Curt Doolittle

Theme: Operationalism

  • TRUE ——————– FALSE—— Operational Language………… Moral lan

    —-TRUE ——————– FALSE——

    Operational Language………… Moral language

    Compensation……………………Shame, Moral Duty or Claim

    Voluntary Exchange…………….Involuntary Transfer

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 08:53:00 UTC

  • TRUTH AND ETHICS IN ARGUMENT In my quest to cleanse libertarianism of platonism,

    TRUTH AND ETHICS IN ARGUMENT

    In my quest to cleanse libertarianism of platonism, and possibly put at least one nail in the coffin of Postmodern thought, Ive come up with two avenues of argument :

    1) Operational language: Operational language (action) forces us to distinguish between platonic and real. The moment something must be described as actions, it becomes scientific. If it is not described as actions, and observable actions, then it’s not. It’s fantasy. (Platonic)

    2) Ethics: I am pretty sure the requirement to speak in operational language is not a matter of ‘truth’ but of ‘ethics’. In other words, its unethical not to speak in operational language, precisely because it allows us to confuse the platonic and the real. This approach is consistent with the ETHICAL constraint libertarians demonstrate as a preference: the visibility of voluntary and involuntary transfers.

    It is much easier to argue using BOTH of these lines of argument at the same time. Mathematical and logical platonists can have their cake imaginary cake, but they can’t actually eat it. Because if you use mathematical and logical platonism to cross the line into economics and politics, you’re now a crook. Worse, you’re advocating thievery.

    In this case, the first platonic argument that I want to kill off is the constraint that ‘magical numbers’ (infinity) and magical sets ‘infinite sets’, place constraints on theories. (They don’t) Semantic ally meaningful combinations open to sympathetic testing are very low in number. And as I’ve said elsewhere, our problem in the construction of theories is one of words, but cognitive bias, instrumentation and measurement.

    Kenneth Allen Hopf has helped me with this argument, by positioning Popper’s advice as moral, or perhaps more narrowly, ethical. Just as, I would argue, is Nassim Taleb’s improvement on Popper, and Poincaire, and perhaps those of Mandelbrot as well.

    This school of thought is called ‘finitism’ in mathematics. The finitist movement stalled with Russell, Cantor and set theory, at which point it became impossible without using operational language, to prove finitism. So mathematical and set theory today is platonic. Most mathematicians and logisticians are platonists.

    Of course, I’m working on moral and ethical theory, because any political system must rely upon some ethical basis, or it’s not logical to discuss ‘politics’ (persuasion) – it’s just engineering of human beings as if they’re cattle.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-06 14:07:00 UTC

  • SETS AND NONSENSE : THE PERCEPTION OF INFINITE SEMANTICALLY MEANINGFUL SETS IS A

    SETS AND NONSENSE : THE PERCEPTION OF INFINITE SEMANTICALLY MEANINGFUL SETS IS A COGNITIVE BIAS

    I have been working with computers for a long time.

    Computers are very good with sets of things and teaching you how to work with them. Relational databases are even better at teaching you the algebra of sets than programming languages. Compilers are very good at teaching you about semantics.

    And trying to write games that have some semblance of intelligence not immediately deducible as trivial dumb patterns. Or writing software that can produce reasonably articulate legal arguments from limited data. Or trying to represent semantic clouds of related terms teaches you something very basic about language:

    That there are actually very few sentences that are not nonsense compared to the number of sentences that are sensible.

    If one accumulates knowledge from many different disciplines, it becomes rapidly apparent that the number of concepts shared by these domains is limited and that the perception of vast knowledge is an illusory artifact of disciplinary methodological loading – most of which is erroneous and caused by ignorance of these greater patterns, or various forms of social and normative loading, or the natural brevity that emerges in any population over time. Worse, no small part of current language consists of loading meant to signal social position or create priestly mysticism to preserve status cues.

    One of our cognitive biases is to assume when we discover something new,

    Mystical statements were not false if they achieved the purpose of getting non-kin to treat each other as kin.

    They may have been allegorical but they were not false. They produced the desired outcome of uniting disunited people by getting them to extend kin-trust to non-kin.

    The externality produced by that allegory was pretty dangerous it turned out. But until trade became pervasive, the need to extend trust in order to trade and operate a division of labor was insufficient to produce the level of trust that religion did.

    We did not become enlightened because we wanted to, but because trade required that we did. And morality could be enforced by trade and credit rather than religion which threatens ostracization and death, and law which threatens punishment. Instead the ability to consume, compete for status and mates or feel the pressure of degrading status made very granular control of moral behavior possible – for nearly everyone, at very low cost, and producing a virtuous cycle of declining prices.

    While we might create very vast and highly loaded languages, the fact of the matter, is that all language is allegory to experience. There is little or nothing that cannot be expressed with a thousand words. The primary challenge is that complexity using that limited vocabulary overwhelms short term memory. So loading using complex words. Like symbols or measurements, allows us to stuff ideas into short term memory and create faster “meaning” in each other’s minds, in the three second window of our processing cycle for those who are already familiar with the topic.

    In this sense, while we use complex words with heavy loading for brevity and status signaling, the concepts that we can convey require analogy to experience, and analogy to experience requires few words.

    Where am I going with this?

    The number if meaningful sentences is fairly small. The number if meaningful narratives has been known to be small for some time.

    The need to restate narratives in the current context is high.

    But the number of theories active at any time is quite small. With the illusion of large numbers a cognitive bias, and most theories merely justifications for preferences masquerading as theories.

    There just aren’t that many theories. And thats in no small part because we are very good at killing theories.

    We are super predators after all.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-04 11:02:00 UTC

  • PROPERTARIAN METAPHYSICS (DRAFT / SKETCH: I have to start somewhere) Not “Popper

    PROPERTARIAN METAPHYSICS

    (DRAFT / SKETCH: I have to start somewhere)

    Not “Popperian”. But “Propertarian”. 🙂 I drafted this before writing the reposted-bit that follows. I have to find a way to tie all of this together. So it might take me a few more tries.

    World (1) Monism : That there exists a single objective, physical reality (physicalism). This objective world exists independently of us. Our actions take place in this world. Our process of thinking takes place in this world. However, the experience of thinking does not take place in this world, because experience is our reaction to the changes in state of our perceptions interacting with our memories in real time. The concept of categories and change in state has no meaning without memory to detect that change. The human body exists here. The act of counting and measuring exists here.

    World (2) Cartesian Dualism – Thoughts: The world of our minds that is caused by the change in state of memory by our senses, perceptions, and thoughts. Our minds are fraught with cognitive bias and error, and without testing against the real world (1) the are indistinguishable from dreams. Whatever information exists here exists only as long as the conscious mind of the individual can access and make use of those memories. THE INDIVIDUAL exists here because his memories do. Memories of what PROPERTY an individual OWNS exists here. In fact, we might argue that that is most of what exists here. Our thinking consists of three parts: stimuli whose workings are imperceptible to us, feelings that we react to changes in the state of, or anticipated state of PROPERTY, and the conscious created by changes in he presentation of the world to our senses by a combination of stimuli and memories.

    World (3) Popper’s Third World – External Representation: The world of the conscious construction: artifacts of our minds (formulae, symbols, language, movement of our bodies, writing, formula, arithmetic, mathematics, designs, tools, arts, and complex constructions.) The things that STORE the results of our thoughts. Given the limited ability of our memories to store concrete items, this category of marks, symbols, records, formulae, designs, narratives allows us to remember, compare, calculate, store, retrieve, copy and share ideas with one another. Once information is stored in these symbols, much of it will exist as long as someone exists to make use of it. CONTRACTS exist here.

    World (4) Dastafshan’s Fourth World – Social Consequences: The world of the social construction of reality (unconscious collective concepts, processes and consequences, morals and norms – those things that only exist by social interaction and cooperation – unintended, self-organizing, unconscious rules and ideas that we understand in retrospect but do not intentionally create. ie: ‘gods’ live here. And the principles that determine PROPERTY distributions in any group exist here. 🙂 Without constant use, human action, and interaction between humans, this information will cease to exist.

    Note that Ali Dastafshan’s Fourth World isn’t part of common philosophical discourse. And I am not necessarily framing the fourth world as he would have me do, but perhaps as E.O. Wilson would. But, I think this definition is in terms more likely to be understood by those of us with exposure to analytical philosophy.

    CONTRA METAPHYSICAL LANGUAGE

    Now, how do I convert these categories into operational language?

    Unfortunately, the only efficient way of expressing philosophical ideas as necessities is to structure them as syllogisms as the greeks did, or as riddles – as Lao Tsu was a master of.

    The only way to express scientific statements is through operational language. Because correlation between actions and facts, and therefore between theory and actions that determine facts, is the test of operational language. Without which causal relations are indeterminate.

    The only way to express human actions as necessary is praxeologically. Because the equivalent of logical non contradiction is the test of rational incentives.

    Unfortunately, instead of a necessary test, praxeology was proposed as a system of apodeictic certainty from which deductions could likewise be certain.

    There are two problems with that approach. The fist is the problem that plagues any logical system, which is that such certainty requires completeness. The second is the completeness is impossible. The impossibility of completeness is what causes the apparent paradoxes in mathematics and the first order logic of set theory.

    The problem that causes a separation of mathematics and logic from science in socio-economics occurs largely due to the use of symbolic proxies without accompanying statements that are articulated in praxeological or operational language: there is a very great difference between “given a set … “, and describing how to create a set of anything, including linguistic permutations.

    As for absurdities of logic, assuming a finite universe, or even an actionably finite universe, any category we name thereby defines the remainder. Any set diminishes the remainder. And all contradictions are tautologies.

    For these reasons science has displaced both philosophy and logic. It has not displaced mathematics, because math can be used in the context of natural science and therefore externally constrained by context.

    Likewise the only way to externally bind logic and philosophy to reality is to require use of operational language.

    And the operational language of human action is constructed through praxeological expression. Praxeology exposes all statements to sympathetic testing. Without praxeological expression any statement is platonic: not real.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-29 07:05:00 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

  • 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

  • SCIENCE AND THE THEORY OF ACTION : ACTIONS DEMARCATE THE REAL FROM THE UNREAL In

    SCIENCE AND THE THEORY OF ACTION : ACTIONS DEMARCATE THE REAL FROM THE UNREAL

    In praxeology, if statements cannot be expressed as human actions that are open to sympathetic testing of the rationality of incentives then the statements are not ‘scientific’.

    OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS: (Operationalism) Operational definitions are definitions of theoretical constructs that are stated in terms of concrete, observable procedures (Actions). Operational definitions solve the problem of what is not directly observable by connecting unobservable traits or experiences to things that can be observed. Operational definitions make the unobservable observable. ( the concepts or terms used in nonanalytic scientific statements must be definable in terms of identifiable and repeatable operations.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-21 12:34:00 UTC

  • LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIAN

    LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM BY INCORPORATING SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE PURELY RATIONAL

    Those three terms, Logic, Praxeology, and Science describe a spectrum. But what is the point of demarcation between each?

    Which of these domains is capable of testing which category of problems, and what constraints does any domain place upon the others, given that each is open to error, and requires the other to test its hypotheses.

    I’ve been working on this problem now for quite some time, and have almost got my arms around how to talk about it praxeologically: as observable human action: and therefore a test of possibility, rational choice and incentives.

    WHY DOES THIS MATTER

    I have, I think, reformed the concepts of property and morality, but I can’t reform the system of thought that we call libertarian political theory without reforming the distinction between logic (unobservable, internally testable), praxeology (observable and subjectively testable), and science (unobservable, and objectively & externally testable.) That work may have been done somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. And I have a very hard time slogging my way through metaphysical assumptions and highly loaded vocabulary of both logicians on one end and rationalists on the other.

    Current libertarian (Rothbardian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I’ve tried to systematically falsify each of them – there are only a handful really. And I think I have been successful.

    Current progressive (Rawlsian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I think that I can falsify that argument without much difficulty. Veil of ignorance being a logical fallacy so to speak.

    Conservatives don’t have an argument, so I have to explain their implied argument in libertarian terminology.

    What I find most interesting, from our perspective, as libertarians, is that we acknowledge that the common law is an organic process, and it functions because it must be digestible and applicable by ordinary people in juries. We understand that the english built an empirical society, not a rational one. And that the French took the british concept of liberty and made it into a rational one. Then the germans have tried, and continue to, make it a spiritual one.

    In other words, Rothbard’s arguments, and one of hoppe’s (his only weak one) rely on rationalism rather than empiricism. And while praxeology may be a test, and while reason may be a test, the purpose of empirical analysis is to extend our senses, and reduce what we cannot sense to analogies that we can perceive by proxy.

    Now, prior generations had to suffer with the limited tool of Rational argument, because they didn’t have data, and the socialistic system of central control produces data on short periodicity, and can justify itself with that data. While the libertarian and conservative argument is that the externalities produced outweigh the short term benefits. But we have to WAIT for our data, and therefore socialistic arguments gather momentum in and civic behavior alters while we wait.

    Thankfully we have data now. Our rational arguments were correct. The conservative arguments look like they are correct too. The only progressive argument we are unsure about at present is whether or not fiat money itself can function in a positive fashion, under some as yet undefined circumstance. (We argue that it can’t, out of hand, on rational grounds, but I’m not sure we can prove that there aren’t holes in our reason sufficient to undermine our position.)

    We are lucky. Time has passed. We’ve learned more than our preceding generations had available to learn. And as such we can debate and restate libertarian theory using scientific rather than rational arguments.

    And that is what I’m trying to do.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-16 05:23:00 UTC