Theme: Operationalism

RESTORING TRUTH: IT”S NOT EASY TRYING TO REGROUND MAN IN REALITY AND FORCING HIM TO SPEAK TRUTHFULLY: BECAUSE IT’S HARD AND COSTLY

The attraction of the theological, platonic, ideal, fictional is so great if for no other reason that the mind naturally categorizes unnecessary operationally deterministic detail into names of consequences of those operations.

In fact, this is what the mind does: generalize. Because our computational bandwidth is limited, and our ability to work with a concept in short term memory is very limited, so we are always struggling to compare the most complex RESULTS using the most simplistic INPUTS. In other words, we generalize so that we can make consequent imaginary associations of different degrees of precision.

The problem is that each time we generalize we lose information. That’s what generalizing means. We give up detail to create increasingly explanatory categories.

And each deduction we make from less precise generalizations includes greater potential for association, but also greater potential for error.

So then, once we have found an answer we then re-evaluate whether that answer is possible by working backward through the detail of each generalization to test it.

Given that mathematics consists entirely of testable operations this generally isn’t necessary, although that was the purpose of the intuitionistic movement in mathematics.

But as we move away from mathematics, or as we move to richer and denser ideas in mathematics, we leave behind operational certainty and begin to encounter deductive uncertainty – searching for limits within which an answer might (or must) be found. And as we move farther away we rely upon only non-contradiction, and at last vague associative relation. The reason being that we move from reproducible and necessary operations to mere deductions, to mere non-contradiction, to mere possible association.

So we fight two battles that are only solvable by reverse-construction: operational definitions from first causes.

ONE

In the first we have the mind’s need to generalize as we work with ever more complex topics,

TWO

In the second we may teach people operations with generalities rather than the construction of those generalities from first principles – so that they can later test consequent deductions, calculations, rationalizations, imaginary relations.

THREE

In the third, we see people that have been taught generalities instead of causalities then create theological, platonic, and other fictional narratives to simplify this causal density and to keep the entire model (system) within their grasp.

FOUR

In the fourth, we produce externalities by the use of the language generalizations, by applying the fictional narratives as if they constitute existential or possible operations, by mere verbal association to problems and categories that have no underlying association in causality, only narrative fictional association.

FIVE

This process is how the public becomes confused with math, science, biology, economics – and how these confusions end up as policy.

Sometimes by the equal ignorance and stupidity of policy makers. And sometimes (as we have seen with the pseudoscientific social sciences) by intent to abuse the people’s openness to such narratives and the possibility of deceiving them by suggestion using those narratives.

THEREFORE

So if it is my purpose to eliminate the possibility of public error and deception from the commons, such that the people do not pursue fallacies, and cannot be led by fallacies, then we must hold accountable those people who manufacture manufacture research, teaching, manufacture publications, and manufacture ideas, and manufacture policy, by the same standards we hold people accountable in the production of resources, materials, goods, medicines, and services.

KEEPING OUR DISCOUNTS AND IRRESPONSIBILITY

Now you will hear from every discipline that they claim that they cannot be held accountable for the use of their products – they refuse to warranty verbal and literary products for the same reason ladder manufacturers, tool manufacturers, toy manufacturers, drug manufacturers, carpet installers, home builders, psychologists, and tax accountants desire not to warranty their services. And they will refuse this reformation the same way that every other externality-causing industry has attempted to refuse warranty of due diligence in informing the customer of the dangers of incorrect use of the product, and themselves of the clarity of articulation and description of the product or service.

People want to preserve discounts and export costs onto others. Intellectuals are no more immune to parasitic existence than other disciplines. And outside of the financial and political sector producers of ideas are probably the GREATEST exporters of damage onto others because of their lack of warranty of due diligence.

But that hasn’t and won’t and shouldn’t ask us to force the reformation of every discipline (math and economics and social science, and law in particular) so that the those who profit from the education and distribution of knowledge are held as accountable for it as are the producers and distributors of all other products.

The informational commons has become as important as any other commons, and the market for information has become more important precisely because it is cheaper and easier to distribute products that harm individuals, groups, societies, and entire civilizations, if not mankind.

I am convinced that the operational revolution that failed in the last century, and the one that we can yet bring about today, will produce as great an improvement in human thought and society as the scientific revolution has in contrast to the rational, and the rational in contrast to the mystical.

We are not yet at the end of history. But if we defend the informational marketplace and the informational commons from pollution by error-bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, pseudoscience and deceit, we can bring the end of history one step closer to fruition.

Truth is enough. But telling the truth is increasingly expensive.

It is the highest tax that we pay.

And it produces the greatest returns of any other tax – even more so than the tremendously costly, but beneficial tax, of paying for the institution of private property, and its consequences.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine