Curt Doolittle

Theme: Operationalism

  • PROPERTARIAN METHODOLOGY The Secrets of Propertarian (Scientific) Analysis: 1) F

    PROPERTARIAN METHODOLOGY

    The Secrets of Propertarian (Scientific) Analysis:

    1) For any concept you refer to, construct lines of three or more points demonstrating limits not states. This is the most subtle and difficult part of the method since we tend to think in ideal types that invoke a particular experience and not the range of conditions and set of experiences that are invoked. Think in lines not states. Turn any idea into a spectrum. It’s not hard with practice.

    2) Analyze information movement – who possesses it, what it consists of, and when. (programming is great for teaching you how your assumptions of the knowledge of others is tragically flawed).

    3) Analyze incentives given the information individuals have at their disposal at any moment.

    4) Expect people to seek to acquire at all points in time, and to seize rents whenever possible, and wherever possible means whenever they won’t be caught.

    5) Expect Culture, Class, Gender, Race, Tribe, Family, and personal reproductive strategies to provide the dominant influence in decidability: whenever discretion is required these factors will influence the decision because the individual has no other means of decidability without propertarian ethics.

    6) When you write, do so operationally not analogically, experientially, or observationally: use the vectors, information, incentives, biases, and decisions of individuals. Never use the word ‘is’ since it means you do not understand what you are saying.

    7) Test for identity (non-conflationary identification of properties, methods and relations). Test for internal consistency of your argument. Test for external correspondence of your argument. Test for existential possiblity of each step in your argument (which is what propertarianism asks you to do by its nature). Test for Morality (that no involuntary transfers have occurrred, or if they have articulate them). Test for parsimony: that you have defined limits to all your assumptions and terms. Test for explanatory power. Attempt to falsify it: seek contradictory examples and ensure that your analysis (description) holds up.

    Propertarian analysis should produce tests of existential possibility: a proof. A proof is not a truth. But it is the most likely means of constructing a truth candidate that we currently know of.

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-21 05:39:00 UTC

  • Close enough. I find I often correct the use of ’empirical’ (observable, measura

    Close enough. I find I often correct the use of ’empirical’ (observable, measurable, recordable, repeatable).

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-16 08:38:54 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/666173585233461248

    Reply addressees: @wargfranklin

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/666149651104423936

    IN REPLY TO:

    Original post on X

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/666149651104423936

  • A statement of social science must be externally correlative and operationally c

    A statement of social science must be externally correlative and operationally constructed: meaning both Internal and External Consistency.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-16 05:59:01 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/666133351376543744

  • A statement of social science must be externally correlative and operationally c

    A statement of social science must be externally correlative and operationally constructed: meaning both Internal and External Consistency.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-16 00:59:00 UTC

  • You are using creative analogy to obscure operational differences. Governed is n

    You are using creative analogy to obscure operational differences. Governed is not led, is not parented.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-13 21:58:24 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/665287622022008832

    Reply addressees: @RiverC

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/665286820767383552

    IN REPLY TO:

    Original post on X

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/665286820767383552

  • If You Don’t Like What I Say – Think About This…

    [I] work on the discipline (technology) of speaking truthfully. Not honestly, but truthfully – as in “as scientifically as possible”. Now like any human being I absolutely do engage in various forms of sarcasm, humor, honorarium, and illustration. But in general, I try to write ‘proofs’: a proof includes including tests of internal consistency, external correspondence, informational availability, existential possibility, limits, parsimony, and full accounting. That’s the innovation that Propertarianism and Testimonialism provide us with: an amoral (unloaded) language for the articulation and comparison of various political, ethical and moral statements. Now, I don’t (like everyone else in the world, and almost everyone in intellectual history) want to know the truth so that I can justify the use of my particular moral bias over your particular moral bias. Instead, I want to know the truth so that you and I can conduct an exchange – a compromise – rather than a conquest. A trade rather than a monopoly act of oppression. A ‘truth’ rather than a falsehood. And that is how Propertarianism differs from the fallacies of authoritarian monotheism, utilitarian rationalism, and democratic majority rule: that the only ‘truth’ we can know is when your bias and my bias results in a compromise that is mutually beneficial.

    [pullquote]But what I will not do, and what no future generations will willingly do, is allow you to perpetuate the pseudoscience, propaganda, deception, and outright lying that has been the basis of the socialist, progressive, feminist, libertine, and neo-conservative movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
    [/pullquote]

    Now that does not mean that we need to agree – another fallacy of democracy – but it means we cannot materially dissent. In other words, we can trade in a compromise, or we can prevent each other from imposing costs upon one another’s property-en-toto (what you’ve acted to obtain), but we cannot by any method impose costs on one another’s property-en-toto without consent. So if you don’t like something that’s true, or you want to speak an untruth, then you’re just a bad dishonest person unworthy of cooperation. If you want to preserve monopoly democracy, then you’re just a bad and dishonest thief unworthy of cooperation and worthy of punishment, ostracization and death. If you want to just get away with stealing from others without engaging in trade then you’re again, a bad, dishonest, thief worthy of punishment, ostracization and death. But if you want to do something that does not impose a cost upon me or mine, I will not and cannot interfere with you. And if you want to impose a cost upon me, or gain my cooperation then I will enter in an exchange with you. I cannot stop you from doing good, I can only prevent you from imposing harm. But what I will not do, and what no future generations will willingly do, is allow you to perpetuate the pseudoscience, propaganda, deception, and outright lying that has been the basis of the socialist, progressive, feminist, libertine, and neo-conservative movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. If that is the case then I am morally justified, ethically justified, and biologically mandated to exterminate you. And that applies to me as well. So if you disagree with this I must end you, and all like you. Not for me, but for all of mankind. Just as if I disagree with this you must end me. This is the most and best moral position any man can take. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • If You Don’t Like What I Say – Think About This…

    [I] work on the discipline (technology) of speaking truthfully. Not honestly, but truthfully – as in “as scientifically as possible”. Now like any human being I absolutely do engage in various forms of sarcasm, humor, honorarium, and illustration. But in general, I try to write ‘proofs’: a proof includes including tests of internal consistency, external correspondence, informational availability, existential possibility, limits, parsimony, and full accounting. That’s the innovation that Propertarianism and Testimonialism provide us with: an amoral (unloaded) language for the articulation and comparison of various political, ethical and moral statements. Now, I don’t (like everyone else in the world, and almost everyone in intellectual history) want to know the truth so that I can justify the use of my particular moral bias over your particular moral bias. Instead, I want to know the truth so that you and I can conduct an exchange – a compromise – rather than a conquest. A trade rather than a monopoly act of oppression. A ‘truth’ rather than a falsehood. And that is how Propertarianism differs from the fallacies of authoritarian monotheism, utilitarian rationalism, and democratic majority rule: that the only ‘truth’ we can know is when your bias and my bias results in a compromise that is mutually beneficial.

    [pullquote]But what I will not do, and what no future generations will willingly do, is allow you to perpetuate the pseudoscience, propaganda, deception, and outright lying that has been the basis of the socialist, progressive, feminist, libertine, and neo-conservative movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
    [/pullquote]

    Now that does not mean that we need to agree – another fallacy of democracy – but it means we cannot materially dissent. In other words, we can trade in a compromise, or we can prevent each other from imposing costs upon one another’s property-en-toto (what you’ve acted to obtain), but we cannot by any method impose costs on one another’s property-en-toto without consent. So if you don’t like something that’s true, or you want to speak an untruth, then you’re just a bad dishonest person unworthy of cooperation. If you want to preserve monopoly democracy, then you’re just a bad and dishonest thief unworthy of cooperation and worthy of punishment, ostracization and death. If you want to just get away with stealing from others without engaging in trade then you’re again, a bad, dishonest, thief worthy of punishment, ostracization and death. But if you want to do something that does not impose a cost upon me or mine, I will not and cannot interfere with you. And if you want to impose a cost upon me, or gain my cooperation then I will enter in an exchange with you. I cannot stop you from doing good, I can only prevent you from imposing harm. But what I will not do, and what no future generations will willingly do, is allow you to perpetuate the pseudoscience, propaganda, deception, and outright lying that has been the basis of the socialist, progressive, feminist, libertine, and neo-conservative movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. If that is the case then I am morally justified, ethically justified, and biologically mandated to exterminate you. And that applies to me as well. So if you disagree with this I must end you, and all like you. Not for me, but for all of mankind. Just as if I disagree with this you must end me. This is the most and best moral position any man can take. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • From the website: Elucidation on Ludwig Von Mises’s works (Praxeology and Human

    From the website: Elucidation on Ludwig Von Mises’s works (Praxeology and Human Action volumes)

    Mises: “Human Operationalism”, Not “Human Action”

    Sunday, January 18th, 2015

    He was that close.

    I have more important things to do with my life, but if I had the time I could rewrite his tome Human Action as Human Operationalism, and instantly reform the debate from one between science and pseudoscience in which he has been outcast, to one that unified all fields, and restored his position in intellectual history.

    Damn. He was SO CLOSE. So close. It’s taken me years. And in retrospect it’s tragic. Terribly tragic. He *almost* reformed economics and saved us from a century of destructive Keynesian policy.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-04 17:25:00 UTC

  • PROOFS AND TRUTHS (important summary) When we write a proof, we demonstrate that

    PROOFS AND TRUTHS

    (important summary)

    When we write a proof, we demonstrate that our testimony is existentially possible. Proofs demonstrate existential possibility. But they do not necessarily demonstrate uniqueness. So a proof does not say that this particular road led one to Rome. It merely says that it is indeed possible to arrive in Rome via this road. A truth claim would have to demonstrate that the only possible way to Rome is by this road, or to demonstrate that you had indeed taken this road using incontestable evidence that you had not taken others. This is the difference between subjective and rational and objective and empirical testimony. And when we construct proofs in Propertarian language, we do not make claims of uniqueness: truth; we make claims of possibility: proofs. We prove that our testimony is possible, but not unique. That proof requires that each step in the sequence of our proof is also subjectively testable as a rational operation by a human mind, given the incentives at his disposal. Propertarianism provides the fulfillment of hte promise of praxeology, without the error that such statements are true, only that they are not false. This corrects the Misesian half-success of praxeology by merging it with the Popperian half-success of critical rationalism: the evolution of knowledge by survival of criticism, to achieve the Hayekian half-success that liberty is only obtainable through rule of law; and merging them together with the expensive commons of high trust and truth telling into Testimonialism: the epistemology of Propertarianism. Liberty results only from truth in mind, utterance, and trial by jury, under the total prohibition of parasitism, forcing all men into production of goods, services and commons. The most precious, expensive, and scarce of commons being objective truth and truth telling itself.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-30 05:23:00 UTC

  • Counter Intuitive Econ Solved By Operational Analysis: The Internet Increases Prices

    —Economists have two standard very simple models of product competition: firms can compete on price or compete on quantity.— —“whether firms compete on price or quantity depends more on which of these they must commit to earliest, not which is easier to change at the last minute. Knowing this, once you heard that it would be easier to change prices at the last minute for products sold on internet, you should have predicted that the internet would increase quantity competition and reduce price competition. Which it in fact has. Economics is general and robust enough to predict things like how selling products on the internet changes competition. But you have to use it right.”— https://shar.es/17xxNn

    [F]irst, I want to point out that the reason the author is able to make his argument is that he has operationally explained the phenomenon as a sequence of decisions and actions in time.  Yet intuitive economics would suggest that price competition would be increased while operational analysis (incentives) would cause competition to be decreased.   This simple example illustrates why operationalism is so important to the testing of hypothesis. [S]econd, the author is trying to make a different point, but I want to riff off it to show that firms compete in commodity and non-commodity spaces. And to some degree economists study commodity activity where noise and signal cancel one another out. But that isn’t how companies think about competition, it’s how distributors do. I have taught the following means of competition by firms: 1) Price, 2) Quantity, 3) Profitability or Debt 4) Rents (firms like polities accumulate renters) 5) Adaptation Costs (innovator’s dilemma). 6) Geographic Housing Costs (salary costs) 7) Segmentation (startups start in niches and expand) Why? Decreasing production cycles, increasing distribution of production, the increasing importance of TALENT and innovation service industries. vs capital or credit in manufacturing and distribution companies. In a highly efficient market, one can sacrifice profits for talent while larger organizations accumulate internal rents. This is most frequently the reason Generally speaking, higher profits incentivize more rents. And while prices are sticky, internal rents are much stickier than prices. Generally speaking, adaptation costs vary dramatically from industry to industry: service firms trade out people and production firms trade out people and capital. The difference being that GAP regulation and tax policy obscure the tail of fixed vs human capital, largely because we can finance against the illusion of fixed capital value while we cannot finance against the obvious lack of control over human capital. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine