Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • Well, if Stephan isn’t going to take this on, I”ll make a couple of points from

    Well, if Stephan isn’t going to take this on, I”ll make a couple of points from the ratio-scientific point of view (my means of argument) instead of the ratio-moral point of view (the rothbardian and anarcho-capitalist means of argument.)

    FAIR WARNING

    (I dont engage in justification. I try to determine the truth. And so if you manage to get through this little essay, you might not emerge with your high investment in rothbardian libertarianism intact.)

    PART 1

    THE AXIOM OF SELF OWNERSHIP

    Regarding: “…the self-ownership axiom is the only one of those under consideration that is sound…”

    Ethical statements cannot be ‘sound’ since that’s an allegorical and untestable statement. The testable term is ‘internally consistent’. However internal consistency (error free construction) doesn’t tell us anything about external correspondence (truth).

    Instead, ethical statements must adhere to a higher standard of argument than the internally consistent: Ethical arguments must be:

    a) preferable (to their absence)

    b) necessary

    c) sufficient

    d) possible

    e) durable (survivable over time)

    How does the self ownership Axiom survive this test?

    a) The S.O. axiom Is probably preferable (I can’t imagine a rational creature for whom it wouldn’t be preferable. I think it’s a precondition of autonomous sentience. So I have to stipulate that while I can’t determine the preferences of others, that it is hard for me to understand how it isn’t preferable for any being for whom action in real time is necessary for survival.)

    b) it may or may not be sufficient;

    c) it is certainly possible since it’s demonstrably extant;

    d) it is rationally, praxeologically, and demonstrably durable.

    Self Ownership and the NAP are very hard to argue with, except with regard to sufficiency. Are Self Ownership, Private Property, and NAP sufficient? They are sufficient for the purposes that Hoppe has put them to: which is the ability solve (almost) all problems of human cooperation while relying on self ownership, private property, and NAP.

    The questions are:

    a) whether the these rules are sufficient to obtain sufficient voluntary adoption and adherence such that this libertarian state of affairs are possible?

    b) is there an alternative axiom or set of axioms that permits the deduction of the various solutions to voluntary cooperation?

    c) is there a superior alternative axiom or set of axioms that permit the deduction of the various solutions to the problem of liberty (voluntary cooperation).

    It would be unscientific to suggest that no other argument exists other than {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. (Self ownership, Private Property, Homesteading, Voluntary Exchange and Non Aggression). It is also pretty hard to imagine something more compact with the same explanatory power.

    Why? Because these three statements:

    1) Metaphysics: Self Ownership:(Existence);

    2) Epistemology: Private Property with Homesteading and Voluntary Exchange :(Scope);

    3) Ethics: NonAggressionPrinciple:(Test);

    …are pretty narrow requirements for an axiomatic system. In fact, one statement per major domain of philosophy is so compact that it’s pretty hard to argue that it can be improved upon. Instead, it’s actually kind of awe-inspiring that all of the philosophy of human cooperation can be reduced to just these three statements.

    Even better, technically all five philosophical domains are answered by SO,PP+H+VE,NAP:

    4) Politics: Politics is solved by market, anarchy and voluntary insurance organizations.

    5) Aesthetics: Aesthetics is satisfied by the fact that we stipulate that liberty is desirable.

    So, if you’re asking the question, ‘how can we cooperate peacefully and voluntarily?’ and Hoppe has demonstrated that from these simple axioms we can cooperate peacefully and voluntarily, then it isn’t NECESSARY to devise an alternative axiomatic system. (I”m not even sure it’s helpful)

    It may be accurate to state that we not claim (actually, that **HE** not claim) no other set of statements would be superior (even if it is improbable) . But that is not to say that it is necessary, since he has demonstrated them to be sufficient for the deduction of all the institutions formal and informal for a voluntary system of cooperation.

    WEAKNESSES? SUFFICIENCY.

    (Now, lest you assume I am an apologist, I’ll take this a little farther.)

    “BUT” (and it’s a big but) is the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} sufficient for voluntary and therefore preferential adoption of such set, either empirically (historically) or rationally (praxeologically)?

    And I think that is probably where it fails to sustain scrutiny, because we can demonstrate that the demand for external intervention (the state) does not decrease sufficiently in any population, to permit the rational and praxeologically testable, preferential and demonstrably voluntary, adoption of anarchy, in any population by other than by a tiny minority – at least as it stands.

    So while {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} may be sufficient for the DEDUCTION of all means of voluntary cooperation, it does not provide sufficient INCENTIVE to reduce demand for external (state) intervention by a sufficient body of the population such that the a self-interested monopoly bureaucracy is not necessary for either:

    (a) the systematic enforcement, of private property for the prevention of free riding, theft and violence, or;

    (b) necessary for the systematic violation of private property to compensate for predation, as well as preventing theft and violence.

    Again, it appears that {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is sufficient for deduction of the informal and formal institutions of voluntary cooperation, but provides an insufficient incentive for the voluntary adoption of informal and informal institutions of voluntary cooperation.

    In that case, if the incentives are insufficient, then we have two possible means of constructing anarchy under {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}:

    (i) involuntary coercion under threat of boycott, ostracization, and/or threat of violence.

    (ii) improvement of incentives such that anarchy is voluntarily adoptable (praxeologically possible).

    (iii) A combination of both.

    So, let us see if either or both solutions are possible or necessary.

    HISTORY

    History tells us that liberty only exists where nearly all involuntary transfers of property are prohibited – including those which are not visible or known of.

    And the few circumstances where all involuntary transfers of property were prohibited was limited to european warriors who granted each other prohibition on involuntary transfer (property rights) in exchange for military service. Property rights were a ‘right’ that was obtained in a contract for voluntary exchange. The incentive to gain access to the privilege of private property was one that was both materially, and reproductively advantageous.

    These property rights were an artifact of the accumulation of wealth first in simple goods, cattle and horses, later in land and built capital. Fighters who took risks, kept their winnings. Later, all free men kept their property.

    Later under manorialism and agrarian farming, a married couple was needed for the rental of land. This delayed marriage, and forced the absolute nuclear family that we understand today.

    When the church sought to break up the large landholders they interfered with inheritance rights, which are the source of the family structure, and consequently, the source of moral code variation, throughout the world. To break up the families they prohibited inbreeding out to as many as eight or even twelve generations, and granted women property rights.

    The combination of property rights for all, the near elimination of free riding, even by family members (offspring), and the persistence of the militia as a fighting force, created the high trust universal social order we call the protestant ethic.

    The enlightenment’s intellectual effort was an experiment in both justifying the middle class seizure of political power, and transferring the rights of the upper and ‘middle’ classes (small business owners : ie: farmers) to all land holders.

    The culmination of this experiment was the near prohibition on involuntary transfers that was embodied in the American Constitution. The aristocracy of everyone who had a stake in the preservation of property rights.

    (Unfortunately, that experiment has shown that universal enfranchisement, especially the enfranchisement of women, was incompatible with liberty, because participatory government by those whose interest is to seek rents and free riding, is an organized means of disempowering armed property owners, and systematically removing their property rights. Thereby returning us to the consanguineous or serial-marriage family structure in corporate (state) form.

    LIBERTARIAN ETHICS: NECESSITY. BUT SUFFICIENCY?

    It’s kind of hard to disagree with libertarian ethics as stated in {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. If only because they’re necessary, and the alternative to disagreeing with libertarian ethics, is demonstrably, a nearly universally undesirable state of affairs involving constant property violations (theft and violence) that make cooperation in a division of labor all but impossible – even among members of a consanguineous community of primitive hunter gatherers it may be beneficial.

    Lets look at classes of involuntary transfers of property as people demonstrate them:

    (1) Criminal statements are those that involve violence and theft.

    (2) Ethical statements are those which prohibit involuntary transfer of property by asymmetry of information between those internal to the action.

    (3) Moral statements are those which by definition apply to unknown persons external to the action: anonymous involuntary transfers of property.

    (4) Conspiratorial Statements: Statements of Political Morality (conspiracy) are those which prevent the organized and systemic involuntary transfer of property, whether criminal, ethical, or moral.

    The NAP only has a mechanism for fairly simple, obvious property violations: criminal violence and theft of class (1)

    The NAP has no mechanism for any of class (2) or class (3), and arguably sanctions and encourages these involuntary transfers by NOT preventing them.

    The NAP prevents class (1) PORTIONS of class (4), but it does not prohibit class (2) and (3) portions of class (4).

    Now, if you are a member of the majority tribe, you will suppress (1) to increase trust and therefore productivity. But if you are an extractive minority tribe without political power, you may in fact prefer to preserve (1) as a means of competing with and draining the majority of resources.

    We libertarians tend to laud intersubjectively verifiable actions. But again, those actions that are intersubjectively verifiable may be visible, they may be verifiable. But they are trivially primitive in scope because they are limited to merely theft and violence – and only to fraud where it is specifically defended against by written warranty in advance.

    As such intersubjective verifiability is, like the NAP too simple a test for the suppression of ethical and moral violations that are required for the development of sufficient trust that liberty can exist by voluntary adoption, because the demand for a third party to prevent these transgressions by way of law-making, and institutional formation, is all but eliminated.

    The NAP is insufficient criteria for the suppression of sufficient involuntary transfers of property to counter the demonstrated universal human disdain for ‘cheating’.

    This is because private property open to intersubjective verifiability is insufficient a description for the types of property people demonstrate that they TREAT as their property.

    So it is one thing to state that we can deduce all necessary formal and informal institutions for the support of private property from the {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. It is another to state that we can either deduce sufficient institutions formal and informal, or create sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of those institutions, from {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}.

    Just as it is demonstrable both rationally and empirically that socialism is impossible because of the impossibility of twin problems of economic calculation, and the absence of incentives, we also must observe that the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is demonstrably impossible because of the impossibility of suppressing sufficient cheating that people will possess the rational incentives, because planning and organizing are higher risk and more expensive under a low trust ethic, to adopt {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}.

    This is a very damning criticism of the sufficiency of {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Or correctly stated, it is a just as damning and inescapable criticism of the NAP, as economic calculation and incentives were for the socialist means of production.

    Once you understand this you will realize that {SO,PP+H+VE} survive, but that {NAP} is as great a logical failure as was the socialist means of production. It is non rational to ask humans to adopt the NAP since it suppresses crime, but not ethical, moral, and arguably, not even conspiratorial, violations of one’s property rights, as people demonstrate their understanding of property rights by their behavior.

    PART 2:

    THE RESISTANCE TO LIBERTY: GENDERS, RACES, CLASSES, AND AGES: VOLUNTARY COOPERATION, COMPETITIVENESS AND PROPORTIONALITY.

    (Going have to wait on this. It’s 2am.) 🙁

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 19:14:00 UTC

  • What is the likelihood that attempts at saving money in research in the physical

    What is the likelihood that attempts at saving money in research in the physical sciences, by reliance on mathematical analysis rather than experimental science, has delayed development of the physical sciences?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:09:00 UTC

  • TO “RETIRE” THE CONCEPT OF INFINITY (and cantor’s contribution to 20th century m

    http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/12/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement-edge-org?CMP=twt_fdTIME TO “RETIRE” THE CONCEPT OF INFINITY

    (and cantor’s contribution to 20th century mysticism with it)

    from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/12/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement-edge-org?CMP=twt_fd

    —–

    MAX TEGMARK

    Physicist, researcher, precision cosmology; scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute; author of Our Mathematical Universe

    I was seduced by infinity at an early age. Cantor’s diagonality proof that some infinities are bigger than others mesmerised me, and his infinite hierarchy of infinities blew my mind. The assumption that something truly infinite exists in nature underlies every physics course I’ve ever taught at MIT and indeed all of modern physics. But it’s an untested assumption, which raises the question: is it actually true?

    There are in fact two separate assumptions: “infinitely big” and “infinitely small”. By infinitely big, I mean the idea that space can have infinite volume, that time can continue for ever, and that there can be infinitely many physical objects. By infinitely small, I mean the continuum: the idea that even a litre of space contains an infinite number of points, that space can be stretched out indefinitely without anything bad happening, and that there are quantities in nature that can vary continuously. The two are closely related because inflation, the most popular explanation of our big bang, can create an infinite volume by stretching continuous space indefinitely.

    A galaxy photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope

    ‘We don’t actually need the infinite to accurately describe the formation of galaxies.’ Photograph: Scott Camazine/Alamy

    The theory of inflation has been spectacularly successful, and is a leading contender for a Nobel prize. It explained how a subatomic speck of matter transformed into a massive big bang, creating a huge, flat and uniform universe with tiny density fluctuations that eventually grew into today’s galaxies and cosmic large-scale structure, all in beautiful agreement with precision measurements from experiments such as the Planck satellite. But by generically predicting that space isn’t just big, but truly infinite, inflation has also brought about the so-called measure problem, which I view as the greatest crisis facing modern physics. Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this: when we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts that there will be infinitely many copies of you far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome, and despite years of tooth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So strictly speaking, we physicists are no longer able to predict anything at all!

    This means that today’s best theories similarly need a major shakeup, by retiring an incorrect assumption. Which one? Here’s my prime suspect: infinity.

    A rubber band can’t be stretched indefinitely, because although it seems smooth and continuous, that’s merely a convenient approximation: it’s really made of atoms, and if you stretch it too much, it snaps. If we similarly retire the idea that space itself is an infinitely stretchy continuum, then a big snap of sorts stops inflation from producing an infinitely big space, and the measure problem goes away. Without the infinitely small, inflation can’t make the infinitely big, so you get rid of both infinities in one fell swoop – together with many other problems plaguing modern physics, such as infinitely dense black hole singularities and infinities popping up when we try to quantize gravity.

    In the past, many venerable mathematicians expressed scepticism towards infinity and the continuum. The legendary Carl Friedrich Gauss denied that anything infinite really existed, saying “infinity is merely a way of speaking” and “I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics”. In the past century, however, infinity has become mathematically mainstream, and most physicists and mathematicians have become so enamoured of infinity that they rarely question it. Why? Basically, because infinity is an extremely convenient approximation for which we haven’t discovered convenient alternatives. Consider, for example, the air in front of you. Keeping track of the positions and speeds of octillions of atoms would be hopelessly complicated. But if you ignore the fact that air is made of atoms and instead approximate it as a continuum, a smooth substance that has a density, pressure and velocity at each point, you find that this idealised air obeys a beautifully simple equation that explains almost everything we care about: how to build airplanes, how we hear them with soundwaves, how to make weather forecasts, etc. Yet despite all that convenience, air of course isn’t truly continuous. I think it’s the same way for space, time and all the other building blocks of our physical word.

    Let’s face it: despite their seductive allure, we have no direct observational evidence for either the infinitely big or the infinitely small. We speak of infinite volumes with infinitely many planets, but our observable universe contains only about 10 to the power of 89 objects (mostly photons). If space is a true continuum, then to describe even something as simple as the distance between two points requires an infinite amount of information, specified by a number with infinitely many decimal places. In practice, we physicists have never managed to measure anything to more than about 17 decimal places. Yet real numbers with their infinitely many decimals have infested almost every nook and cranny of physics, from the strengths of electromagnetic fields to the wave functions of quantum mechanics: we describe even a single bit of quantum information (qubit) using two real numbers involving infinitely many decimals.

    Not only do we lack evidence for the infinite, but we don’t actually need the infinite to do physics: our best computer simulations, accurately describing everything from the formation of galaxies to tomorrow’s weather to the masses of elementary particles, use only finite computer resources by treating everything as finite. So if we can do without infinity to figure out what happens next, surely nature can too – in a way that’s more deep and elegant than the hacks we use for our computer simulations. Our challenge as physicists is to discover this elegant way and the infinity-free equations describing it – the true laws of physics. To start this search in earnest, we need to question infinity. I’m betting that we also need to let go of it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-12 15:51:00 UTC

  • UPDATE : Oversing Update : How Much Do You Want To Really Know About Your Busine

    UPDATE : Oversing Update : How Much Do You Want To Really Know About Your Business?

    (curious) (software)

    You know, we pretty much, all of us, have internalized that we have an amazing product on our hands. Sure it’s early. And it’s not like we don’t have a lot of work left to do. But it’s the kind of thing that once you use it a bit, you think that it’s SO amazing you end up asking “Why didn’t anyone do this before?”

    The flip side is different though. And it’s just beginning to dawn on me. And it’s that, are there indeed things that you do not want to know?

    For example, I designed a piece of software a very long time ago, and it was, somewhat like Oversing, so insightful into the business, that it was disturbing. For example, we could measure how much less productive smokers were. (Or rather, the data was odd and we discovered it was that smokers were running out of energy earlier in the day.)

    Now, any experienced manager knows the reality that most people cannot really do more than four to six hours of work in a day. And that the most productive people are those that simply can work longer and more consistently. Repetitious work is quite different. But only some of us can really problem solve (concentrate) for eight, ten or even fourteen hours.

    So, if Oversing provides you with so much information about your business, and so much ability to control that business, then, how do I prevent that information from being misinterpreted and misused?

    I mean Oversing is like E.S.P. for project managers. and project managers tend to be pretty good managers if they’re successful; since Project Management of time and budget and people is a pretty unforgiving specialty with pretty empirical measures. I’m more concerned about the average idiot C-level (financial types) who haven’t managed people in a creative capacity trumpeting their positivist ignorance from on high – completely unaware that what is wrong is their illusion of man, not how the employees are working.

    But, I suspect that Oversing’s various weights and measures and social scoring tell us the hidden value people provide, and that it takes time to collect all that data. So maybe we can use that.

    I guess the compensation for employees is that in exchange for making politics in the organization almost irrelevant – actually powerless, and rendering the middle management political nonsense out of existence – that the transparency to do that comes at the cost of transparency into your work too. It’s hard to argue with the truth. It’s hard to argue with transparency. But to some degree, we don’t like people to know the truth about us.

    One thing the internet has taught us though, is that while we were concerned about privacy, the fact is, that the loss of some of our privacy due to social media, educated us: we are all full of foibles and failings and once aware of that, they become meaningless both as questions of guilt for us and matters of judgement for others.

    We are all human. And transparency reminds us of that.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-09 18:18:00 UTC

  • CAN I GET HELP WITH HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY? (edited) (request for he

    CAN I GET HELP WITH HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY?

    (edited) (request for help) (foundations of mathematics)

    Need a mathematical historian. Someone very well versed in teaching theory.

    I am going to say this badly because I don’t know the correct way to ask it:

    0) the classical construction of mathematics is an operational and (identity, counting and measurement) and analog one. It is the practical uniting of counting, measurement, geometry, and algebraic logic (deduction).

    1) The ZFC+AC argument (the set argument) converts the practice of math from one of dimensions (space and analog) to one of sets (binary). This allows the excluded middle. It is a very artful way of solving the problem, by simply returning to the very basics of the origination of counting. But the set solution is achieved by removing scale and therefore contextual utility from the calculation, leaving us with no means of external reference for choice of precision. I see this solution as useful, but a fabrication.. a ‘trick’. Whereas, one could just say ‘precision of N’, and increase or decrease that precision as needed. (Although this approach would require tagging variables or numbers I think, or maybe prevent us from reducing ratios including real numbers.) The solution to the problem of scale and context (analog representation) by converting to binary (set membership) representation is actually very interesting one. The question is, was it knowingly made, or what this solution achieved without understanding that the problem of context and scale was solved by effectively reducing math from analog (related to the real world scale) and binary (independent of real world scale). I can’t figure it out from the literature.

    2) The constructivist argument relies on a binary proof. (“Russian Recursive Mathematics”) This method disallows the excluded middle. (and double negation). It is a higher standard of proof. However, I don’t understand why we could not construct a syntax for the explicit preservation of scale (correspondence with whatever context we have in mind) and thereby retain correspondence as well as the excluded middle. (I am not sure about double negation. I haven’t thought it through yet.)

    3) Computational mathematics is both operational and binary.

    But why aren’t these three methods a spectrum – just like description, deduction, induction, abduction, guessing and intuitive choice? I mean, at the early end of the spectrum (0, 1) we require deduction, and at the later end of the spectrum (2,3) we require computability. The reason we have a problem with (1) and (2) is because they give upon correspondence (context). And with that we lose the use of context for determining the precision of a calculation.

    Deduction in context is always easier because we have information with which to make a choice (precision). But outside of context we cannot use external information, so we must rely on a binary choice (or decidability). Deduction is a very different problem from computation.

    Or, can we say then, that the foundations of mathematics have been wrongly divorced from correspondence and context by cantor through ZFC? When we could just say that binary is a universal substitute for arbitrary precision? I mean, that’s the functional equivalent of it?

    I need a frame of reference within the language of mathematics to talk about this issue and I don’t know how to get to it. I don’t even know how to ask this question any better than this?

    Was the solution to the foundations of math, culminating in ZFC+AC, understood as providing a solution to creating independence from the problem of correspondence and scale at the expense of ‘truth’ while retaining ‘proof’ and internal consistency?

    Or stated this way: Did mathematical philosophers understand that they were divorcing ‘departmental mathematics’ from physics (cause and correspondence) and logic (truth) by adopting ZFC+AC, thereby creating a study of pure relations independent of context?

    I have worked through both sides of the debate to the best of my ability.

    Why can the reason that sets work – reduction to binary in order to escape the burden of retaining context – simply be stated openly? I mean, if all it does is render scale infinitely variable, then that explains why ZFC works, and all these platonic devices are necessary: they create deducibility and computability. And it’s not ‘wrong’ per se, in the sense that it doesn’t produce correct calculations independent of context, or rather, independent of SCALE and therefore independent of correspondence. But it does sort of render mathematics platonic and almost magical rather than computational and rational.

    In that sense, we get to logically state WHY these methods work and when and when not they are applicable. The excluded middle is a problem of scale (analog, and correspondent values).

    In the end, the set method is useful because is just SO MUCH LESS BURDENSOME, but that’s all.

    But still, teaching people operational mathematics, and higher criteria of proof under constructive math, and then explicitly stating that we can move to sets at the expense of correspondence in order to obtain the ability to practice double negation and the excluded middle is not a problem, it’s a tool not a truth.

    I don’t need to solve this problem for my work. But since math is the gold standard, and contains this particularly burdensome problem, if I can describe the consequences in mathematics of non-operational language leading to platonism, I can explain why non-operational language in ethics, likewise leads to platonism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-03 16:05:00 UTC

  • THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IS THE SUBJECTIVE VALUE OF THE DI

    THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IS THE SUBJECTIVE VALUE OF THE DIFFERENT OUTPUTS.

    (expanded and edited)

    It has nothing to do with method.

    The difference between physical science and engineering, as between mathematics and computer science, is simply the UTILITARIAN VALUE we attach to either:

    (a) the product of the test;

    OR

    (b) the extension of deductive power that results from the test.

    The purpose of engineering is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe.

    The purpose of computer science is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe. The purpose of physical science is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe.

    That, in the last case, of physical sciences, as in the case of mathematics, the ‘human wants’ are largely the desire to know the additional properties of something,and the outputs of the tests are but a byproduct, is not materially different from engineering where the outputs of the tests (production) are what is desired, while the advancement in our theories is but a byproduct.

    That in computer science, biological research, or engineering, we place equal or higher value on the production of our tests, than we do on the advancement of our general theories, is a statement about the relative value of the various outputs, not statement about any difference in method.

    This can be restated as “the products of our tests in some fields finance further expansion of knowledge, and in other fields the products of our tests do not produce intermediate products that finance our further expansion of our theories.”

    That is the only difference.

    That is the answer you know. Everything else is nonsense.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-03 12:47:00 UTC

  • I don’t know what Arnold Kling is doing these days. How would data look differen

    I don’t know what Arnold Kling is doing these days.

    How would data look differently to economists if all accounting software, everywhere, reported sales data from A to B, whenever it was posted, to an independent database using a (large) generic chart of accounts, so that we could measure PSST at that level, rather than the macro level?

    Policy is enacted upon what can be measured.

    I suspect that we would just see even more intervention. On the other hand, the impact of all the intervention would be more visible. And that our counter -arguments would be much better.

    household data is nonsense. Macro data is all but useless. PSST is actionable.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 11:04:00 UTC

  • ENDING MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM : BECAUSE IT’S IMMORAL (ISN”T THAT ENOUGH OF A REA

    ENDING MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM : BECAUSE IT’S IMMORAL (ISN”T THAT ENOUGH OF A REASON?)

    (reposted from elsewhere for archival purposes)

    Math was constructed from, and must, of necessity, consist of a series of operations. And consequently, all mathematics is reducible to a few simple operations. (Which is why computers can calculate.) In practice. everything we can think of can be reduced to adding or removing one, and the test of equality.

    (As an aside, this is why we can explain more possibilities with mathematics than the physical universe can demonstrate in reality: because the universe does not have this level of freedom due to the apparent complexity of its interacting forces.)

    The act of adding and subtracting the symbols we call numerals and positional numbers, is an obvious and common example of creating symbols to replace what would be tedious and incomprehensible repetitions.

    This necessity to use symbols to condense information into usable components (categories) is what our brains need to do. Imagine trying to do all operations by counting? It would be impossible. We could not function without these symbols.

    Furthermore, describing mathematical equations and proofs as operations is both verbally and syntactically burdensome. And since these operations are largely simple, and can be accurately reduced to symbols (named functions) there is little value in articulating them as operations.

    So mathematicians have developed a multitude of symbols and names for what are not extant objects, but names of functions (sets of operations) – just as every other discipline creates heavily loaded terms in order to allow informationally dense communication with fewer words.

    Most ‘numbers’ are anything but: they are names, glyphs and symbols, for functions that consist of large numbers of operations. “The natural numbers exist in nature, but all else is the work of man.”

    The reason for this complexity is that quantitative, and directional relationships are expressed as ratios, and while some ratios are reducible to numbers, others are not. Those that are not reducible must be expressed as functions. We have not invented a mathematical system that can circumvent this problem. It is possible such a thing cannot be done.

    Now aside from the practical utility of creating symbols, that obscure the operations, there is a practical value in using these names by disconnecting these names from their operations and from correspondence with any given scale.

    That is, that disconnection allows one to use the logic of mathematics independent of cause, correspondence and scale, to explore ONLY the properties of the relations between the entities in question. And this turns out to be extremely useful for deducing what causes we do not now.

    And this extraordinary utility has been responsible for the fact that the discipline has laundered time, causality and scale (precision) from the discipline. But one cannot say that a mathematical statement is true without correspondence with the real world. We can say it is internally consistent (a proof), but not that it is true (descriptive of reality via correspondence).

    Mathematics when ‘wrong’ most recently, with Cantor’s sets, in which he used imaginary objects, infinity, the excluded middle and the the axiom of choice, to preserve this syntactical convenience of names, and in doing so, completed the diversion of mathematics from a logic of truth (external correspondence), to one that is merely a logic of proof (internal consistency).

    Cantor’s work came at the expense of correspondence, and by consequence at the expense of truth. ie: mathematics does not determine truths, only proofs, because all correspondence has been removed by these ‘contrivances’, whose initial purpose was convenience, but whose accumulated errors have led to such (frankly, absurd) debates, .

    So the problem with mathematical platonism, which turns out to be fairly useful for the convenience of practitioners, is not so much a technical problem but a MORAL ONE. First, mathematicians, even the best, rarely grasp this concept. Second, since, because it is EASIER to construct mathematical proofs than any other form of logic, it is the gold standard for other forms of logic. And the envy of other disciplines. And as such mathematical platonism has ‘bled’ into other envious fields, the same way that Physics has bled into economics.

    Worse, this multi-axial new mysticism has been adopted by philosophers from Kant to the Frankfurt school to the postmodernists, to contemporary totalitarian humanists as a vehicle for reinserting arational mysticism into political debate – as a means of obtaining power.

    Quite contrary to academic opinion, all totalitarianism is, is catholicism restated in non-religious terms, with the academy replacing the church as the constructor of obscurant language.

    I suspect this fairly significant error is what has plagued the physics community, but we have found no alternative to current approaches. Albeit, I expect, that if we retrained mathematicians, physicists, and economists to require operational language in the expression of mathematical relations, that whatever error we are making in our understanding of physics would emerge within a generation.

    No infinity can exist. Because no operation can be performed infinitely. We can however, adjust the precision and scale of any proof to suit the context, since any mathematical expression, consists of ratios that, if correspond to reality, we can arbitrarily adjust for increasing precision.

    Mathematics cannot claim truth without correspondence.

    Correspondence in measures is a function of scale and the UTILITY of precision, in the CONTEXT of which the operation is calculated (limit).

    A language of mathematics that is described independent of scale in given context, can be correctly stated. It need not be magian.

    Fields can still be understood to be imaginary patterns.

    But the entire reason that we find such things interesting, is a folly of the mind, no different from the illusion of movement in a film.

    The real world exists. We are weak computers of property in pursuit of our reproduction and amusement. We developed many forms of instrumentalism to extend our weak abilities. We must use instruments and methods to reduce to analogies to experience, those things which we cannot directly do so.

    It’s just that simple.

    AGAINST THE PLATONIC (IMAGINARY) WORLD

    Why must we support imaginary objects, as extant? Especially when the constructive argument (intuitionist) in operational language, can provide equal explanatory power?

    Why must we rely on ZFC+AC when we have recursive math, or when we can explain all mathematics in operational language without loss of context, scale, precision and utility? Just ’cause it’s easier.

    But that complexity is a defense against obscurantism and platonism. So it is merely a matter of cost.

    I understand Popper as trying to solve a problem of meta ethics, rather than anything particularly scientific. And I see most of his work as doing the best he could for the purposes that I’ve stated.

    Anyone who disagrees with me would have to disagree with my premies and my argument, not rely on the existence of platonist entities (magic) in order to win such an argument.

    That this is impossible, is at least something that I understand if no one else yet does. I don’t so much need someone to agree with me as constantly improve my argument so that I can test and harden it until it is unassailable or defeated.

    I think that defeating this argument is going to be very, very, difficult.

    TIME AND OPERATIONS (ACTIONS) IN TIME

    One cannot state that abstract ideas can be constructed independent of time, or even that they could be identified without changes in state over time. Or that thought can occur without the passage of time. Or consciousness can occur without the passage of time.

    Whether I make one choice or another is not material. This question is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of possibility. I can make no choice without the passage of time.

    I think that the only certain knowledge consists of negations, and that all the rest is conjecture. This is the only moral position to take. And it is the only moral position since argument exists for the purpose of persuasion, and persuasion for cooperation.

    I keep seeing this sort of desire to promote the rather obvious idea that induction is nonsense – yet everyone uses it, as a tremendous diversion from the fact that induction is necessary for action in real time, whenever the cost of not acting is higher than the cost of acting.

    Description, deduction, induction, abduction, guessing and intuitive choice are just descriptions of the processes we must use given the amount of information at our disposal. Science has no urgency, and life threatening emergencies do.

    Popper (and CR-ists for that matter) seem to want to perpetuate either mysticism, or skepticism as religion, rather than make the very simple point that the demands for ‘truth’ increase and decrease given the necessity of acting in time.

    I guess that I could take a psychological detour into why people would want to do this. But I suspect that I am correct (as I stated in one of these posts) that popper was, as part of his era, trying to react against the use of science and academia to replace the coercive power of the church. So he restated skepticism by establishing very high criteria for scientific truth.

    And all the nonsense that continues to be written about his work seek to read into platonic tea leaves, when the facts are quite SIMPLE. (Back to Argumentation Ethics at this point.) The fact is that humans must act in real time and as the urgency of action increases so does the demand for truth. Conversely, as the demand for cooperation increases, the demand for truth increases. Finally at the top of the scale we have science, which in itself is an expensive pursuit, and as such one is forbidden to externalize costs to other scientists. (Although if we look at papers this doesn’t actually work that well except at the very top margin.)

    THE QUESTION IS ONE OF COOPERATION

    The problem is ECONOMIC AND COOPERATIVE AND MORAL, not scientific.

    It’s just that simple. We cannot disconnect argument from cooperation without entering the platonic. We cannot disconnect math from context without entering the platonic. We cannot disconnect numbers from identity without entering the platonic.

    Each form of logic constrains the other. But the logic that constrains them all, is action. Without action, we end up with the delusions we spend most of philosophical discourse on. It’s all nonsense.

    I understand the difference between the real and the unreal, and the necessity of our various logics as instruments for the reduction of that which we cannot comprehend (sympathize with) to analogies to experience that we can comprehend ( sympathize with).

    Which is profound if you grasp it.

    THE PROBLEM OF SYMBOLS AND ECONOMY OF LANGUAGE

    If you cannot describe something as human action, then you do not understand it. Operational language is the most important, and least articulated canon of science.

    I do not argue against the economy of language. I argue against the loss of causality and correspondence that accompanies repeated use of economizing terms.

    ( I am pretty sure I put a bullet in this topic along with apriorism in economics. )

    MORAL STANDARDS OF TRUTH

    Requiring a higher standard of truth places a higher barrier on cooperation.

    This is most important in matters of involuntary transfer, such as taxation or social and moral norms.

    Religions place an impossible standard of truth. This is why they are used so effectively to resist the state. Religious doctrine reliant upon faith is argumentatively inviolable.

    As such, no cooperation can be asked or offered outside of their established terms. … It’s brilliant really. Its why religious groups can resist the predation of the state.

    I would prefer instead we relied upon a prohibition on obscurant language and the requisite illustration of involuntary transfers, such that exchanges were easily made possible, and discounts (thefts) made nearly impossible.

    This is, the correct criteria for CR, not the platonic one that is assumed. In this light CR looks correct in practice if incorrect in argument.

    (There. I did it. Took me a bit.)

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 10:44:00 UTC

  • THREE POINTS PROVE A LINE – IN PHILOSOPHY TOO In propertarian methodology I have

    THREE POINTS PROVE A LINE – IN PHILOSOPHY TOO

    In propertarian methodology I have explicitly argued in favor of an expanded version of the golden mean: that is that definitions of states or objects or properties are not testable unless they are described in the context of a spectrum (or axis), either end of which the concept fails to meet the criteria of the axis.

    This habit, like equilibrial thinking, is not terribly natural. Humans tend to gravitate to the simplest mode of comparison: ideal types, just as they tend to gravitate to finite states instead of equilibrial thinking.

    So, whenever I define something I try to construct the axis.

    In the propertarian method, what little I’ve written about it, in the few examples, I suggest the simple method of collecting as many related terms as possible, and arranging them into axis by playing what thing is like the other and not games so to speak.

    This allows us to construct the equivalent of supply demand curves for human concepts and behaviors.

    I find that most philosophical error comes from either:

    (a) failure to state human concepts as human actions (as if they are geometric, or platonic, rather than praxeological).

    or

    (b) definitions (like ‘knowledge’) that are specious by construction, because they describe a fixed state rather than a spectrum.

    or

    (c) Failure to account for equilibrial processes

    or

    (d) Failure to account for opportunity costs.

    This (geometrization) is a curable habit in human cognition, by training us to be less solipsistic and increasingly sympathetic and then autistic in our understanding of the world.

    Now, this might be a little deep for the mind to grasp, but the reason we make these mistakes can be accounted for by a particular spectrum as well:

    The Increasing Abstraction Of Point Of View:

    1) Self (solipsism) – Awareness

    2) Other (the insight of introspection) – Comparison

    3) Categories (the insight of numbers) – Numbers

    3) Relationship (the insight of geometry) – Measurement

    4) Independence from the self (the insight of calculus) – Motion

    5) Equilibria (the insight of economics and physics) – Systems

    6) Opportunity (differences in multiple ‘worlds’) – Possibilities

    Each of these increasingly complex ideas places a higher burden on us by requiring that we make comparisons against less perceptible and intuitive objects of consideration.

    A loose spectrum is more precise than the most precise definition, whose spectrum must be assumed.

    This is the value of the “golden mean” in virtue, but it is a generic test of any concept: if you don’t state the properties of the spectrum, you must assume them.

    In most of western philosophy, like all philosophy, despite being rational, the assumptions are unstated. The virtues are stated but without axis. The logics are stated but without axis.

    But one needs axis. We are terrible at conceiving more than one flight of an arrow. But We are terrible at it. But no question of consequence consists of a single arc.

    And no definition consists of a single state.

    Because no such arcs or states are sufficiently testable, and therefore are loaded with metaphysical assumptions.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-31 06:42:00 UTC

  • ARE WEALTH

    http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/redistribute-wealth-no-redistribute.htmlSIGNALS ARE WEALTH

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-30 14:34:00 UTC