Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • Eli. Libertarian cognitive bias and computation. LIBERTARIANS HAVE A MODEL – NO

    http://ivo.co.za/2007/08/09/libertarian-iq/From Eli. Libertarian cognitive bias and computation.

    LIBERTARIANS HAVE A MODEL – NO ONE ELSE DOES

    (actually I argue that we have the correct model and everyone else’s enlightenment model is false.)

    —“Just as programmers have a model of computation, libertarians have what I call a model of interaction. Just as a programmer can “play computer” by simulating how specific lines of code will change program state, a libertarian can “play society” by simulating how specific actions will change societal state. The libertarian model of interaction cuts across economic, political, cultural, and social issues. For just about any given law, for example, a libertarian can tell you exactly how such a law will affect society (minimum wage laws create unemployment by setting a lower-bound on entry-level wages, drug prohibition artificially inflates drug prices which leads to violent turf wars, etc.). As another example, for any given social goal, a libertarian will be able to tell you the problems generated by having government try to achieve that goal and will tell you how such a goal can be achieved in a libertarian society.I believe this is qualitatively different from other predictive models because of the breadth of the model and the focus on transitions (both of which are also true of programming). On newsgroups I often see questions … [that] … libertarians almost always quickly answer by saying, “I’ll tell you exactly what would happen…” And, surprisingly, the libertarians tend to give the same answer in most cases.

    I think most people find this odd about libertarians. They understand how an economist might be able to predict the effect of a certain law on the economy or how a social scientist might be able to predict how drug legalization might affect the ghettos, but they don’t understand how somebody could predict all of these things, especially someone who has no formal training. Libertarians, on the other hand, don’t seem to understand how someone could fail to have such a model of interaction… The nonlibertarians have no comprehensive model of interaction, and as a result, they can’t communicate in a meaningful way with those who do. Their attention is always focused on misleading superficial problems rather than on the underlying causes of such problems.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-11 09:15:00 UTC

  • Talking with Don at the moment on why so many CS guys leann libertarian: because

    Talking with Don at the moment on why so many CS guys leann libertarian: because our generation understands (a) information transfer, (b) undecidability of propositions, (c) correspondence vs causation (d) the frailty of reason that writing software forces you to accept (e) the problem of computability (existence proof), (f) the incentives provided to users via interacting with information they observe.

    Hoppe’s generation did not have it. Plus he was trained by Marxists and their reliance on rationalism, in German universities under german rationalism. He didn’t have the luxury of standing on the shoulders of Turing, and so when he read through the Intuitionist and Operationalist argument he did not understand that they had found what Mises had failed to.

    I’m lucky. I can stand on the shoulders of Hoppe and On the shoulders of Turing, Poincare, Brouwer, Bridgman.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-11 08:26:00 UTC

  • THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD” All processes of product

    THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD”

    All processes of production are the same. We merely weight the outputs differently in value. Science values knowledge for its own sake (supposedly.) The scientific method ignores both real costs and opportunity costs. Technology doesn’t ignore them, because it is goal directed. The production of consumer goods, ignores places lower value on knowledge development and hides it rather than publishes it. But all that differs in any process of production (study of transformation) is which inputs we consider, and which outputs we prefer. PERIOD.

    The scientific method is but one instance of THE METHOD. The method is the same, whether in craft, production, technology or science. You would not believe how hard I have tried to make this argument, and how hard critical rationalists try to deny it so that they can preserve a special place in their hearts.

    Here is the mind blowing bit: The scientific method is written as a moral rule more than a logical one. The reason that scientists developed this moral rule in some detail before other fields, was because it was so much easier to lie, err, and fantasize about the production of hypotheses than it was to produce craft, production, or technology. Worse, (and this is what I work on) it is even harder to take the same moral prohibition and apply it to social science (economics, religion, morality, politics, law) because the incentives to lie, err, and fantasize, are even greater than those in science. My objective, in my work, is to apply the moral constraints we put in place upon science to defend us from lies, errors, and fantasies, to the social sciences, and the moral literature. And I expect that there will be a lot of resistance to following THE METHOD. Precisely because lying, useful error, and selling fantasies is so profitable.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-02 12:19:00 UTC

  • The reason I frame propertarianism as philosophy, despite that it is a social sc

    The reason I frame propertarianism as philosophy, despite that it is a social science (system of measurement) is to kill the ability to use philosophy to lie. End postmodern pseudoscience.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-01 03:36:00 UTC

  • REFORMING PHILOSOPHY: ITS ALL CALCULATION NOW. ALGORITHMS WIN OVER SET OPERATION

    REFORMING PHILOSOPHY: ITS ALL CALCULATION NOW. ALGORITHMS WIN OVER SET OPERATIONS.

    That any general rule,

    Requires a utilitarian context (a ‘question’)

    AND

    That answering that question,

    Requires an hypothesis{intuition,->hypothesis, ->theory, ->law}

    AND

    Any hypothesis,

    Requires a test of verbal construction,

    Requires tests of internal consistency,

    Using the instruments of logical operations{identity, ->category(logic proper), ->scale, ->relation, ->time, ->cause, ->cooperation}

    AND

    Requires tests of external correspondence,

    Using the instruments of physical operations {a sequence of actions},

    Recorded as a sequence of actions and measurements(observations)

    That can be followed and reproduced by others,

    AND

    Requires Warranty,

    Provided to the self, or to others, consisting of:

    Tests of falsification recorded

    Using instruments of physical and logical operations.

    Recorded as a sequence of actions and measurements(observations),

    That can be reproduced by others.

    AND

    Requires Warranty,

    Provided to the self and others, consisting of:

    Testimony to the truthful witness of all the above.

    This algorithm applies in all cases of human construction of general rules. There is no need for any other model except to lower the standard, and to obviate the individual from warranty.

    Philosophy suffers, possibly catastrophically, from verbalism: syllogism and set operation, rather than algorithmic operations. These verbalisms rely on extant meaning of words, themselves general rules. These words carry properties and relations whenever used. We use only some subset of those properties and relations in any context.This means that the use of words can add informational content to any statement that would not be extant if expressed as an operation.

    As such philosophy as a discipline tolerates polluted (extra information) that obscures, incorrectly weights, confuses and conflates theories. The majority of errors come not from comparisons (calculations) but from information external to the operation included in the language. This is why defining terms is so important. It is equivalent to using pure ingredients in chemistry.

    As far as I know, once we have solved the problem of ethics, morality, and politics, we possess all necessary logical instrumentation, and philosophy is a closed domain in which all statements can be represented logically through operations.

    As far as I know, if we follow what originated as the scientific method, but is simply the algorithmic application of instruments both mental and physical: “THE method”, no other method is needed.

    Worse philosophy, outside of science, appears to be extremely useful for the purpose of conducting interpersonal, social, political, and economic, fraud. In fact, the singular purpose of the vast majority of philosophy, has been used for the purpose of justifying these categories of fraud: justifying takings.

    Apriorism, as we have seen in Mises and Rothbard, can be abused, can be used to state pseudoscience (misesian praxeology), and to state immorality as moral (Rothbard), and requires no warranty. And all products in the market, whether physical operations (goods and services) or mental operations (hypothesis) can cause negative externalities that impose costs upon others.

    When our theories were confined to human action at human scale, mythology was adequate, and even when our investigation of the physical world was limited to human scale, our reason was largely adequate. Because humans can test arguments at human scale. But all theories exceeding human scale (human perception) require instrumentation. And instrumentation is required for any operation that is not possible to conduct with human sense perception alone.

    So, while it may be true that relying upon apriorism is useful. It is also true that constructing and publishing a theory in that manner is an avoidance of providing warranty to your ideas. And labeling your ideas as a black-market product that may have dangerous, keynesian levels, freudian levels, cantorian levels, rothbardian levels, of side effects.

    And any moral man should seek to prosecute you in every possible venue for the pollution of the commons.

    (I think I can wrap it all together even better, but I’m getting there.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-29 04:52:00 UTC

  • ANY POLITICAL STATEMENT USING THE WORD “FAIR” AS A INSTRUMENTAL MEASURE IS A LIE

    ANY POLITICAL STATEMENT USING THE WORD “FAIR” AS A INSTRUMENTAL MEASURE IS A LIE.

    (worth repeating)

    –“Fairness may be perceptible but it is not instrumentally calculable, and as such the scope of fairness is limited to members of the small, local group; and any use of the word ‘fair’ beyond the immediately perceptible is not only an error it is a deception if not an outright lie.”–

    –“We have a sense of fairness – the correct term is ‘Proportionality’, and left and right value proportionality differently (equality vs meritocracy), however it is true that all people sense violations of proportionality. However, the fact remains that this is the projection of a sense-perception onto a scale requiring instrumentalism. As such, any statement of proportionality is a fallacy since such a thing is incalculable. Instead, we respond to people who are in need, but we do not SUPPORT people who are in need as a matter of course, because it is UNFAIR (disproportionate) to support people who systemically seek rents at the expense of others. We DO seek to insure each other against the vicissitudes of life, but we also seek to insure each other against free riding. One cannot make one statement without making the other without engaging in verbal deception.”—

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-21 11:09:00 UTC

  • MORE ON HUMAN SCALE You know, empiricism (observation) and instrumentalism (inst

    MORE ON HUMAN SCALE

    You know, empiricism (observation) and instrumentalism (instrumental observation) are demarcated by the limits of our sense perception. But the process is essentially the same.

    I would prefer to get the point across that the reason we require instrumentalism is that once we pass beyond our sense perception, we also pass beyond human scale.

    I consider economics to be instrumental : a discipline for measuring that which is directly unobservable, and therefore only indirectly observable.

    Just as I consider all logics to be instruments, and any human action that does not require such instruments within human scale.

    This distinction turns out to be terribly important once we realize just WHY Bridgman was so concerned about operationalism, why Poincare so concerned about mathematical platonism, why Brouwer was so concerned about mathematical operationalism and intuitionism, and why **I** am so concerned about both verbal operationalism and testimonial truth, and it’s opposite: the use of verbalisms (obscurant analogies), loading and framing.

    Because we have been systematically applying the methods, including mathematical methods, but more importantly, the philosophical methods, that we developed during the era of human scale where we could reason without instruments, to the era of post-human scale where we cannot sense perceive without instruments. And there is a vast difference in the properties of human scale and post-human scale measurements.

    Most important of these, at least in economics, is morality. Morality is a local phenomenon and macro economics is NOT. Just as we cannot apply the morals of the famly to the extended order, we cannot likewise apply the rules of the extended order to the family.

    Now, if we apply the rules of the family to the extended order our efforts will be non-predictive. That is merely an empirical or perhaps epistemological criticism. But when we apply the rules of the extended order (non-moral) to the rules of the family and tribal (moral) then we commit suicide.

    Macroeconomics as I understand it is merely a secular christian crusade against aristocracy by the Cathedral. It is not we who are conquering the cathedral. But the out-group nations who understand that the cathedral’s immorality is socially destructive religion, both for it’s hosts (us) and everyone touched by it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-16 13:04:00 UTC

  • IS PHILOSOPHY A PROTOCOL FOR JUSTIFICATION? AND IS PHILOSOPHY A FORM OF CALCULAT

    IS PHILOSOPHY A PROTOCOL FOR JUSTIFICATION? AND IS PHILOSOPHY A FORM OF CALCULATION?

    I am fairly certain that calculation in the wider sense – that which is necessary for action – precedes verbalism necessary for philosophy, and I am unsure that philosophy as currently stated is calculative and necessary, or whether it is merely justificationary.

    In other words, is philosophy a form of calculating, or is calculating a form of philosophy? And I am increasingly convinced the former.

    We may require philosophy to categorize and describe such things but we do not require philosophy to act, nor to act morally, where morally is defined as prohibiting free riding in-group and prohibiting imposed costs in and out-group. We did these things prior to philosophy, and they exist independent of philosophy.

    Furthermore, how do we account for the use of philosophy for the purpose of deception and obscurantism in the french, german and jewish schools, the use of mysticism in most other cultures, or the past (Kant) and current (progressives,postmoderns, libertarians) use of moral philosophy to restate christianity in non mystical terms. In other words, calculation (demonstrated action as well) does not allow us to make such framing and loading, while language does, and it is quite possible to use language to err, lie, obscure, frame, load and overload.

    This gets quite deep in distinguishing between demonstrable actions stated as operations and analogies as used in philosophy and reason. And I want to stay on track. But it is useful to at least point out that I am approaching problems descriptively via action, and treating language as largely justificationary. That shouldn’t be a big leap really.

    Philosophy is necessary to justify to the self or others, but it is not necessary for action. Hopefully that makes sense. I may be engaging in philosophical discourse but that is very different from planning and acting.) I work with operationalism precisely because it is insulated from the various sins of rationalism. That is why science and even psychology have adopted Operationalism.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-12 08:33:00 UTC

  • not corrected for generations. Sigh

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/pew-politics-is-a-white-mans-world/article/2552870Data not corrected for generations. Sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-10 20:15:00 UTC

  • Existential, Experiential, and Objective

    ON THE EXISTENTIAL, EXPERIENTIAL, AND OBJECTIVE (OBSERVABLE)
    (worth repeating)

    [H]umans are usually, when not defective, capable of reasoning – meaning comparing and contrasting properties, methods and relations, then forecasting, then ranking and choosing – usually without much introspective requirement – although our abilities to do so differ vastly. Very often we use language to organize these thoughts, which then frames the thoughts themselves by the language available to the speaker.

    One can be sentient (aware of changes in state of memory) and willing, but not able to make rational judgements. (see Sacks). One’s rational judgements can be internally consistent, and therefore self-justifiable as rational, but externally non-correspondent (false) and therefore objectively non-rational. (or more easily stated, an individual may be too incompetent or ignorant to make an objectively rational assessment.)

    So while we use the term ‘rational’ categorically, we cannot ‘cheat’ and because of that verbalism, conflate the existence, the experience, and the measure. This is also the technique used by the postmoderns, of whom Heidegger is the most advanced, in their attempt to restate truth as experiential rather than objective. For him, Being is experiencing, not acting. This is an elaborate defense of hedonic ignorance. The most anti-rational set of ideas yet made.

    It is possibly not obvious that advocating both Popper’s Platonic Truth, and your above statement that we “ARE” rational (which is also an obscurant use of the verb to-be) with as Experiential Truth, is itself a contradictory definition of Truth. We may use language to mask the point of view, but points of view are different: existential, experiential, and objective are three different points of view.

    (I suspect this might be brain-frying, because I have to actually pay attention when I’m writing it myself this morning) lol Operational language, constant awareness of the ‘fungibility’ of empty verbalisms, has helped me avoid these mistakes.