Programming is as important an innovation in thought as is empiricism. Because while empiricism is but correspondent and logic is a but question of sets, programming is operational (existential). I think the act of creating databases is about as close to philosophizing as you can come, but it involves the same problem as logic: as practiced by the discipline its logical but non-operational, and often non-correspondent. When you combine user interfaces(human-reality), programming (operations), and databases (sets/logic), where the data structures must correspond to real world entities (empiricism), then you have covered the entire conceptual spectrum. If we combine the correspondent, logical, and operational, we have everything but the moral. If we were to add full accounting of all transactions (full capital accounting that is: under property in toto) we would essentially create the entire spectrum of dimensions necessary for cognition. My view is that while the blockchain method is currently too weak for this purpose, that the general theory of duplicated recursive competing ledgers provides the full accounting of TITLES (changes in ownership), and that local databases can take care of local accounting (local measures of local capital), then we would have sufficient dimensional information to produce meaningful artificial intelligences bound by the same limits as we are. But regardless of what we do with programming itself, my objective is to teach people that the sensation of teaching a computer but having the reaction “well it should know that’s what I meant!” vs what you told it to do are two different things. And that this ‘gap’ is solved by training the mind to think operationally – existentially? Why? Because just as empiricism taught us that the information we wished to be contained in our words was not in fact there, programming or in broader terms ‘operationalism’ teaches us how little we actually know. In other words, it teaches us humility and skepticism in our own thoughts. Or conversely, it teaches us how to test for error and deceit in others. Is this an additional burden? Of course it is. So was scientific knowledge. So was literacy. So was numeracy. So was law and order. These are all costs. But they are not sunk costs. They are investments we make. And the investments in truth telling are always the BEST investments man has EVER made. (Good luck trying to argue otherwise) My strategy is to require law be written programmatically (operationally) even more so than today. Strictly constructed by the same means. This will produce an even more readable body of law, and one that can be accumulated technologically in future systems other than the human mind. Law is very close to programming now. But we do not have all the requirements in law that are necessary for the defense of the informational commons. If we do that, then law will be dimensionally complete (as far as I can tell). And we will be able to hold the liars at bay.
Theme: Measurement
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Programming Teaches Operational Thought
Programming is as important an innovation in thought as is empiricism. Because while empiricism is but correspondent and logic is a but question of sets, programming is operational (existential). I think the act of creating databases is about as close to philosophizing as you can come, but it involves the same problem as logic: as practiced by the discipline its logical but non-operational, and often non-correspondent. When you combine user interfaces(human-reality), programming (operations), and databases (sets/logic), where the data structures must correspond to real world entities (empiricism), then you have covered the entire conceptual spectrum. If we combine the correspondent, logical, and operational, we have everything but the moral. If we were to add full accounting of all transactions (full capital accounting that is: under property in toto) we would essentially create the entire spectrum of dimensions necessary for cognition. My view is that while the blockchain method is currently too weak for this purpose, that the general theory of duplicated recursive competing ledgers provides the full accounting of TITLES (changes in ownership), and that local databases can take care of local accounting (local measures of local capital), then we would have sufficient dimensional information to produce meaningful artificial intelligences bound by the same limits as we are. But regardless of what we do with programming itself, my objective is to teach people that the sensation of teaching a computer but having the reaction “well it should know that’s what I meant!” vs what you told it to do are two different things. And that this ‘gap’ is solved by training the mind to think operationally – existentially? Why? Because just as empiricism taught us that the information we wished to be contained in our words was not in fact there, programming or in broader terms ‘operationalism’ teaches us how little we actually know. In other words, it teaches us humility and skepticism in our own thoughts. Or conversely, it teaches us how to test for error and deceit in others. Is this an additional burden? Of course it is. So was scientific knowledge. So was literacy. So was numeracy. So was law and order. These are all costs. But they are not sunk costs. They are investments we make. And the investments in truth telling are always the BEST investments man has EVER made. (Good luck trying to argue otherwise) My strategy is to require law be written programmatically (operationally) even more so than today. Strictly constructed by the same means. This will produce an even more readable body of law, and one that can be accumulated technologically in future systems other than the human mind. Law is very close to programming now. But we do not have all the requirements in law that are necessary for the defense of the informational commons. If we do that, then law will be dimensionally complete (as far as I can tell). And we will be able to hold the liars at bay.
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How About Operational (True) Names for Schools of Economics?
[W]hy don’t we just rename each branch of econ operationally instead of geographically: 1 – Austrian: Economic Social Science. 2 – And then follow with Chicago: Economic Rule of Law. 3 – And follow finally with Saltwater: Economic Discretionary Spending. There is plenty of reason there is such conflict between schools over method when the schools seek three different ends: 1 – Institutional improvement seeking to eliminate frictions and asymmetries of information. 2 – insurance against shocks and errors given asymmetries of information and natural frictions. 3 – disinformation to force corrections to the asymmetries of information and natural frictions. There is no monopoly methodology to be found in social science. There are just actions we can take at different points in the inter-generational organization of production of offspring(families), goods and services(market), commons(govt), and polities(nations). Each group specializes in their reproductive interests: 1) good intergenerational families (Austrian/social-science), 2) aspiring families (classical liberal / rule of law ), 3) and unsuccessful families and their priesthoods (saltwater / progressive / discretionary spending) When you argue (falsely) that some method is true or false for the purpose of providing a monopoly of decidability, then you’re engaging in fallacy. When you argue that we have only so many domains of action in economics, and that each school studies that means of action, that’s simply true. When you state that the consequences of three intertemporal strategies: eugenic long term, pragmatic medium term, and dysgenic short term, then just admit that’s what we’re doing. The fact that we (a) try to create a monopoly framework of decision making from (b) a set of tools of limited utility, (c) serving different reproductive (and therefore class and race) strategies, then we are just making the same fallacy that monopoly majoritarian, first-past-the-post rule does: that we need a monopoly rather than a market in government and therefore a monopoly rather than a market in economics. Let’s imagine for a minute that we had three houses of government, and that economists in each field held one house: austrian/social science, Chicago/rule-of-law, and freshwater/discretionary-rule . Now let’s imagine that these three groups had to create a policy where all three compromised upon the result. What would we see? Smaller government(medium term) and better normative behavior(long term), in exchange for higher redistribution (short term). Now let’s extend this model and ask why we don’t have a senate (Austrian), a house (freshwater), and a lower house (saltwater), and that these economists advised members of each house. This is what we had in the old English system of monarchy, lords, house, and church. We had a perfect government. The classical liberals were just wrong. Not all of us can or wish to, join the middle class. Most people simply wish to consume the most that they can with the least effort and risk. The rest of us want to compete for the crown. There is very little new under the sun. Most human discourse is as polluted as the waters of Bangladesh with error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. Our rhetorical problems exist largely because it is so easy to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. And that problem exists only because, while we force producers to involuntarily warranty goods, involuntarily warranty services, we do not force them to involuntarily warranty their words. Lying was industrialized by combining pseudoscience, propaganda, and diminution of standards of education by the elimination of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and economics from our education system. So we have the perfect storm: the ability to saturate the environment with propaganda, a population insufficiently educated to falsify it, and no means of juridical defense by which a minority can prosecute it. When we could create a perfect opposition: a population sufficiently educated to falsify it, a media with incentives to speak truthfully, and the juridical defense of the informational commons by which any minority can hold speakers accountable. We cannot warranty perfection but for the purpose intended. What we can do is warranty that we have done due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine. -
How About Operational (True) Names for Schools of Economics?
[W]hy don’t we just rename each branch of econ operationally instead of geographically: 1 – Austrian: Economic Social Science. 2 – And then follow with Chicago: Economic Rule of Law. 3 – And follow finally with Saltwater: Economic Discretionary Spending. There is plenty of reason there is such conflict between schools over method when the schools seek three different ends: 1 – Institutional improvement seeking to eliminate frictions and asymmetries of information. 2 – insurance against shocks and errors given asymmetries of information and natural frictions. 3 – disinformation to force corrections to the asymmetries of information and natural frictions. There is no monopoly methodology to be found in social science. There are just actions we can take at different points in the inter-generational organization of production of offspring(families), goods and services(market), commons(govt), and polities(nations). Each group specializes in their reproductive interests: 1) good intergenerational families (Austrian/social-science), 2) aspiring families (classical liberal / rule of law ), 3) and unsuccessful families and their priesthoods (saltwater / progressive / discretionary spending) When you argue (falsely) that some method is true or false for the purpose of providing a monopoly of decidability, then you’re engaging in fallacy. When you argue that we have only so many domains of action in economics, and that each school studies that means of action, that’s simply true. When you state that the consequences of three intertemporal strategies: eugenic long term, pragmatic medium term, and dysgenic short term, then just admit that’s what we’re doing. The fact that we (a) try to create a monopoly framework of decision making from (b) a set of tools of limited utility, (c) serving different reproductive (and therefore class and race) strategies, then we are just making the same fallacy that monopoly majoritarian, first-past-the-post rule does: that we need a monopoly rather than a market in government and therefore a monopoly rather than a market in economics. Let’s imagine for a minute that we had three houses of government, and that economists in each field held one house: austrian/social science, Chicago/rule-of-law, and freshwater/discretionary-rule . Now let’s imagine that these three groups had to create a policy where all three compromised upon the result. What would we see? Smaller government(medium term) and better normative behavior(long term), in exchange for higher redistribution (short term). Now let’s extend this model and ask why we don’t have a senate (Austrian), a house (freshwater), and a lower house (saltwater), and that these economists advised members of each house. This is what we had in the old English system of monarchy, lords, house, and church. We had a perfect government. The classical liberals were just wrong. Not all of us can or wish to, join the middle class. Most people simply wish to consume the most that they can with the least effort and risk. The rest of us want to compete for the crown. There is very little new under the sun. Most human discourse is as polluted as the waters of Bangladesh with error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. Our rhetorical problems exist largely because it is so easy to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. And that problem exists only because, while we force producers to involuntarily warranty goods, involuntarily warranty services, we do not force them to involuntarily warranty their words. Lying was industrialized by combining pseudoscience, propaganda, and diminution of standards of education by the elimination of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and economics from our education system. So we have the perfect storm: the ability to saturate the environment with propaganda, a population insufficiently educated to falsify it, and no means of juridical defense by which a minority can prosecute it. When we could create a perfect opposition: a population sufficiently educated to falsify it, a media with incentives to speak truthfully, and the juridical defense of the informational commons by which any minority can hold speakers accountable. We cannot warranty perfection but for the purpose intended. What we can do is warranty that we have done due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine. -
HOW ABOUT OPERATIONAL [true] NAMES FOR SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS? Why don’t we just r
HOW ABOUT OPERATIONAL [true] NAMES FOR SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS?
Why don’t we just rename each branch of econ operationally instead of geographically:
1 – Austrian: Economic Social Science.
2 – And then follow with Chicago: Economic Rule of Law.
3 – And follow finally with Saltwater: Economic Discretionary Spending.
There is plenty of reason there is such conflict between schools over method when the schools seek three different ends:
1 – Institutional improvement seeking to eliminate frictions and asymmetries of information.
2 – insurance against shocks and errors given asymmetries of information and natural frictions.
3 – disinformation to force corrections to the asymmetries of information and natural frictions.
There is no monopoly methodology to be found in social science. There are just actions we can take at different points in the inter-generational organization of production of offspring(families), goods and services(market), commons(govt), and polities(nations).
Each group specializes in their reproductive interests:
1) good intergenerational families (Austrian/social-science),
2) aspiring families (classical liberal / rule of law ),
3) and unsuccessful families and their priesthoods (saltwater / progressive / discretionary spending)
When you argue (falsely) that some method is true or false for the purpose of providing a monopoly of decidability, then you’re engaging in fallacy. When you argue that we have only so many domains of action in economics, and that each school studies that means of action, that’s simply true. When you state that the consequences of three intertemporal strategies: eugenic long term, pragmatic medium term, and dysgenic short term, then just admit that’s what we’re doing.
The fact that we (a) try to create a monopoly framework of decision making from (b) a set of tools of limited utility, (c) serving different reproductive (and therefore class and race) strategies, then we are just making the same fallacy that monopoly majoritarian, first-past-the-post rule does: that we need a monopoly rather than a market in government and therefore a monopoly rather than a market in economics.
Let’s imagine for a minute that we had three houses of government, and that economists in each field held one house: austrian/social science, Chicago/rule-of-law, and freshwater/discretionary-rule .
Now let’s imagine that these three groups had to create a policy where all three compromised upon the result. What would we see? Smaller government(medium term) and better normative behavior(long term), in exchange for higher redistribution (short term).
Now let’s extend this model and ask why we don’t have a senate (Austrian), a house (freshwater), and a lower house (saltwater), and that these economists advised members of each house.
This is what we had in the old English system of monarchy, lords, house, and church.
We had a perfect government. The classical liberals were just wrong. Not all of us can or wish to, join the middle class. Most people simply wish to consume the most that they can with the least effort and risk. The rest of us want to compete for the crown.
There is very little new under the sun. Most human discourse is as polluted as the waters of Bangladesh with error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
Our rhetorical problems exist largely because it is so easy to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
And that problem exists only because, while we force producers to involuntarily warranty goods, involuntarily warranty services, we do not force them to involuntarily warranty their words.
Lying was industrialized by combining pseudoscience, propaganda, and diminution of standards of education by the elimination of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and economics from our education system.
So we have the perfect storm: the ability to saturate the environment with propaganda, a population insufficiently educated to falsify it, and no means of juridical defense by which a minority can prosecute it.
When we could create a perfect opposition: a population sufficiently educated to falsify it, a media with incentives to speak truthfully, and the juridical defense of the informational commons by which any minority can hold speakers accountable.
We cannot warranty perfection but for the purpose intended. What we can do is warranty that we have done due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-13 09:18:00 UTC
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( HOW ABOUT OPERATIONAL [true] NAMES FOR SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS ) Why don’t we jus
( HOW ABOUT OPERATIONAL [true] NAMES FOR SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS )
Why don’t we just rename each branch of econ operationally instead of geographically:
1 – Austrian: Economic Social Science.
2 – And then follow with Chicago: Economic Rule of Law.
3 – And follow finally with Saltwater: Economic Discretionary Spending.
There is plenty of reason there is such conflict between schools over method when the schools seek three different ends:
1 – Institutional improvement seeking to eliminate frictions and asymmetries of information.
2 – insurance against shocks and errors given asymmetries of information and natural frictions.
3 – disinformation to force corrections to the asymmetries of information and natural frictions.
There is no monopoly methodology to be found in social science. There are just actions we can take at different points in the inter-generational organization of production of offspring(families), goods and services(market), commons(govt), and polities(nations).
Each group specializes in their reproductive interests:
1) good intergenerational families (Austrian/social-science),
2) aspiring families (classical liberal / rule of law ),
3) and unsuccessful families and their priesthoods (saltwater / progressive / discretionary spending)
When you argue (falsely) that some method is true or false for the purpose of providing a monopoly of decidability, then you’re engaging in fallacy. When you argue that we have only so many domains of action in economics, and that each school studies that means of action, that’s simply true. When you state that the consequences of three intertemporal strategies: eugenic long term, pragmatic medium term, and dysgenic short term, then just admit that’s what we’re doing.
The fact that we (a) try to create a monopoly framework of decision making from (b) a set of tools of limited utility, (c) serving different reproductive (and therefore class and race) strategies, then we are just making the same fallacy that monopoly majoritarian, first-past-the-post rule does: that we need a monopoly rather than a market in government and therefore a monopoly rather than a market in economics.
Let’s imagine for a minute that we had three houses of government, and that economists in each field held one house: austrian/social science, Chicago/rule-of-law, and freshwater/discretionary-rule .
Now let’s imagine that these three groups had to create a policy where all three compromised upon the result. What would we see? Smaller government(medium term) and better normative behavior(long term), in exchange for higher redistribution (short term).
Now let’s extend this model and ask why we don’t have a senate (Austrian), a house (freshwater), and a lower house (saltwater), and that these economists advised members of each house.
This is what we had in the old English system of monarchy, lords, house, and church.
We had a perfect government. The classical liberals were just wrong. Not all of us can or wish to, join the middle class. Most people simply wish to consume the most that they can with the least effort and risk. The rest of us want to compete for the crown.
There is very little new under the sun. Most human discourse is as polluted as the waters of Bangladesh with error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
Our rhetorical problems exist largely because it is so easy to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
And that problem exists only because, while we force producers to involuntarily warranty goods, involuntarily warranty services, we do not force them to involuntarily warranty their words.
Lying was industrialized by combining pseudoscience, propaganda, and diminution of standards of education by the elimination of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and economics from our education system.
So we have the perfect storm: the ability to saturate the environment with propaganda, a population insufficiently educated to falsify it, and no means of juridical defense by which a minority can prosecute it.
When we could create a perfect opposition: a population sufficiently educated to falsify it, a media with incentives to speak truthfully, and the juridical defense of the informational commons by which any minority can hold speakers accountable.
We cannot warranty perfection but for the purpose intended. What we can do is warranty that we have done due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, propaganda, pseudorationalism, pseudoscience, and outright deceit.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-13 09:12:00 UTC
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1) the properties of x equal the properties of x. (identity/tautology) these axi
1)
the properties of x equal the properties of x. (identity/tautology)
these axioms allow me to say x (identity/tautology)
-and-
the properties of x are sufficiently equal to the properties of y for the purpose of this argument (ok) (category)
2)
These axioms x and those axioms y allow me to say z for the purpose of this argument, becuase that argument depends only on the axioms of x and y.
-and-
the properties of known x are shared with the properties of unknown y for the purpose of communicating the meaning of y. (ok) (meaning)
3)
given the properties of x and the properties of y, we can deduce z. (deduction) (No, no, no, no….!!!!!)
– and –
given the axioms x and the axioms y, we and deduce z. (deduction) (No, no, no, you can only guess z might be possible, however unlikley)
4)
given this subset of properties of x and this subset of properties of y, we can deduce z from the properties of x or y that are not a subset of x and y. (conflation) (No No No No…..!!!!)
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-13 07:51:00 UTC
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PROGRAMMING PROVIDES THE CURRENT LOGIC OF OPERATIONALISM – YET WE CAN EXTEND IT.
PROGRAMMING PROVIDES THE CURRENT LOGIC OF OPERATIONALISM – YET WE CAN EXTEND IT.
Programming is as important an innovation in thought as is empiricism. Because while empiricism is but correspondent and logic is a but question of sets, programming is operational (existential).
I think the act of creating databases is about as close to philosophizing as you can come, but it involves the same problem as logic: as practiced by the discipline its logical but non-operational, and often non-correspondent.
When you combine user interfaces(human-reality), programming (operations), and databases (sets/logic), where the data structures must correspond to real world entities (empiricism), then you have covered the entire conceptual spectrum.
If we combine the correspondent, logical, and operational, we have everything but the moral. If we were to add full accounting of all transactions (full capital accounting that is: under property in toto) we would essentially create the entire spectrum of dimensions necessary for cognition.
My view is that while the blockchain method is currently too weak for this purpose, that the general theory of duplicated recursive competing ledgers provides the full accounting of TITLES (changes in ownership), and that local databases can take care of local accounting (local measures of local capital), then we would have sufficient dimensional information to produce meaningful artificial intelligences bound by the same limits as we are.
But regardless of what we do with programming itself, my objective is to teach people that the sensation of teaching a computer but having the reaction “well it should know that’s what I meant!” vs what you told it to do are two different things. And that this ‘gap’ is solved by training teh mind to think operatoinally – existentially?
Why? Because just as empiricism taught us that the information we wishted to be contained in our words was not in fact there, programming or in broader terms ‘operationalism’ teaches us how little we actually know.
In other words, it teaches us humility and skepticism in our own thoughts. Or conversely, it teaches us how to test for error and deceit in others.
Is this an additional burden? Of course it is. So was scientific knowledge. So was literacy. So was numeracy. So was law and order. These are all costs. But they are not sunk costs. They are investments we make. And the investments in truth telling are always the BEST investments man has EVER made.
(Good luck trying to argue otherwise)
My strategy is to require law be written programmatically (operationally) even more so than today. Strictly constructed by the same means. This will produce an even more readable body of law, and one that can be accumulated technologically in future systems other than the human mind.
Law is very close to programming now. But we do not have all the requirements in law that are necessary for the defense of the informational commons.
If we do that, then law will be dimensionally complete (as far as I can tell). And we will be able to hold the liars at bay.
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-13 04:45:00 UTC
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MISES AND ROTHBARD – END THE PSEUDOSCIENCE We need to stop this kind of thing. 1
https://mises.org/blog/myth-macroeconomicsSAVE MISES AND ROTHBARD – END THE PSEUDOSCIENCE
We need to stop this kind of thing.
1) Macro economic manipulation measures the extent to which we can deceive through disinformation, and socialize private gains from capital accumulation. Macro economic manipulation DOES produce gains that SOMETIMES offset those private losses. But this is very hard to measure with any degree of reliability.
2) Mises is correct that the subjective operational testing (praxeological) of any economic proposition must be possible to construct as a rational and preferable sequence of events, for us to claim that economic phenomenon are descriptive of MORAL processes consisting of TRUTHFUL information provided by money and prices.
3) But it’s not myth, it’s not pseudoscience, it’s just IMMORAL. Mises conflates not only logic and science, justification and criticism, but also truth and morality. He did hold an insight but as a philosopher he was only marginally better than Rothbard, who was a catastrophe. We are better off reading Simmel than either Rothbard or Mises on the morality of money.
I struggle to reform this nonsense on a daily basis and thankfully I’ve mad substantial progress. Because we cannot pursue liberty by pseudoscience any more than the marxists could pursue communism through pseudoscience.
Mises is repairable. Rothbard less so. Hoppe more so. Hayek and Popper even more so.
But as the right ascends, libertarianism is quickly devolving even further into a lunatic fringe.
It is no use taking down mises and rothbard and possibly hoppe because of dedication to the false praise of men who were partly right but because of cultural traditions conflated true with moral, justification with criticism, logic with science, and straw men with argument.
We do their legacies no honor by promoting their errors rather than their achievements.
IN THREE GENERATIONS WE SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL SCIENCE.
That’s enough. We can take credit for it. Not because each man was perfect. Or because each man was an authority. But because despite being victims of their times and cultures, they each managed to find a piece of the puzzle that solved the riddle of social science. Cooperation by non imposition of costs that cause retaliation. Or stated positively: Reciprocal insurance of Property in Toto; continually policed by the market for dispute resolution: Natural, common, judge-discovered, law.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
PS: I would like to stop beating on Rothbard and Mises but as long as this nonsense continues I have to do the right thing.
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-07 11:16:00 UTC
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UNDERSTANDING ART Art is best intellectually understood as a technology no diffe
UNDERSTANDING ART
Art is best intellectually understood as a technology no different from any other. That technology uses three basic axis:
1) craftsmanship,
2) design (aesthetics)
3) content
Art can be an innovation in materials and techniques, it can be an innovation in aesthetic appeal, and it can be used to advance the binding myths of a people. If all three of these are met we generally refer to this ‘high information density” as “high art” or just “art”. at the other end of the spectrum is utilitarian goods. In between is everything else.
We tend to organize by high art (monuments), editorial or commentary art (essays so to speak), decorative art, designed and decorated objects, designed objects, crafted objects, and commodity crafts. But this reflects all produced goods not just art.
Art evolves with crafting and materials technology. For example there are only so many properties to fashion: Stiffness, Texture, Cut, Pattern, Color, and combinations thereof – culminating in ‘information density’. And what we see in history is the evolution of styles to signal status with the evolutions in technology to produce stiffness, texture, cut, pattern, color and combinations thereof to produce status signals.
Art evolves with aesthetics – the most obvious being the medieval invention of the grid system, and Vermeer’s use of mirrors and prisms, and the 20th centuries use of negatives, photos, and projectors. And the 21st century’s use of digital imagery and animation. (Hollywood is a horrifically powerful magnet since with copyright laws, it’s possible to profit from proletarian art.) We have dramatically increased our sensory stimulation in various ways. Although monumental scale still seems to hold the high ground in aesthetics.
Art evolves with meaning. And this is where you’re going to find something interesting to discuss in your paper on Australia. Because a lot of things happened to art in the 19th and 20th centuries. We had the industrial revolution and this dramatically increased the demand for artistic signals as people entered the middle and consumer classes. Photography put a bullet in the income of painters and sculptors, and printing became even cheaper. We saw the same effect in the 1980’s with the expansion of the printing capability – producing high-quality posters. Although that died rather quickly.
So generally you can look at any era, and ask “what is changing in the market for decoration, symbolism, and status?” If you can answer those questions (and I know you can) then you can pick a single or set of pieces and discuss how they reflect the state of Australian crafts, economics, status signaling, and political and editorial ambitions, and attempts to make monuments.
Or you can type a lot of postmodern bullshit that has filled the pages of top twenty new york based art magazines since the second world war. lol
Curt
Source date (UTC): 2016-09-06 11:53:00 UTC