Theme: Measurement

Peter (all),

(again, probably epistemologically too technical for this crowd)

RE: https://www.facebook.com/peter.boettke/posts/10158213805095389

IT’S NOT A CASE OF MISINTERPRETATION BUT MISREPRESENTATION, AND IGNORANCE

There is a difference between:

(a) misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

(b) monopoly/authoritarianism(subjective/apriorism/operationalism vs objective/existential/empiricism) and competition(survival from criticism in both apriorism and empiricism)

(c) scientists(survival from criticism) and ideologues (justificationism as in misesian/rothbardians)

ASSERTION

Any and every statement of social science proposed as a truth claim must survive the following forms of criticism, of which AUSTRIAN economist’s operationalism/intuitionism (misnamed ‘methodological individualism’) provides the first INNOVATION in science in over a century.

1) categorical consistency (identity – non conflation)

2) logical consistency (internal consistency)

3) empirical consistency (external correspondence)

4) existential consistency (operational language/intuitionism/methodological individualism)

5) reciprocal consistency (objectively moral: productive, fully in formed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to productive externalities)

6) scope consistency (full accounting, limits, and parsimony – where full accounting includes the difference in opportunity costs: the seen, unseen / intended, unintended / caused, uncaused.)

That completes the scientific method.

When a mainstream quantitative (correlative) economist issues his findings, in almost NO case does he test (4)(5)(6), and arguably they rarely test (1). In other words, most mainstream (correlative) economists cherry-pick in order to defend priors and desired measures.

We succeed at what we measure. We fail at what we don’t.

WHO IS AT FAULT

1) The Mises Institute has polluted the informational commons for 30 years, if for no other reason than they are philosophically sophomoric to the last man. Their propagandizing by making innovative use of the internet to capture interest has created large numbers of activists who lack breadth of knowledge necessary to judge (test) the ideology they absorb.

2) While the Christian Austrians (austrians proper) maintained a metaphysical (subconscious) accounting of the challenge of organizing the commons (an aristocratic bias), many if not all of the Cosmopolitan Austrians (jewish Austrians), like the Rousseau, ignored the cost of organizing the commons, under the pretense that man was oppressed – rather than domesticated by the aristocracy (like any other animal) through the use of war, governance, law, and policy. Yes, domesticating man was profitable. It continues to be. That does not mean man was oppressed if it means forcing him into the market and to respect life, liberty, and property.

3) Academic Practitioners of operationalism / intuitionism / methodological-individualism AND empirical observation are almost equally philosophically sophomoric in their understanding of the innovation of the Austrian method, as the first instance of operationalism/intuitionism discovered in ANY of the sciences.

This is because (a) philosophers were distracted by the pseudoscientific effort of trying to make analytic philosophy of language into a ‘science’. (b) Popper/Kuhn failed to complete the scientific method sufficiently to explain why it worked so successfully, and therefore how to apply it to adaptive systems (social science), and while Hayek correctly identified information as the model we should study in social science, and correctly identified the common natural law as the means of regulating that information, he failed to learn from Simmel, Weber and Mises, as well as Brouwer and Bridgman how the scientific method could be captured in law and used to regulate that information. (c) the Incentive to take advantage of fiat currency (stock in the state’s revenue and income potential) was so great that economists were as equally distracted by the use of it to obtain legitimacy and influence as were philosophers distracted by the philosophy of language to obtain legitimacy and influence.

WHY DOES AUSTRIAN ECON MATTER?

1) because operationalism is more important in social science than physical science, and physical science more important than in mathematics, for the simple reason that the difference between the methods of observation and survival (proof/test/criticism) are trivial in mathematics, limited in physical science, and expansive in social and cognitive science.

2) because Austrians discovered operationalism in economics where it is most important of all sciences other than perhaps psychology.

3) because by discovering operationalism in economics, Austrians largely completed the scientific method – despite failing to grasp that they had done so.

KNOWING THIS, HOW DO WE REPOSITION AUSTRIAN ECON?

1) By using both empirical and operational methods, Austrian econ’s are engaged in social science: the study of human cooperation those markets for reproduction, production of private goods and services and information, production of common goods, services, and information, and production of competition against other groups (group evolutionary strategy). THEY PRACTICE SCIENCE.

2) By attempting to correct accumulated misinformation in the economy and assist networks of sustainable specialization and trade in adaptation, Chicago (freshwater) economists are attempting to (a)remain within rule of natural law (social science) and preserving the individual’s (b) ability to forecast and plan, (c) protection from retroactive legislation (policy) required by natural law. THEY PRACTICE MORAL SCIENCE.

3) By attempting to maximize consumption, mainstream economists ignore social science, violate natural law, and insert disinformation into the economy to the point where disinformation and malincentives accumulate on longer time horizons at greater scale, than individuals, organizations, the economy, the nation, and the civilization can adapt to. THEY PRACTICE DECEITFUL, IMMORAL, PSEUDOSCIENCE.

WHERE CAN YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT AUSTRIAN ECON’S PLACE IN HISTORY?

This post contains pointers to a series of articles that position Menger/Mises and their discovery in intellectual history as part of the movement of late 19th and early 20th century that failed, and allowed us to be subject to 100 years of social pseudoscience.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/scientific.praxeology/permalink/750994611656577/

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine