon. But if one desires to operate within that order, he desires only to ensure the quality of information within that order.

    Ergo, I would seek to improve the quality of information within that order.

    Now, as to ‘illusion’ we can find very little evidence of this. What we find instead is that because of heterogeneous strategies, heterogeneous interests, heterogeneous values, heterogenous information, and outright disinformation, and lack of ability to deflate this heterogeneity, we IMAGINE that we sense and perceive falsely, and we IMAGINE many relations between events, and this CONFUSION may convince us that see very little. But this problem can be solved either by expanding the quality of the information available to an individual despite its in-actionabilty, or we can expand quality of information available to members of the group for both individual and group actionability.

    Since liberty is only existential when actionable, and actionable only possible in a polity, then the answer is rather obvious…

    So I want to improve the quality of information in an increasing division of perception, cognition, action knowledge, and advocacy;

    And given that we cannot know what is true, only what is false;

    And as far as I know, given the wide variation of cognitive ability,

    Then, this can only be achieved through providing in environmental context (Institution, tradition, norm, environment and information) that which prohibits DISINFORMATION.

    Ergo. Natural law in all things.

    If one has the power to change the narrative (contextual information) and and the metaphysics(assumptions) within it, and the general rules within it, one can choose the degree of truthfulness (deflation) existential in the method of narrative.

    The only question then is whether one possesses the knowledge to do so, and is willing to pay the higher cost of imposing truthful and deflationary rather than untruthful and conflationary models.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 07:42:00 UTC

  • I would say that our senses cover a wide range of the energy spectrum, and other

    I would say that our senses cover a wide range of the energy spectrum, and other than temperature or sensitivity we are not lacking in available senses nor information processing power.

    I would say that it certainly appears that we can sense everything that we can act upon or react to. Which is all evolution can do for us. Our achievements have been in extending our ability to perceive and act at increasing scales, through the use of cooperation and instrumentation

    I would say that we evolved our reason in concert with our language, and that the limitation of serial utterance of language, and the relatively high cost of speech determines the utility of using stories (think ‘parallelization’) that make use of context (high free association ), and that precision (low context high precision) is the result of our general need to increase sense perception cognition decidability, and retention in concert with our increase in scales of cooperation and instrumentation. ergo: our minds evolved to be limited by our speech.

    As far as I know the demonstrated difference in intellectual performance over the past few centuries has been the conversion of recipe-thinking to general-rule-thinking. And that this has demonstrated that changes in the method of thought dramatically improve the structure of the brain and therefore mind, and the mind’s ability to process information by association. Ergo, seemingly burdensome training of the mind can dramatically increase processing power through the application of new general rules more correspondent with the scale of concepts we utilize. Storytelling, symbols, measures, writing and literacy, reason, rationalism, empiricism, and now testimonialism, all rewire the brain and the mind to use the tools at their disposal – admittedly at some cost of acquisition.

    We observe differences (changes). The limit is information given reaction time, and limit in causal relations. We evolved when we could make lots of use of time. We can process absurd informational density. I am not even sure if we know how to measure it. We can REASON with limited ability.

    So given that some portion of people can master higher precision and greater scale, and some lower precision and lower scale, the question is merely how to construct cooperation among people with different abilities, and we encounter one solution: voluntary exchange, and one problem: dispute resolution. While voluntary cooperation scales indefinitely, dispute resolution is limited to a maximum difference between individuals ability to judge (ergo, dunning kruger).

    Now, the universe cannot ‘lie’. Our imaginations and our brains are filled with folly we increasingly succeed in purging through the development of rules, operations, objects, relations, and values, and saturating the common folk in context and therefore eliminating their need for calculative(rational) equivalency. (environment, information, norms, institutions.

    Ergo some of us can create institutions, norms, information, and environment that the less cognitively able can depend upon as means of obviating their limited ability to calculate, and decreasing the cost of their acquisition of those patterns.

    But an individual regardless of his abilities CAN perform due diligence to the BEST of his abilities. And in fact, that is what we do. And we provide prior restraint in the form of institutions, procedures, laws, norms and traditions to both limit his ability to cause harm to others out of ignorance, and provide contextual, procedural and educational means of enabling him to act within those limits. We do this and always have done it whether it be baby, child, youth, adult, mature adult, or barbarian, slave, serf, freeman, citizen, sovereign.

    Of course, we always seek discounts, and particularly discounts that suit our biases and wishful thinking, and facilitate our use of suggestion, obscurantism and deceit within the limits we can get away with.

    To leap ahead, and seize your concern, The question might be instead, “why does one have the right to ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit if cooperation and non conflict increasingly requires we eliminate them?

    I appreciate your concern for the common man. But in each era, the defenders of the anchors of the prior order of ideas and therefore man, attempt to preserve it – always wrongly. The test is simple: are we adding to the information processing of man or we constraining or reducing it?

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-26 14:21:00 UTC

  • You Cannot Trust What You Cannot Measure – That’s not Trust, but Faith

    Apr 17, 2017 12:29pm You cannot trust what you cannot measure. If you cannot measure it you are acting not on trust but on faith. And faith is not a way to govern, but a way to hide the extraction of rents before the opportunity is lost.

  • You Cannot Trust What You Cannot Measure – That’s not Trust, but Faith

    Apr 17, 2017 12:29pm You cannot trust what you cannot measure. If you cannot measure it you are acting not on trust but on faith. And faith is not a way to govern, but a way to hide the extraction of rents before the opportunity is lost.

  • The Evil of Comforting Lies

    THE EVIL OF COMFORTING LIES I have a thing: I like calculations. I like calculative technologies. I like them because they require specialists. And because they require specialists we get fewer idiots claiming they know what they’re talking about. why isn’t public speech in politics regulated as highly as a series seven license for example? Or a Legal License? Or a medical license? Are you saying that the construction of commons by political mans, backed by violence, is somehow less dangerous or open to misuse than financial predation, legal predation, or medical predation? Why is it so hard to imagine a world in which a journalist, in order to publish content for money, would have to be able to write in propertarian language, a propertarian argument, defending his or her position, even if summarizing that argument in an abstract? Why is it so hard for a politician to do the same? Why can we ship s—t arguments into the commons?

  • The Evil of Comforting Lies

    THE EVIL OF COMFORTING LIES I have a thing: I like calculations. I like calculative technologies. I like them because they require specialists. And because they require specialists we get fewer idiots claiming they know what they’re talking about. why isn’t public speech in politics regulated as highly as a series seven license for example? Or a Legal License? Or a medical license? Are you saying that the construction of commons by political mans, backed by violence, is somehow less dangerous or open to misuse than financial predation, legal predation, or medical predation? Why is it so hard to imagine a world in which a journalist, in order to publish content for money, would have to be able to write in propertarian language, a propertarian argument, defending his or her position, even if summarizing that argument in an abstract? Why is it so hard for a politician to do the same? Why can we ship s—t arguments into the commons?

  • MEASUREMENTS RENDER COMMENSURABILITY 1) Numbers render countable objects commens

    MEASUREMENTS RENDER COMMENSURABILITY

    1) Numbers render countable objects commensurable

    2) Measurements render relations commensurable

    3) Physics renders physical causes commensurable.

    4) Money renders goods and services commensurable

    5) Property renders cooperation (ethics, morals, politics) commensurable

    6) Reason renders words and concepts commensurable.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-20 11:18:00 UTC

  • THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF VIOLENCE: It’s an article of faith among many liberta

    THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF VIOLENCE:

    It’s an article of faith among many libertarians that violence, and particularly aggressive violence, is necessarily negative sum.

    Prices contain information and markets broker them (in a subjective utility maximising way.) Violence only short circuits that, disrupts markets, destroy price signals, and makes everyone worse off.

    But this is not correct.

    In the first place, market transactions aren’t necessarily positive sum. If they are fraudulent or create negative externalities for those not party, they can be negative sum.

    And in the second place, violence is itself a signal, and transmits information. A threat expresses a subjective evaluation just as an offer does in the marketplace. “Hey, don’t do that or we’re going to fight.”

    And the initiation of hostilities demonstrates the authenticity of that information just as a payment does in the marketplace. One undertakes real cost, and real risk, in resorting to violence.

    (In contrast, whining, and playing the victim DO NOT demonstrate the authenticity of grievances in the way that resorting to violence does, and so are liable and likely to prove negative sum, if indulged, just as theft is liable and likely to prove negative sum, in the marketplace, because it does not make a sufficient demonstration and exchange of value.)

    Markets and prices on the one hand, and violence and threats on the other, are both necessary components to a stable, functional, and efficient society and economy. To suppress either wholly in favor of the other, would be to forego the benefits they offer, and to pervert incentives towards destructive outcomes.

    No society which does either will be able to compete, long term, against one which makes a more sensible tradeoff between them, making best use of information supplied by both exchange and conflict.

    Violence is the means of expressing the subjective evaluations not captured by price signals, which are as vast and varied as those which are.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-19 11:49:00 UTC

  • Hierarchy of Knowledge – Two Views of Same Conclusion

    THE NEW HIERARCHY OF KNOWLEDGE
    0) Physics (Existence)
    1) … Time, Man, Action (old Metaphysics – Limits)
    2) … … Acquisitionism (old Psychology)
    3) … … … Testimony (old Epistemology) – “Science”)
    4) … … … … Ethics (old Sociology)
    5) … … … … … Production (Old economics)
    6) … … … … … … Commons (Old Politics)
    7) … … … … … … … Group Evolutionary Strategy (old War)
    8) … … … … … … … … Aesthetics (that which is ‘true, good, beautiful)
     
    Or we could group it this way:
     
    THE NEW HIERARCHY OF KNOWLEDGE: Limits and Oppys
    0) … Physics (Existence)
    … … … Physics,
    … … … chemistry,
    … … … biology,
    … … … sentience
    1) … Time, Man, Action (old Metaphysics – Limits)
    … … … Acquisitionism (old Psychology)
    … … … Cooperation (old Sociology)
    … … … … Reproduction (marriage/family)
    … … … … Education
    … … … … Production (Old economics)
    … … … … Commons (Old Politics)
    … … … … Group Evolutionary Strategy (War)
    … … … … … Testimony (old Epistemology) – “Science”) And the second way appears to be better.