Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • MORE ON WRITING THEORY : AN ARGUMENT IS A THEORY AND WRITING IT IS A TEST I gues

    MORE ON WRITING THEORY : AN ARGUMENT IS A THEORY AND WRITING IT IS A TEST

    I guess, I should put it this way: I don’t assume I know anything. Anything at all. I just construct arguments to see how well I can make them. They’re like recipes. I bake a hundred variations of the cake. Maybe one of them rises enough to be worthy of frosting. When I run out of ways to write a recipe and the recipe produces a cake all the time, I consider it the best recipe I can make for a cake.

    1) Write to learn what you do not know. (observe and record)

    2) Write to test what you know. (conduct experiments)

    3) Write what you know you know. (articulate hypothesis)

    4) Publish what you have written (subject it to testing by peer review)

    That’s about it. That’s science. I don’t assume I know anything except that which is false. And libraries are largely populated by that which is false. The problem is determining what’s left over that still might be true. 🙂

    If each book held one idea, I’m pretty sure that a library of 1500 books (per both Murray and Adler) would accomplish the task.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-25 11:51:00 UTC

  • WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE Using the methods of science we reduce phen

    WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE

    Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.

    (Excerpt from longer post.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 07:41:00 UTC

  • FINAL WORD ON METHOD: AUSTRIAN AND OTHERWISE Any statement about human behavior

    FINAL WORD ON METHOD: AUSTRIAN AND OTHERWISE

    Any statement about human behavior that cannot be expressed as a sequence of human actions open to subjective, sympathetic, testing of the rationality of the individual’s incentives, is in fact, not scientific.

    The reason we like to use correlative aggregates is that they obscure involuntary transfers. The reason we like to use causal, operational language, that describe human actions, is because it makes visible involuntary transfers.

    And while morality APPEARS to differ around the world, because different cultures use different allocations of property rights between the commons, family, Pater, and individual – because the productive and reproductive strategies must be reflected in a group’s property rights – the fact is that human morality, universally, without exception, is determined by a prohibition on involuntary transfer according to those cultural allocations of property. Period. Morality is property. Period. End of discussion.

    This fact illustrates the difference between progressive (mainstream) economics, and conservative (austrian) economics, Progressives want to hide and conservatives want to draw attention to, involuntary transfers. And the reason is that Progressives favor the feminine reproductive strategy of limitless population growth that all other non-sentient creatures demonstrate. And conservatives favor improvement of the tribe in relation to other tribes – which is something only humans do with intent.

    Everything else is just propaganda.

    Apodeictic nonsense included.

    Philosophy is justifying your preferred reproductive strategy and nothing else. The fact that we use language and reason is arbitrary. We are just like any other species, using what is available to us to reproduce. We’e just invented a very complex verbal dance. But its still a dance.

    And that’s all our nonsense is : a dance.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 06:09:00 UTC

  • THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE AUSTRIAN METHOD Science is useful in tw

    THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE AUSTRIAN METHOD

    Science is useful in two dimensions: X) It allows us to sense what we cannot sense – by making the unobservable, observable by reducing those phenomenon to some form of analogy to experience. And Y) It helps us compensate for the unfortunate strength of our cognitive biases.

    The Austrian method asks us to use one of the methods of science, by describing any human behavior in OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE (in terms of human actions) and to SYMPATHIZE with each of those steps, and when in sympathy, to TEST whether each step meets the test of rational incentives. If it doesn’t there are two possible answers: the first being that ‘humans won’t do that, so that can’t be true’, and the second being ‘humans might do that but this will be the external consequence of it’.

    I don’t think there is any mystery to the Austrian method: it is another scientific process that allows us to test by sympathetic experiences, whether any give statement can be constructed as steps of human action, and where each step is subject to the scrutiny and test of rational incentives.

    Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.

    I apologize to other Austrians for using somewhat different language, but there is a method to my madness: in trying to articulate what it is that we are doing in this particular way I hope to correct praxeology as Mises stated it and Rothbard, well, ruined it – if not in theory but in practice, as those ideas have spread with common use.

    Most of us in our field tend to contrast empirical evidence with tests of Austrian rationality. I think this is what separates us from other fields. We do not make deductions without bounding them by the theory of rational incentives. We are skeptical of everything. In particular, we have internalized as a scientific principle, the concept that hubris and cognitive bias are ever present challenges to our interpretations.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 14:17:00 UTC

  • BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS WHY AUSTRIANS ARE NOT MAINSTREAM “Verbal logic is not adequ

    BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS WHY AUSTRIANS ARE NOT MAINSTREAM

    “Verbal logic is not adequate to explain economic relationships. In the absence of formal logic, one cannot really test propositions. In other words, syntactic logic matters more than semantic logic.” (Hypothesis H4)

    AND

    “Science is not about absolutes, but about refutation. If AE is about (apodictic) certainty, then it is not a science, but a pastime.” (Hypothesis H5)

    Well I disagree with AE as apodictic unless it’s complete. As I’ve written elsewhere it’s not complete. However, if expressed as complete, then it’s possible to propose means of falsification. And “m not sure it isn’t possible to model. Just very, very difficult, because we need much, much more data than we have today. Tis is where experimental psychology comes in.

    In this sense, AE has a higher bar, because it tries to provide greater explanatory power than mainstream economics.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 11:17:00 UTC

  • NPOV: POSITIONING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VS MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS For you to consider

    NPOV: POSITIONING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS VS MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS

    For you to consider yourself an Austrian in ECONOMIC theory, the minimum requirement is to subscribe to 1) the subjective theory of value, 2) the austrian theory of the business cycle and possibly 3) that money is non-neutral. That is all that would differentiate you from a mainstream economist.

    Mainstream economists TEND to argue that macro monetary policy is ‘above’ all of that:

    i) that the business cycle MAY be affected by the government, but that the net result is actually still better than it would be if we constrained the government.

    ii) The idea that we push problems down the road is fine, because in the progressive view, technology will save us in the future. (Really.)

    iii) that individual benefits are distributed by complex means, so that in the end, it all works our if they take your property and give it to someone else, and increase risk and government debt.

    iiii) Austrian economics is logical, but does not place an emphasis on the empirical, or at least, casts doubt on the empirical statements mainstream economists make. And since economics as a discipline is actually econometrics then this means you have no place in economics departments.

    You would CHOOSE to study Austrian economics only if you either have a) a moral objection to Keynesianism, or b) it violates your observation about human nature, or c) the externalities it will produce accumulate into even more serious problems than the business cycle. (That’s what libertarians argue.)

    The reason some of us tend to choose Austrian economics is because we have a political interest in the long term effects of policy on society. And because we think norms and institutions are not arbitrary. This category of questions is in the domain of POLITICAL ECONOMY, not really that of monetary economics. And as such, most of us would recommend that you study Austrian economics in the context of political science, or ethical philosophy, rather than monetary economics, and do so in support of a political science degree where first year macro and micro economics really are sufficient.

    GMU does teach Austrianism and their program is competitive, and their students are sought out precisely for that reason. The developing world, where corruption is a serious problem, also tends to have austrian influence, because it explains at least in part, why these countries remain poor: they don’t have property rights.

    The truth is that in our advanced countries, where we do have at least marginal property rights and limited corruption, Austrian principles are not as important as macro principles. So I think it is more that Austrianism is an early stage way of looking at the world, and once you’ve succeeded with institutions at the austrian level you can more easily make use of macro institutions without such substantially negative externalities. Although most dedicated Austrians (the ideological kind) might disagree with me, I kind of doubt that I’d lose the argument.) 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-22 16:13:00 UTC

  • ON FINITISM, PLATONISM, MEASUREMENT, SCIENCE (I have been working for the past f

    ON FINITISM, PLATONISM, MEASUREMENT, SCIENCE

    (I have been working for the past few weeks on the problem of what I see as platonism in libertarian theory, and am trying to correct that by basing political theory on science instead. This post from another group illustrates the direction I’m going.)

    Steven:

    Thank you for helping me with this.

    “But this wouldn’t entail anything about the infinity or non-infinity of reality, or of theories understood in the sense of Popper’s ‘objective knowledge’…”

    Of WHAT in reality? What measurement could I take in reality that was not finite in a finite period of time? Given change, the idea of infinity is not logical, since at any point state (a) vs state (b) no longer has any non-arbitrary meaning.

    As far as we know, any reality in which we can take action is geometric on actionable time scale.

    As far as we know, language, like mathematics can describe both the real and unreal, and given its ability to expand, it can indeed construct infinite names, descriptions, and statements. But likewise, as far as we know, this does not apply to measurements, which must meet the criteria of observability – hence bounded by time. What ‘real’ phenomenon can be expressed as a measurement that is infinite? I can’t think of any. And as far as I know, this applies forward and backward in time. If it didn’t physics wouldn’t be possible. Micro-scale actions, even in n-dimensional space, still equilibrate at any observable, measurable unit-size.

    Logic and mathematics also address this position in the FINITIST movement, and even Aristotle was, to some degree a Finitist. (I’ve read that Wittgenstein also was, but I haven’t spent enough time on him to judge for myself.)

    As far as I know, and as far as I can prove anyone knows, reality and measurement are ARITHMETIC, NOT MATHEMATIC.

    As far as I know, Mathematical and Logical constructs are platonic, while arithmetic are real.

    As far as I know there is very little that cannot be expressed in very basic real numbers. And that which can be is also platonic. And as far as I know, there is no measurable activity that cannot be expressed in Finitist terms.

    The problem of relative relations requires ratios (calculus) whenever we cannot produce a mechanical measurement (a complex fluid system for example), but the problem of geometric measures requires only natural numbers.

    My problem is not philosophy. The problem is mathematics. I just don’t know the field at this level although it’s pretty much intuitive to me. Philosophy departments are overwhelmingly platonic. It gives them something to do. Otherwise they’d have to focus on empirical problems like economists and physicists. 🙂

    But this position ties in with Matt’s statement on Koertge:

    why did popper have to invent this theory anyway? Because of morality of his time. Popper had to destroy certitude, not just in mathematics, but in politics, in order to undermine what was thought to be scientific socialism.

    From my perspective, mathematical platonism, physics as mysticism, and postmodernism, are all political biases that have invaded academia with marxist and freudian mysticism.

    Like Freidrich Hayek, I am fairly sure that this era will have been considered a new era of magianism ushered in by Marx and Freud, and the einsteinan revolution used by every possible academic department to claim psychological legitimacy by making relativistic claims. And in particular by liberal arts departments, envious of their replacement by physics and economics, as means to promote the secular religion of Postmodernism, which makes use of all of these platonic and magical properties.

    This may cross a bit too many different disciplines for this forum but I am fairly sure it is a correct analysis.

    As I’ve stated in another post, I think CR / Falsification is a defense against cognitive bias, and an attack on relativism, but I am not sure that it is in fact a statement about reality.

    Probably one of the more profound things discussed on FB today, I’m sure. 🙂

    Thanks for giving me an opportunity to test my thoughts by articulating them.

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-22 02:22:00 UTC

  • Propertarian Analysis Is The Analysis Of Spectra, Not Of Nouns – We Did Learn Something From Supply vs Demand Curves. 🙂

    (From FB)

    Curt, what is your opinion about the relation between knowledge and information?

    Francesco, I am very skeptical of these definitions. For example, 1) Deduction, Induction and Abduction all describe the process of deduction but with decreasingly available information. 2) Knowledge, Information, Data, and Phenomena, likewise describe only our decreasing confidence in any theory’s or set of theories’ correspondence with the tools of observation available to us. The 3) correspondence between theory and Information that is necessary for personal action, that which is necessary for political action (coercion), and that which meets the standard of logical truth, is likewise a spectrum. And I see any point on those spectra as semi arbitrary unless applicable to a given question. And I see arguments to ‘truth’ often illogical in application for this reason, due to the methodological vanity of the speaker. But I am working hard right now to solve this problem, so that I can pull libertarian theory out of the french rationalism that Rothbard buried it in, into the anglo empirical from whence it came.

  • Propertarian Analysis Is The Analysis Of Spectra, Not Of Nouns – We Did Learn Something From Supply vs Demand Curves. 🙂

    (From FB)

    Curt, what is your opinion about the relation between knowledge and information?

    Francesco, I am very skeptical of these definitions. For example, 1) Deduction, Induction and Abduction all describe the process of deduction but with decreasingly available information. 2) Knowledge, Information, Data, and Phenomena, likewise describe only our decreasing confidence in any theory’s or set of theories’ correspondence with the tools of observation available to us. The 3) correspondence between theory and Information that is necessary for personal action, that which is necessary for political action (coercion), and that which meets the standard of logical truth, is likewise a spectrum. And I see any point on those spectra as semi arbitrary unless applicable to a given question. And I see arguments to ‘truth’ often illogical in application for this reason, due to the methodological vanity of the speaker. But I am working hard right now to solve this problem, so that I can pull libertarian theory out of the french rationalism that Rothbard buried it in, into the anglo empirical from whence it came.

  • QUESTION: UNIVERSITY RANKINGS We can rank universities by popularity and reputat

    QUESTION: UNIVERSITY RANKINGS

    We can rank universities by popularity and reputation (meaningless), by input criteria (assets, recruiting, and scope), by mission (arbitrary specialization), and by output criteria (career placement and income of graduates).

    We know that universities largely sort, and don’t teach very much outside of each discipline’s basic rules of thumb.

    But, I don’t really understand why, given any ranking, there are almost no universities outside the english speaking world in the top ranks, and those that are, are in the Lotharingian arc from England to Zurich.

    Now, I suspect this is nothing other than the long term effect of anglo ratio-scientific empiricism, anglo imperialism, the resulting value of the english language, and the persistence of anglo wealth that results from all of the above.

    But I would love to know if there is any research on this.

    I’ve started with Sowell’s bibliography and worked out from there, but I can’t find an economic historian’s point of view on the matter.

    Help appreciated.

    Thanks.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 04:11:00 UTC