Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • Operationalism as Criticism: Repairing The Errors of 20th Century Philosophy

    [I] have chosen the term ‘Operationalism’ over Praxeology, Actions, Intuitionism, and Operationism because it seems most intuitive given our language’s use of ‘Mathematical operations”, and “Human Actions”.

    Ray (who is very helpful) does the logical thing which is treat critics of critical rationalism’s early errors as behind-the-times or ignorant, while himself making the same mistake. Because we all do. However, I have tried to repair the individual errors of the last century by uniting and repairing Critical Rationalism’s emphasis on criticsm (but painful use of analogy), and combining the various attempts to construct criticism in other fields.

    So (Irony being what it is) critical rationalism (philosophy), intuitionism (mathematics), praxeology(economics), operationalism(physics), operationism(psychology), strict constructionism(law), are all parallel developments that occurred in human thought in multiple disciplines, as we evolved our scope of scientific inquiry beyond human scale; and therefore when the ‘arbitrary precision’ of the language and concepts that we had evolved WITHIN human scale, reached their limits and began to fail us. Or technically speaking, we assumed the continuous application properties predictively useful at a prior level of precision, into conditions where they no longer held.

    Secondly, as as we converted from human-scale to beyond-human-scale, the problem we faced was not identifying success, but identifying error. (This is an information problem. And Taleb isn’t quite there in piecing this together yet, but he is getting very close with the math of late.) In other words, we changed from trying to find things that worked, to trying to find things that failed. And that is because we changed from individuals making discoveries, to a division of labor in the process of discovery. We changed from the high cost of experimentation, to the high cost of propagating error.

    In Propertarianism I have tried to reform the 19th-20th century’s errors by completing the unification of the process of justification – which is necessary for moral testimony and in particular warranty – with criticism, which is necessary for scientific testimony. And where scientific testimony is more correctly stated as truthful testimony, that has been warrantied by due diligence (criticism) to be free of imaginary content.

    I know that most people are interested in my political and moral arguments – because they advance their agendas (or refute them). But as far as I know this repair to philosophy and the merger of philosophy and science into a single discipline is my greatest achievement so far.

    ORIGINAL POST:

    ***Ray Scott Percival***
    Operationalism has insuperable problems similar to logical positivism. This article is a nice synopsis of the rise and fall of operationalism, Ala the physicist Bridgeman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/

    ***Curt Doolittle***
    I cannot be accountable for the errors of prior generations, I can only seek to repair them. smile emoticon And as far as I know I have done so.

    Operationalism(science), Intuitionism(mathematics), Operationism(psychology), Praxeology/Propertarianism(economics) must be seen as instances of criticism. It is the criticism first, that ensures that we have not misapplied extant concepts beyond the limits of their arbitrary precision; and second, that each named sequence of our observations is existentially possible, and third, free of imaginary content – particularly imaginary content supplied by analogy.

    So, collectively, the set of criticisms must be seen as provisions for the issue of warranty of due diligence. In other words, that we have not polluted the informational commons in a world where investigation is distributed (and therefore one has exported costs upon others), and where the expectation of our contribution to the informational commons is a contribution, not a harm.

    And, any theory, in order for one to attest that it is truthful, must be criticized( falsified) by tests of:
    1) external correspondence
    2) internal consistency (logic)
    3) existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content (operationalism/intuitionism/operationism/propertarianism)
    4) parsimony (falsification)
    5) morality (consisting entirely of voluntary transfer)
    6) warranty (promise of having performed all criticism)

    We cannot know if something is true, but we can warranty that it is truthful. If a statement provides explanatory power, and is truthfully constructed, we can testify that it is true for known applications.

    But as Bridgman pointed out, there are no certain premises, because any rule of arbitrary precision (theory) likely fails at some scale. (This is a superior restatement of infinitely parsimonious scientific truth in critical rationalism.) Since there are no certain premises there are no certain non-tautological deductions – at scale. However, it is problems of scale – those beyond our senses, and those at the margins of our instruments – that we struggle to solve.

    As such, our definition of a ‘true’ theory is mistaken. A theory is truthful if we have performed due diligence. A theory is true if it works at scales we currently comprehend. If the scale changes, and we improve precision, that does not invalidate the theory, but improves it. A complete theory is one in which no further parsimony is possible.

    Or stated differently, we cannot treat theories as analogies wherein properties are transferred for the purpose of transferring meaning. Theories are names for categories of similar operations that produce similar outcomes. We can theorize by any means possible, but no matter how we theorize, we cannot justify a theory, we can only criticize it or state that the cost of failure using the extant theory is less than the cost of investigating a new one. We can justify our actions but not our theories. We can justify adherence to moral, legal, an contractual norms, but we cannot justify our theories.

    For example, Einstein improves upon Newton, he does not render Newton false. Just as someone will undoubtably improve Einstein, not necessarily render him false. The purpose of a theory is to provide us with case independent explanatory power.

    That is all it can do for us. And as such good theories can save us effort and risk and provide us with rewards while useless theories do not – not because of the theory but because of the results. And bad theories merely waste our time and effort.

    Even pure (non-correspondent) mathematics fails, since, for example, infinities are impossible to construct. So even mathematical rules that remain consistent regardless of scale (which is the point of logic of ratios), are only useful as ideals. And the failure of those ideals at scale assists us in identifying the physical properties of the universe.

    So by whatever name we call it “warranty of existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content”, the form of criticism I refer to as Operationalism holds. It holds because it is the only means of warrantying that we are not substituting imaginary information into an observation.

    Operations constitute names. All else is analogy. Analogies allow – if not mandate – the introduction of external, imaginary information, by the natural process of substitution that makes the human mind useful for theorizing.

    Worse, analogies can be used for loading, framing, overloading and suggestion, and as such have been the source of error and deceit – not only in anglo, but in german, and jewish enlightenment thought.

    (I solved it. That’s just how it is. I didn’t set out to. But I did. CR requires a minor reformation. Austrian econ a minor reformation. And political theory a major one – away from monopoly rule, and into a market for commons. Science can be more correctly described as the disciple of truth telling, and that there is no difference between philosophy and science any longer. And we can abandon psychology forever as one of the most destructive theoretical systems ever developed. Only monotheism and Marxism/Keynesianism were worse.)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Operationalism as Criticism: Repairing The Errors of 20th Century Philosophy

    [I] have chosen the term ‘Operationalism’ over Praxeology, Actions, Intuitionism, and Operationism because it seems most intuitive given our language’s use of ‘Mathematical operations”, and “Human Actions”.

    Ray (who is very helpful) does the logical thing which is treat critics of critical rationalism’s early errors as behind-the-times or ignorant, while himself making the same mistake. Because we all do. However, I have tried to repair the individual errors of the last century by uniting and repairing Critical Rationalism’s emphasis on criticsm (but painful use of analogy), and combining the various attempts to construct criticism in other fields.

    So (Irony being what it is) critical rationalism (philosophy), intuitionism (mathematics), praxeology(economics), operationalism(physics), operationism(psychology), strict constructionism(law), are all parallel developments that occurred in human thought in multiple disciplines, as we evolved our scope of scientific inquiry beyond human scale; and therefore when the ‘arbitrary precision’ of the language and concepts that we had evolved WITHIN human scale, reached their limits and began to fail us. Or technically speaking, we assumed the continuous application properties predictively useful at a prior level of precision, into conditions where they no longer held.

    Secondly, as as we converted from human-scale to beyond-human-scale, the problem we faced was not identifying success, but identifying error. (This is an information problem. And Taleb isn’t quite there in piecing this together yet, but he is getting very close with the math of late.) In other words, we changed from trying to find things that worked, to trying to find things that failed. And that is because we changed from individuals making discoveries, to a division of labor in the process of discovery. We changed from the high cost of experimentation, to the high cost of propagating error.

    In Propertarianism I have tried to reform the 19th-20th century’s errors by completing the unification of the process of justification – which is necessary for moral testimony and in particular warranty – with criticism, which is necessary for scientific testimony. And where scientific testimony is more correctly stated as truthful testimony, that has been warrantied by due diligence (criticism) to be free of imaginary content.

    I know that most people are interested in my political and moral arguments – because they advance their agendas (or refute them). But as far as I know this repair to philosophy and the merger of philosophy and science into a single discipline is my greatest achievement so far.

    ORIGINAL POST:

    ***Ray Scott Percival***
    Operationalism has insuperable problems similar to logical positivism. This article is a nice synopsis of the rise and fall of operationalism, Ala the physicist Bridgeman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/

    ***Curt Doolittle***
    I cannot be accountable for the errors of prior generations, I can only seek to repair them. smile emoticon And as far as I know I have done so.

    Operationalism(science), Intuitionism(mathematics), Operationism(psychology), Praxeology/Propertarianism(economics) must be seen as instances of criticism. It is the criticism first, that ensures that we have not misapplied extant concepts beyond the limits of their arbitrary precision; and second, that each named sequence of our observations is existentially possible, and third, free of imaginary content – particularly imaginary content supplied by analogy.

    So, collectively, the set of criticisms must be seen as provisions for the issue of warranty of due diligence. In other words, that we have not polluted the informational commons in a world where investigation is distributed (and therefore one has exported costs upon others), and where the expectation of our contribution to the informational commons is a contribution, not a harm.

    And, any theory, in order for one to attest that it is truthful, must be criticized( falsified) by tests of:
    1) external correspondence
    2) internal consistency (logic)
    3) existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content (operationalism/intuitionism/operationism/propertarianism)
    4) parsimony (falsification)
    5) morality (consisting entirely of voluntary transfer)
    6) warranty (promise of having performed all criticism)

    We cannot know if something is true, but we can warranty that it is truthful. If a statement provides explanatory power, and is truthfully constructed, we can testify that it is true for known applications.

    But as Bridgman pointed out, there are no certain premises, because any rule of arbitrary precision (theory) likely fails at some scale. (This is a superior restatement of infinitely parsimonious scientific truth in critical rationalism.) Since there are no certain premises there are no certain non-tautological deductions – at scale. However, it is problems of scale – those beyond our senses, and those at the margins of our instruments – that we struggle to solve.

    As such, our definition of a ‘true’ theory is mistaken. A theory is truthful if we have performed due diligence. A theory is true if it works at scales we currently comprehend. If the scale changes, and we improve precision, that does not invalidate the theory, but improves it. A complete theory is one in which no further parsimony is possible.

    Or stated differently, we cannot treat theories as analogies wherein properties are transferred for the purpose of transferring meaning. Theories are names for categories of similar operations that produce similar outcomes. We can theorize by any means possible, but no matter how we theorize, we cannot justify a theory, we can only criticize it or state that the cost of failure using the extant theory is less than the cost of investigating a new one. We can justify our actions but not our theories. We can justify adherence to moral, legal, an contractual norms, but we cannot justify our theories.

    For example, Einstein improves upon Newton, he does not render Newton false. Just as someone will undoubtably improve Einstein, not necessarily render him false. The purpose of a theory is to provide us with case independent explanatory power.

    That is all it can do for us. And as such good theories can save us effort and risk and provide us with rewards while useless theories do not – not because of the theory but because of the results. And bad theories merely waste our time and effort.

    Even pure (non-correspondent) mathematics fails, since, for example, infinities are impossible to construct. So even mathematical rules that remain consistent regardless of scale (which is the point of logic of ratios), are only useful as ideals. And the failure of those ideals at scale assists us in identifying the physical properties of the universe.

    So by whatever name we call it “warranty of existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content”, the form of criticism I refer to as Operationalism holds. It holds because it is the only means of warrantying that we are not substituting imaginary information into an observation.

    Operations constitute names. All else is analogy. Analogies allow – if not mandate – the introduction of external, imaginary information, by the natural process of substitution that makes the human mind useful for theorizing.

    Worse, analogies can be used for loading, framing, overloading and suggestion, and as such have been the source of error and deceit – not only in anglo, but in german, and jewish enlightenment thought.

    (I solved it. That’s just how it is. I didn’t set out to. But I did. CR requires a minor reformation. Austrian econ a minor reformation. And political theory a major one – away from monopoly rule, and into a market for commons. Science can be more correctly described as the disciple of truth telling, and that there is no difference between philosophy and science any longer. And we can abandon psychology forever as one of the most destructive theoretical systems ever developed. Only monotheism and Marxism/Keynesianism were worse.)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • THE ERRORS OF 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY (from elsewhere)(important) I have chosen

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/REPAIRING THE ERRORS OF 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

    (from elsewhere)(important)

    I have chosen the term ‘Operationalism’ over Praxeology, Actions, Intuitionism, and Operationism because it seems most intuitive given our language’s use of ‘Mathematical operations”, and “Human Actions”.

    Ray (who is very helpful) does the logical thing which is treat critics of critical rationalism’s early errors as behind-the-times or ignorant, while himself making the same mistake. Because we all do. However, I have tried to repair the individual errors of the last century by uniting and repairing Critical Rationalism’s emphasis on criticsm (but painful use of analogy), and combining the various attempts to construct criticism in other fields.

    So (Irony being what it is) critical rationalism (philosophy), intuitionism (mathematics), praxeology(economics), operationalism(physics), operationism(psychology), strict constructionism(law), are all parallel developments that occurred in human thought in multiple disciplines, as we evolved our scope of scientific inquiry beyond human scale; and therefore when the ‘arbitrary precision’ of the language and concepts that we had evolved WITHIN human scale, reached their limits and began to fail us. Or technically speaking, we assumed the continuous application properties predictively useful at a prior level of precision, into conditions where they no longer held.

    Secondly, as as we converted from human-scale to beyond-human-scale, the problem we faced was not identifying success, but identifying error. (This is an information problem. And Taleb isn’t quite there in piecing this together yet, but he is getting very close with the math of late.) In other words, we changed from trying to find things that worked, to trying to find things that failed. And that is because we changed from individuals making discoveries, to a division of labor in the process of discovery. We changed from the high cost of experimentation, to the high cost of propagating error.

    In Propertarianism I have tried to reform the 19th-20th century’s errors by completing the unification of the process of justification – which is necessary for moral testimony and in particular warranty – with criticism, which is necessary for scientific testimony. And where scientific testimony is more correctly stated as truthful testimony, that has been warrantied by due diligence (criticism) to be free of imaginary content.

    I know that most people are interested in my political and moral arguments – because they advance their agendas (or refute them). But as far as I know this repair to philosophy and the merger of philosophy and science into a single discipline is my greatest achievement so far.

    ORIGINAL POST:

    ***Ray Scott Percival***

    Operationalism has insuperable problems similar to logical positivism. This article is a nice synopsis of the rise and fall of operationalism, Ala the physicist Bridgeman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/

    ***Curt Doolittle***

    I cannot be accountable for the errors of prior generations, I can only seek to repair them. 🙂 And as far as I know I have done so.

    Operationalism(science), Intuitionism(mathematics), Operationism(psychology), Praxeology/Propertarianism(economics) must be seen as instances of criticism. It is the criticism first, that ensures that we have not misapplied extant concepts beyond the limits of their arbitrary precision; and second, that each named sequence of our observations is existentially possible, and third, free of imaginary content – particularly imaginary content supplied by analogy.

    So, collectively, the set of criticisms must be seen as provisions for the issue of warranty of due diligence. In other words, that we have not polluted the informational commons in a world where investigation is distributed (and therefore one has exported costs upon others), and where the expectation of our contribution to the informational commons is a contribution, not a harm.

    And, any theory, in order for one to attest that it is truthful, must be criticized( falsified) by tests of:

    1) external correspondence

    2) internal consistency (logic)

    3) existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content (operationalism/intuitionism/operationism/propertarianism)

    4) parsimony (falsification)

    5) morality (consisting entirely of voluntary transfer)

    6) warranty (promise of having performed all criticism)

    We cannot know if something is true, but we can warranty that it is truthful. If a statement provides explanatory power, and is truthfully constructed, we can testify that it is true for known applications.

    But as Bridgman pointed out, there are no certain premises, because any rule of arbitrary precision (theory) likely fails at some scale. (This is a superior restatement of infinitely parsimonious scientific truth in critical rationalism.) Since there are no certain premises there are no certain non-tautological deductions – at scale. However, it is problems of scale – those beyond our senses, and those at the margins of our instruments – that we struggle to solve.

    As such, our definition of a ‘true’ theory is mistaken. A theory is truthful if we have performed due diligence. A theory is true if it works at scales we currently comprehend. If the scale changes, and we improve precision, that does not invalidate the theory, but improves it. A complete theory is one in which no further parsimony is possible.

    or stated differently, we cannot treat theories as analogies wherein properties are transferred for the purpose of transferring meaning. Theories are names for categories of similar operations that produce similar outcomes. We can theorize by any means possible, but no matter how we theorize, we cannot justify a theory, we can only criticize it or state that the cost of failure using the extant theory is less than the cost of investigating a new one. We can justify our actions but not our theories. We can justify adherence to moral, legal, an contractual norms, but we cannot justify our theories.

    For example, Einstein improves upon Newton, he does not render Newton false. Just as someone will undoubtably improve Einstein, not necessarily render him false. The purpose of a theory is to provide us with case independent explanatory power. That is all it can do for us. And as such good theories can save us effort and risk and provide us with rewards while useless theories do not – not because of the theory but because of the results. And bad theories merely waste our time and effort.

    Even pure (non-correspondent) mathematics fails, since, for example, infinities are impossible to construct. So even mathematical rules that remain consistent regardless of scale (which is the point of logic of ratios), are only useful as ideals. And the failure of those ideals at scale assists us in identifying the physical properties of the universe.

    So by whatever name we call it “warranty of existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content”, the form of criticism I refer to as Operationalism holds. It holds because it is the only means of warrantying that we are not substituting imaginary information into an observation.

    Operations constitute names. All else is analogy. Analogies allow – if not mandate – the introduction of external, imaginary information, by the natural process of substitution that makes the human mind useful for theorizing.

    Worse, analogies can be used for loading, framing, overloading and suggestion, and as such have been the source of error and deceit – not only in anglo, but in german, and jewish enlightenment thought.

    (I solved it. That’s just how it is. I didn’t set out to. But I did. CR requires a minor reformation. Austrian econ a minor reformation. And political theory a major one – away from monopoly rule, and into a market for commons. Science can be more correctly described as the disciple of truth telling, and that there is no difference between philosophy and science any longer. And we can abandon psychology forever as one of the most destructive theoretical systems ever developed. Only monotheism and Marxism/Keynesianism were worse.)

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-09 02:16:00 UTC

  • DELONG AND PAUL KRUGMAN AND THEIR ANTI-EMPIRICAL ECONOMICS RE: Brad, I would cou

    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/friedman-ideas-great-recession-by-j–bradford-delong-2015-03BRAD DELONG AND PAUL KRUGMAN AND THEIR ANTI-EMPIRICAL ECONOMICS

    RE: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/friedman-ideas-great-recession-by-j–bradford-delong-2015-03

    Brad,

    I would counter, as I have since 2009, that you and your intellectual kindred fail to grasp that politics is moral not merely empirical. That humans are tribalists not universalists. That universalism suits the interests of the academy’s revenues, but not the interests of all polities. That human morality is roughly translatable into a prohibition on free riding. And that under plenty, humans share excess in exchange for status, and under duress humans punish free riders.

    What you have seen in the great recession is a evidence of moral expression that will always exist under democratic polities that are able to express moral instincts. Under the great recession we are punishing free riders build up under the era of plenty.

    You may call this irrational. But the use of this moral intuition is doing precisely what those who carry that instinct intuit that it should: punishing free riders – even and extreme personal expense. The middle class votes against its material interests out of altruistic punishment of free riders.

    Until we find an institutional means of controlling free riding, we will continue to see this behavior in high-trust high-altruistic-punishment societies. And it is only high trust high altruistic punishment societies that matter. Because they are always the only societies with wealth to distribute. Since those societies are the only ones that produce excesses.

    I will not live long enough I think, to restore morality to economics. But at some point someone will. Because good economics is empirical. And empirically – humans do, and must, act morally. And morality is a synonym for the prohibition on free riding.

    Democracy is incompatible with your interpretation of ‘good’ economics. And economics without morality is not scientific, but ideological and dysgenic.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-05 14:23:00 UTC

  • HELP: STUPID ACCOUNTING QUESTION – PROJECT ACCOUNTING Costs, Expenses and ‘Float

    HELP: STUPID ACCOUNTING QUESTION – PROJECT ACCOUNTING

    Costs, Expenses and ‘Floats’.

    1) A cost is something that does not get consumed in the process of producing revenue.

    2) An expense is something that does get consumed in the process of producing revenue.

    3) A project expense (a ‘float’) is neither an expense nor a cost, but a loan from the company to the customer, which is billed to the customer as if it is revenue.

    Now, given that in project accounting, one can be reimbursed (float), or one can bear the expense (expense), but rarely if ever bear a cost, what is the proper sequence for booking transactions?

    In the states we book project expenses as revenue, even though it distorts both revenue and profitability. In the international market, I’m not sure I understand how this is generally done.

    I actually should know this and I don’t, or I’ve forgotten.

    Thanks in advance.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-03-19 10:36:00 UTC

  • MORE ON KANT Or let me put it another way: Science evolved to require operationa

    MORE ON KANT

    Or let me put it another way:

    Science evolved to require operational definitions in the proposition of evidence and theory. The purpose of empirical argument is to make it extremely difficult to err, bias or deceive.

    Philosophy by contrast is an extremely useful means of deception by analogy, loading, framing, overloading, suggestion. Kant invented a new means of conducting the same deception that was possible under babylonian-judeo-christian mysticism, by rational means, and in doing so created the most successful series of rationalists and pseudoscientists the world has ever known.

    So, if we are to say, we gained enlightenment, we have to ask, whether Kant’s invention of a new means of deceit – one that persists today – was in fact “enlightening”. Or whether, like the other counter-enlightenment figures, he was merely inventing an alternative means of deceit, even more sophisticated than that of Abraham and Zoroaster.

    So by such standards, he was a member of the enlightenment period, he was a liberal in the classical (upper middle class) sense, but not in the modern proletarian sense, and he was not enlightened in any sense other than replacing mysticism with rationalism.

    The germans were right about the nature of man, and the anglos were wrong about the nature of man. The British were right that common law and empiricism were critical defenses against deceit and abuse, and the germans were wrong that rational philosophy could replace the church. (Which is why the European right still fails.) The jewish philosophers were both wrong about the nature of man AND wrong about the adoption of german rationalism as justification for the preservation of separatism.

    Unfortunately, everyone was insufficiently correct.

    And because of Marx and Keynes, we are starting to seriously pay for it.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-03-04 10:17:00 UTC

  • The Monty Hall Problem


    diagram

  • The Monty Hall Problem


    diagram

  • RIFFING ON MICHAEL PHILIP – ON THE PRICE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMONS –“In the

    RIFFING ON MICHAEL PHILIP – ON THE PRICE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMONS

    –“In the socialist calculation debate, Mises says socialism fails because we can’t impute prices to capital goods without prices for consumer goods and consequently we can’t rationally allocate capital across sectors. In the environmentalist calculation debate, we can’t rationally allocate an environmental price to a consumer good without having environmental prices on capital goods. In the fully Pigovean world, prices fully convey information about costs including environmental costs. Outside of that world, we probably still do best by looking only to prices as the best potential aggregation of knowable cost”– Michael Phillip

    To create a market price you have to privatize a good.

    To partly privatize a good one can limit Usus, Fructus, Mancipio and Abusus. Meaning that we can privatize the Use, Fruition and in some cases transfer (sale) of a good, without the right of Abusus (destruction or harm).

    It is not necessary to grant Abusus, or even Mancipio to create a tradable good (we don’t grant Mancipio and Abusus to ourselves when selling our labor). Privatization requires only the rights of Usus and Fructus in order for us to create prices from those trades.

    So it is a fallacy that we cannot have the best of both worlds: commons. Commons in which we privatize Usus, Fructus, and Mancipio, while retaining Abusus.

    We do not grant Mancipio and Abusus to Man, nor do we grant it to our commons. Most of our commons we grant Usus (parks). Occasionally we grant fructus (grazing on park land). But the only way to know the price of a commons is to at least grant Usus and Mancipio. And we probably, in all circumstances, should prevent Abusus.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    `

    TERMS:

    Rights of use:Usus, the fruits of:Fructus, to transfer: Mancipio, to abuse:Abusus.

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/11/02/usufructs-under-propertarianism/

    H/T Ayelam Valentine Agaliba for getting me to use the right terminology.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-15 02:55:00 UTC

  • Skye Stewart You made me think. Why does reading a novel ‘work’? Aside from the

    Skye Stewart

    You made me think.

    Why does reading a novel ‘work’? Aside from the truth or falsehood, good or bad measurement, why do we learn from reading narratives?

    Now, I am trying to eliminate deception in matters of public political speech – at least that kind of deception that was introduced in the 19th century by Marx, Boaz, Cantor and Freud, but expanded by Keynes and nearly the entire discipline of academic philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

    But I don’t really attack mythology and religion. And I am perfectly happy with ‘rule of thumb’ science. It doesn’t appear to matter whether something is precise, scientific, and causally explicable if it empirically produces positive ends. It matters if something produces negative ends, is immoral (imposes costs).

    So when I say that I am OK with imprecise IQ tests, personality tests, and moral tests, that is because the test data is not the output that is in question. It’s whether the individuals now possess a non-subjective means of categorization and comprehension.

    In philosophical terms, it’s epistemelogically justificationary if I were to demand a high standard of good things. When the purpose is critical instead: to demand a high standard in order to advocate bad things.

    Thanks for provoking thoughts.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-14 05:33:00 UTC