—“You think IQ research is dangerous to the status quo? Wait until researchers begin uncovering population group differences in the moral senses.”—
Yeah. Um. That will be awkward.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-10 00:42:00 UTC
Theme: Measurement
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“You think IQ research is dangerous to the status quo? Wait until researchers be
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AND CALCULABILITY NOT ARBITRARY MORALITY John. Good piece. Although, I’m critica
http://www.johnmccaskey.com/joomla/index.php/blog/71-new-libertariansEXCHANGE AND CALCULABILITY NOT ARBITRARY MORALITY
John.
Good piece. Although, I’m critical of philosophical pretense in social justice as much as I am in the market.
If any judgment is beyond our perception, and any concept of social justice is, then we must, as in all other matters where complexity exceeds our perception, develop some kind of instrumentation and means of calculation such that we can reduce that which we cannot perceive, to some analogy to experience that we can perceive. Moral rules are not sufficient for achieving that kind of instrumentation, or performing that kind of calculation. The problem requires formal institutions and means of calculation. We have the market for cooperating on means even if we disagree on ends. We have the government for forcing cooperation on means and ends by majority rule. We have accounting to assist us in the perception of that which we cannot possibly grasp without it. And we have economics to attempt to measure our success. But we have no such instrumentation and means of calculating social justice – or even defining such a thing as social justice. (Which current psychologists and economists suspect is reducible to status seeking, and insurance against risk, and nothing more.)
While we might continue in the methods of the past, and attempt to concoct yet another empty incalculable moralism for the purported common good, these are value judgements and nothing more. They are incalculable. Most of the post-enlightenment effort has considered society a monopoly, in contrast to the pre-enlightenment condition of most urban cities, as federations of minorities denied access to political power, and forced to compete outside of politics, in the market. So the idea of social justice is an artifact of monopoly democracy rather than a federation of disparate interests.
However, libertarians rightly argue that the only moral test is that of voluntary exchange free of violent coercion. I argue that this ‘test’ is incorrect, since no in-group human organizations demonstrate that low a level of trust, And instead all groups demonstrate and require higher standards of trust, tah also forbid free riding, deception, cheating, as well as burdening other group members indirectly. However, whether we accept a low trust society and high demand for external authority that low trust societies demonstrate, or a high trust society and the low demand for external authority that high trust societies demonstrate, the underlying argument that the only test of moral action is voluntary exchange. So the effort that political philosophers left, libertarian and right have expended under the universalist assumption of the enlightenment has been to find some justification for moral decision making even if the knowledge to make such decisions is impossible both in the market, and afterward, using the profits created from the market.
The question instead, is how to construct institutions with which groups can conduct voluntary exchanges, which are by definition moral. Majority rule does not allow this. Majority rule is sufficient for the selection of priorities in homogenous polities with homogenous interests. The market is the means by which heterogeneous polities cooperate on means despite different interests on ends. But how can we construct an institutional system that allows the construction of commons, and other exchanges between groups and classes, but is not dependent upon a monopoly bureaucracy, majority rule, or representatives open to influence, special interest, and corruption? Because a government of contracts, not laws, would allow the exchange of say, adherence to traditions and norms, or requirements for married families in order to obtain redistribution. This would make government a means of cooperation rather than the source and facilitator of conflict.
Cheers
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev
http://www.johnmccaskey.com/joomla/index.php/blog/71-new-libertarians
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-30 13:48:00 UTC
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WE CAN NOW OBJECTIVELY AND SCIENTIFICALLY JUDGE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS AND BAD PHILOS
WE CAN NOW OBJECTIVELY AND SCIENTIFICALLY JUDGE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS AND BAD PHILOSOPHERS
(suggestions wanted)
If we acknowledge that democracy is a failure, and all philosophers who attempted to justify democracy failures, and all philosophers who attempted to expand democracy into socialism and postmodernism failures, we are left with instrumentalists (empiricists) and reactionaries of various fields.
Philosophy as a discipline, must face the uncomfortable fact, that (a) the metaphysical program failed and was solved by cognitive science, and (b) the democratic program failed and was solved by economists (c) therefore the political program failed, and was solved by heterodox philosophers (d) the ethical problem failed and was solved by economists and heterodox philosophers. The reason for this is obvious: the incentives in Academia to attempt to replace the church’s mysticism with some sort of collectivist democratic rationalism, had it’s predictable influence.
Philosophers can produce good neutral and bad influences. Unfortunately, the greater body of philosophers that have been influential since the american revolution, have been more destructive than beneficial. We can never forgive Marx and Freud, any more than we can forgive Kant and Rousseau.
“Thou Shalt Not Harm” not only applies to doctors, but to philosophers, and to all of us.
I give great weight to computer science because unlike the logic of language and unlike abstract and mathematical logic, computer science does not drop the property of operationalism in real time from its reasoning. As such it has higher correspondence with actionable reality than mathematics, and farm more so than formal logic. And if we seek to make informal logic of any value we must learn from computer science and return the property of operationalism to philosophical discourse. Because without it, it certainly appears to consist almost entirely of nonsense built upon linguistic deception.
==
99. Aristotle
99. Niccolo Machiavelli
99. Adam Smith
99. Max Weber
99. Emile Durkheim
99. David Hume
99. John Locke
99. G.W.F. Hegel
99. Friedrich Nietzsche
(lesser candidates)
99. Robert Michels
99. Steven Pinker
99. Jonathan Haidt
==
99. Rene Descartes
99. Alan Turing
99. Karl Popper
99. Gottlob Frege
99. W.V.O. Quine
99. Saul Kripke
THE BAD PHILOSOPHERS
99. Immanuel Kant
99. Ludwig Wittgenstein
99. Karl Marx
99. Soren Kierkegaard
99. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
20. John Rawls
99. Martin Heidegger
99. Jacques Derrida
99. Michelle Foucault
99. Jean-François Lyotard
99. Jean Baudrillard
99. Murray Rothbard
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL’S BAD PHILOSOPHERS
Max Horkheimer
Theodor W. Adorno
Herbert Marcuse
Friedrich Pollock
Erich Fromm
Otto Kirchheimer
Leo Löwenthal
Franz Leopold Neumann
Siegfried Kracauer
Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Walter Benjamin
Jürgen Habermas
Claus Offe
Axel Honneth
Oskar Negt
Alfred Schmidt
Albrecht Wellmer
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-30 05:06:00 UTC
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“BENEFICIALLY NOVEL, GOOD, BAD(WRONG), AND DANGEROUS” (Discussion on Bleeding He
“BENEFICIALLY NOVEL, GOOD, BAD(WRONG), AND DANGEROUS”
(Discussion on Bleeding Heart Libertarians: The Measure of an Economist or a Philosopher)
All,
A good economists provides us with insights into the state of affairs we live in. A novel economists provides us with new general rules (a theory). A good philosopher explains or re-explains the changes in the world to us in current language. A novel philosopher provides us with a new general rule (a theory).
It is not better to be good or novel. It is most important that one not be dangerous.
Freud, Marx and Cantor reintroduced mysticism in the form of obscurantism. Russell compounded that new mysticism. The postmoderns have been terribly damaging to institutions, morality and language. Rothbard did more damage than good. Most of his history is quite good. His ethics were a catastrophe and set us back by decades. A disaster I have been struggling to correct.
So one can be novel, one can be good, one can be wrong and one can be destructive. I don’t care much about the first three. The fourth quadrant is what I worry about most. Because bad and dangerous philosophy turns out to spread far faster than good and beneficially novel philosophy. Just like bad news spreads faster than good.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute.
Kiev.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-29 10:05:00 UTC
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ALTERNATIVE TO IMAGINARY, UNATTAINABLE AND IMPOSSIBLE TRUTH? Isn’t this more sen
ALTERNATIVE TO IMAGINARY, UNATTAINABLE AND IMPOSSIBLE TRUTH?
Isn’t this more sensible than an unknowable unattainable imaginary ‘truth’?
THEORIES: correspondence with reality for desired use. A theory should map to reality (properties should correspond to reality), given the utility claimed by the author.
TRUTH: performative: you testify that this theory does what you claim, just as you testify to any other statement you claim corresponds to reality. You claim (warranty) that your theory corresponds with reality for the purposes intended. You do not claim that there is not a better theory that more narrowly corresponds, because you never can. (Although at some point further precision becomes farcical.) All theories that correspond to reality for the purpose claimed are true.
There is nothing novel here. What differs is that the execution of math, logic and science are not ethically constrained as the claims about math logic and science are. And even those claims are not as ethically constrained as economic, political, legal, ethics and moral claims are. So while it’s probably correct that Performative truth is ‘truth’ and everything else is some derivative thereof, there has simply been no reason to ‘correct’ math, logic, and science because the consequence of their ‘mystical language’ or ‘conveniences’ is not damaging. However, as we can see from the fact that we must have this argument, it’s not that their ‘mystical language’ abuse of truth as a matter of convenience does not produce damaging externalities. Because they do. Otherwise we would not have to correct this problem.
CRITICAL PREFERENCE
–“…clearly scientific inquiry is subject to economic limitations.”–
It’s not that it’s subject to economic limitations, its whether or not following the least cost course leads EMPIRICALLY to the ‘truth’ more rapidly than alternatives (although I question the popperian use of that term for theories). I suspect that it does. And I want to see if it does. And I’m hoping someone has done some work on this. As far as I know it holds up.
Given the choice between pursuing any N theories, will following the least cost experiment with the greatest explanatory power more likely lead to the truth. It would seem so. But I would like to see someone research and test that.
–“You need to understand that there exists infinitely many internally consistent bodies of knowledge that have not been falsified.”–
In any given context, this is demonstrably not true. It is true axiomatically but not empirically. We can STATE less than infinitely many theories. Much less than that number are semantically meaningful. Those that we can demonstrate are smaller still. Those that are falsifiable are smaller still. And the choice between those available options is quite small. I suspect that following the least expensive test with the greatest explanatory power is in fact, probabilistically, more likely to result in contributions to the ‘truth’.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-28 09:21:00 UTC
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Extending Kahneman: "System 0" Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like -
Extending Kahneman: “System 0” Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like -
Extending Kahneman: "System 0" Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like -
Extending Kahneman: “System 0” Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like -
On English As The Language Of Ethics
(cross posted for archival purposes) [E]nglish is a very precise and technical language. Probably the most empirically framed language we have. As such it’s burdensome. The verb “to-be” problem (the problem of ‘is’, and solved with E’) evolved and exists largely as an operational simplifier in an already burdensome language. Secondly it’s an emotionally unloaded language – very german. And so we have to invent all sorts of devices to add emotion to an emotionally unloaded language. We used to do that with artistry – riddle, poetry, rhyme, insinuation, innuendo, and allegory. I think that with the rise of mass education, marketing, military and technical language, as well as cultural diversity those more artistic means of adding emotional content have been replaced by simplistic exaggeration and euphemism as you’ve mentioned above. [N]ow, assuming that we want to eliminate mysticism, platonism, postmodernism, obscurantism, and various forms of loading and framing, so that we can construct a scientific language of ethics, morality, law and politics (a logic of cooperation), in which it is impossible to obscure involuntary transfers (thefts); and assuming that the performative theory of truth is correct and that it requires an individual to possess not only knowledge of use, but knowledge of construction; and assuming that with such knowledge one can, and must, and assuming that the only means by which we can test both transparency of transfers and and knowledge of construction, and therefore the only means of speaking honestly is with E’ in operational language; then the burden on the speaker is quite high. Extraordinarily so. This set of ethical and moral constraints upon language of produces a few very interesting consequences: (a) Because of that high burden, similar to the burden of memorization placed on ‘wise men’ in oral tradition societies, it severely limits the number of people who can participate in public discourse – effectively recreating our druidic ancestors. (b) it makes it possible for anyone to prosecute obscurantists of all kinds for conspiracy to commit fraud, under the common law. Public intellectuals, attempted statists, lawyers, judges, and the common folk included. Actually, I don’t think it’s possible to state a logic of ethical, moral, legal, and political argument in any language OTHER than English or German – and I’m not sure about German. (I only studied it for one year and I can’t speak it at all. I just understand its structure.) Cheers Curt
COMMENTS Jeannine DiPerna, Michael Pattinson and Eric Field like this. Curt Doolittle (hat tip to Paul Bakhmut)