Theme: Operationalism

GETTING TO TRUTH, PREFERENCE AND TRADE: PETERSON(conflation), HARRIS(omission), and DOOLITTLE(completion)

The problem of our era (the post-industrial revolution) is not identifying goods to imagine – it’s in eliminating error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, overloading, and deceit, so that we pursue the good, beautiful, possible, and select among the good, beautiful, and possible, the preferable. Thankfully, rather than seeking whatever we can, because of the technologies of investigation and cooperation, and transformation of the world that we have invented, we are less limited by the possible than we are the good, and the beautiful.

THE RECENT DEBATE BETWEEN PETERSON AND HARRIS

It provided an example of both ends of the spectrum of failure of thinkers in our era:

Peterson engages in the ‘sin’ of conflation – conflation is the language of liars. It is the technique we have struggled to escape our inherent tendency to reduce complexity to an ideal type which is easiest to compare. Teachers fall into this trap because they want to convey meaning. Priests and public intellectuals and politicians make use of this technique to create the impression of false goods or consensus.

Peterson says “it is ok to lie if we lie by conflation for good reason”

Harris says: it is not necessary to lie by conflation if we separate out the true, the good, the beautiful, the possible, and the preferable. Because at each stage we can ensure we have not violated the previous stage.

Harris engages in the ‘sin’ of omission (incompleteness). Incompleteness combined with overloading (complexity) is the means by which we are lied to using suggestion by prophets, priests, philosophers, pseudoscientists, and pseudo-intellectuals. Judges fall into this trap because they want to resolve disputes by fault. Authoritarians make use of this technique because they seek monopolistic solutions rather than exchanges.

But both Harris and Peterson err. But despite their errors, it is possible to make either’s argument – the argument they both seek by different means – using DEFLATION, and COMPLETENESS and avoid both of their ‘sins’: conflation and incompleteness.

HOW DO WE BOTH DEFLATE AND COMPLETE?

EXAMPLE : DEFLATING CONSTANT RELATIONS IN MATH

… identity (category)

… … number (naming)

… … … arithmetic (operations, add, multiply divide)

… … … … mathematics (ratios)

… … … … … geometry (spatial relations)

… … … … … … calculus (movement relations)

… … … … … … … statistics (inconstant movement relations)

… … … … … … … … equilibria (equilibration between inconstant relations)

BUT HOW DO WE DEFLATE A TRUTH PROPOSITION?

Just a when we want to know if something is true, we ask:

… is it categorically consistent

… … is it logically consistent (internally consistent)

… … … is it empirically consistent (externally consistent)

… … … … is it existentially possible (existentially consistent)

… … … … … is it reciprocally consistent (morally consistent)

… … … … … … is it fully accounted? (scope, limits, and parsimony consistent)

OUR QUESTION: HOW DO WE DEFLATE A ‘GOOD’ PROPOSITION?

… We must test whether something is true

… … Then whether it is good

… … … Then whether it is possible.

… … … … Then whether it is beautiful.

… … … … … Then whether it is preferable to the other things that are true, good, beautiful and possible.

… … … … … … Then whether we can obtain it by cooperation.

SO WE CAN SOLVE BOTH DEFLATION AND COMPLETION

Full accounting takes care of the long term. So that takes care of the darwinian question for Peterson, and reciprocity, parsimony and limits take care of the ‘omissions’ that Harris (is much more subtly) making.

Reciprocity takes care of morality. (where we define reciprocity by criteria: “Productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to productive externalities.”

THE DESIRE OF MAN FOR IDEALS (one dimensional testing).

Our optimum means of decidability is provided by anthropomorphization because this allows us to reduce complex criteria into a model that we can test by intuition and experience rather than reason.

Man may desire a simple means of testing all his ideas, but this is not possible – our intuition is too easily overloaded, which is why clear falsehoods like mysticism, theology, pseudo-rationalism, pseudoscience, and propaganda are so effective a means of persuasion..

We invented deflation (breaking things into pieces) to prevent us from ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, and deceit. And Peterson is advocating simplicity (regressive thinking) instead of achieving the same ends through those means we can insure we do not deceive.

We use analogy and conflation to convey meaning and understanding. This is called communication. And to argue based upon it is called justificationism. it evolved because we must usually explain our ‘way’ to an answer in order to communicate; we must explain our actions as moral by way of norms; and we must explain our way of permissible actions by existing laws. We have evolved in a social and therefore justificationary world – which is fine, for small homogenous polities of closely related people, who do not need to decide that which is beyond their collective experience.

Conversely, we use truth and deflation to insure that the meaning we communicate is not constructed from error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception. This is called criticism. Or more correctly: the scientific method.

Imagine two artists, one who constructs a sculpture by adding layers of clay, and another who removes layers of stone. We construct communication, normative, moral and legal arguments via adding layers to clay. We discover truth, adjudicate differences, by removing ignorance, bias, error, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, and deceit. By the comparison of construction and deconstruction we perform a competition, and discover truth candidates from our presumptions.

We use stories (literature) to compose analogies to transfer properties and relations and values (meaning) to those that lack present understanding. Then we use criticism (analysis) to decompose the resulting properties, relations, and values into constituent parts to test whether the meaning that was conveyed is true – we cut the errors, biases, and deceits from the clay of meaning.

BACK TO OUR EXEMPLARS

Peterson tries to convey the problem of beliefs that cause extermination by false means, and Harris tries to circumvent that his beliefs cause extermination by incomplete means.

Unfortunately, Harris makes his mistake because of his background of analysis and his culture, just as Peterson makes his mistake because of his background of communication and his culture. Whereas I advocate that we deny the field to both peterson’s false and harris’ incomplete means of argument, by the requiring complete means of testing truth AND preference

So, this is why they fail. But it is still possible for us to succeed: by the combination of deflation, and stepping through each test of each dimension until we reach a condition of completeness.

From there we can choose among the possible, that which is most preferable.

BUT IN THE END THE LIMITS OF ARGUMENT RESULT IN THE CHOICE OF PREFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTHS

And from there we will realize that preferences do not coincide, and so regardless of TRUTH or PREFERENCE the only actions we can take that are True, moral, and preferable are those that constitute productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges, limited to productive externalities.

And it is that last sentence that is the basis of western civilization, and the single principle from which it all evolved.

That last step is TRADE. And if trading fails, boycott, or violence are the only options that remain, not further argument.

The jeffersonian, anglos-saxon, germanic, aryan, indo-european oath of reciprocity under sovereignty: the oath of the intiatic brotherhood of warriors.

In the end, we pursue the true, the good, the beautiful, the preferable, and the obtainable through trade. Or we simply obtain the preferable by force.

The first question of ethics is “if I can, then why do I not just kill or enslave you and take your women, your property, and your territory?” And denying this is the first lie we engage in.

So these are not trivial questions. Because if we cannot come to a trade by truthful means, the only means of ‘clearing the market’ is violence.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.

(thinking about an upcoming interview)

Well, you know, it’s pretty hard to describe empiricism before empiricism, rationalism before rationalism, reason before reason. So it’s pretty hard to describe Testimonialism, a little less so Propertarianism, and a little less so market government.

And just as language had to change in response to every major conceptual evolutionary leap, learning that language each time is pretty hard. But in exchange for that leap, those problems of that were previously not understood, describable, and debatable, become understandable, describable, and debatable – extending our understanding of the universe we live in.

To create internally consistent means of categorizing, comparing, and deciding between increasingly complex questions (problems) we have developed a number of categories of increasing complexity. In mathematics we think in terms of numbers, sets of numbers (arithmetic), ratios of numbers (mathematics), spatial relations (geometry), and relations in time (calculus), and fragmentary information (statistics). Each method increases the number of dimensions we are able to describe as constant relations.

Outside of mathematics, in philosophy (or at least in analytic philosophy) we use similar categories to describe a spectrum of increasingly complex constant relations.

They are science andMetaphysics, psychology and Epistemology, sociology and Ethics, politics and Law, the arts and Aesthetics, group competitive strategy and War( violence, immigration, economic, norms(religion) and information (propaganda).)

Note the use of lower case for the physical and social sciences, and the uppercase for the branches of philosophy.

What I have tried to accomplish, and I think successfully, is to create a common value neutral, scientific language, for the categorization, comparison, decidability of all of these subjects, across all of these fields. Whether you want to call it a science or philosophy at this point is rather meaningless, since the result of my work is that those two terms are now synonyms, and everything else is either pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, pseudo-moralism, utopian literature, or the supernatural.

The net result of which is that I have, I think, made it much harder to use language at every scale, from the intrapersonal (self), to interpersonal, to an audience, to the media, to the government, to the courts, to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, omission and suggestion; loading framing and overloading; or pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, pseudo-moralism, and supernaturalism; our outright deceit, and repetition of falsehoods (propagandizing).

And just as empiricism radically reduced falsehood in the informational commons, I am fairly sure that testimonialism will radically reduce falsehood in the commons. And I am entirely certain that Testimonialism(epistemology) and Propertarianism(ethics) will produce as great a change in human existence as did empiricism and darwinism.

So when I tell you that my work consists of a framework:

Acquisitionism (psychology)

Testimonialism (epistemology)

Propertarianism (Sociology)

Strictly Constructed Natural Law (Law)

Market Government (Politics)

Sovereignty, Heroism, Transcenence (Aesthetics)

Group Evolutionary Strategy (War)

And that this framework completes the promise of the Anglo scientific enlightenment by solving the problem of the social sciences.

That’s what my work has accomplished.

And that is why it takes a bit of explaining.

But if you want to know WHY I spent my life on it. It’s because (a) I really dislike conflict, (b) I really dislike deceit, (c) I really love my people, (d) I understand the unique accidents that are i-life, ii-sentient life, iii-cooperative life, and iv-western civilization: the people who discovered “Truth Proper”.

And so when I heard conservatives fail to say anything intelligent in arguments against the pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, outright lying, and propaganda of the de-civilizing left, I wanted to create a rational language to explain their ancient group evolutionary strategy, and the reasons that that strategy had resulted in dragging mankind out of ignorance, disease, and poverty in the pre-historic world of the bronze age, in the ancient greco roman world, and in the modern european world.

But somewhere along teh way I decided that I had to not only provide a positive means of explanation, but a negative means of criticism. In other words, I had to make it much harder than it is today, to engage in very complex lies.

Because just as in the early world we developed domesticationism (paternalism/property/sovergitny), and in the ancient world we developed reason, and in the modern world we developed science, the middle east developed authoritarian religion (zoroaster) in response to domesticationism, authoritarian monotheism (judaism/christianity/islam) in response to reason, and authoritarian pseudoscientific cosmopolitanism (Boaz, Marx/Lenin/Trotsky, Freud, {Frankfurt School}, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard/Rand, and Strauss) using the same utopian fictionalism that had Abraham and his cult, and Zoroaster and his cult.

I have no doubt that they will seek to invent another authoritarian set of lies to counter against testimonialism, but in the interim, we can take at least one step forward in restoring western civilization from the Third Great Utopian Lie of the East.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, ukraine.