Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • A Gap?

    CAN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOPED SCIENCE HAVE A DANGEROUS GAP? (Yes)

    [I]f you had told me that western philosophy contained such a catastrophic hole that we could be nearly destroyed by ideas even worse than monotheism, I would have told you to write science fiction novellas.

    It turns out it’s true.

    We treat truth and universalism as normal. But when our knowledge exceeded human scale, we adopted platonic truth, and at the very same time, the continentals and cosmopolitans swamped us with pseudoscience.

    The european new right is wrong. We don’t need a religion. We don’t need to return to religion.

    We just need to speak the truth.

    And speaking the truth, it turns out, isn’t a philosophical proposition that is open to interpretation. You can either give an operational description or you can’t.

    The truth is, that we’ve been poisoned as seriously as we were when Justinian closed the greek schools, and imposed middle eastern mysticism upon us.

  • A Gap?

    CAN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOPED SCIENCE HAVE A DANGEROUS GAP? (Yes)

    [I]f you had told me that western philosophy contained such a catastrophic hole that we could be nearly destroyed by ideas even worse than monotheism, I would have told you to write science fiction novellas.

    It turns out it’s true.

    We treat truth and universalism as normal. But when our knowledge exceeded human scale, we adopted platonic truth, and at the very same time, the continentals and cosmopolitans swamped us with pseudoscience.

    The european new right is wrong. We don’t need a religion. We don’t need to return to religion.

    We just need to speak the truth.

    And speaking the truth, it turns out, isn’t a philosophical proposition that is open to interpretation. You can either give an operational description or you can’t.

    The truth is, that we’ve been poisoned as seriously as we were when Justinian closed the greek schools, and imposed middle eastern mysticism upon us.

  • POPPER’S COSMOPOLITANISM (worth repeating) I increasingly position Popper as try

    POPPER’S COSMOPOLITANISM

    (worth repeating)

    I increasingly position Popper as trying to defend against the authoritarian use of science promoted by the (pseudo)scientific socialists. And his moral propositions are true, albeit not much of an advance on Socrates’ less elaborate one: that wisdom is knowing our ignorance, and being none-to certain of anything, that we are willing to coerce others to common ends.

    And like all cosmopolitans he is ALSO, at every moment resisting anglo empiricism, political truth, and the requirement that we contribute to the commons. Like the rest, he seems to want to preserve ethical dualism, central to the cosmopolitan mission. Whereas objective truth is a political construct, cosmopolitan truth is not – it is either authoritarian on one hand, or dualistic, preserving choice independent of objective truth, but never political. (This is a really complicated and really fascinating line of thought I’m working on, and I haven’t reduced it to something tolerably digestible yet. But as someone else said, I think it’s a superior to the Hegelian hypothesis of cultural differences.)

    But like all the cosmopolitans, Popper seems to have resorted to their strange fascination with getting it only half right, and fudging the rest with elaborate conflation of existence, experience, and objective experience through the mere use of experiential language. This is very consistent with jewish literature, which is the most sophisticated justificationary philosophy humans have ever invented. Muhammed couldn’t rely on the same intellect so he just reduced the same ideas to authoritarian commands. The Chinese wrote in hedged moralisms justified by harmony (balance) – but they honestly could not solve the problem of politics, because the very idea was an anathema. The europeans celebrate aspirational falsehoods (democracy) in part because politics is an aristocratic status signal – and in most of the west, participation and contribution mandatory.

    I see what the cosmopolitans are doing now, but I am not sure how it’s possible. I mean, in Heidegger you can see it and in Kant you can see it, but in both cases it’s in the aristotelian sense: objective. These are products brought to market. Cosmopolitan ideas are authoritarian prognostications positioned as truths. While all of the cosmopolitans retain subjectivity by verbal conflation.

    I want to ask Agassi about this because he dances all around the subject in his recent book, which I’ve read, twice now, but I think I might piss him off. (Honestly I got more out of his analysis of popper’s context than all other writers combined. It’s literally delicious to read. I dont think I really understood Feyerabend’s motives until I read Agassi.)

    So, I think, probably within a year or at the outside two, I will figure out they how, what and why, of the technique they are using, and I can put an end to that form of obscurantism too. Not that I care about Popper, but because of all the less noble applications of that technique.

    Curt.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-24 10:13:00 UTC

  • David says… Duh

    http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-08-children-autism-extra-synapses-brain.htmlAs David says… Duh.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-22 12:03:00 UTC

  • on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason. STIPULATIONS It is rational to hold opin

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Closed-Mind-Understanding/dp/0812696859/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/181-2526688-3304011Thoughts on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason.

    STIPULATIONS

    It is rational to hold opinions.

    It is rational to hold desperately to opinions.

    It is rational to hold desperately to opinions even in the face of overwhelming argumentative evidence that one cannot refute.

    It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs as a deliberate choice if one prefers to imagine the world as one wishes, versus represent it correspondingly.

    It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs and to conduct constant selection bias because there exist a multitude of applications in which arational, and seemingly irrational behavior are beneficial strategies, immune to argumentative change.

    THEREFORE

    The rationality of a belief is not a truth proposition post-hoc, but a volitional necessity given the preconditions set by one’s ignorance.

    This constrains rationality to constituent ignorance.

    ??No opinion then is criticizable as irrational?? Or is it that only simple and well constructed ideas are criticizable as irrational.

    ABSENT FROM CONSIDERATION

    The opportunity cost of erroneous ideas is neutral.

    The cost of conducting persuasive argument is immaterial.

    The difference in cost between the construction and distribution of various false and deceptive arguments, and truthful and honest arguments is immaterial.

    The persistence of human cognitive biases, of metaphysical assumptions, of religious, philosophical, intellectual, and normative convictions, are rational tools, and therefore immaterial.

    FALSE DICHOTOMY

    First criticism as a false dichotomy:

    1) Irrational: a statement that is internally inconsistent in construction, and we cannot determine if it would produce desired outcomes, or if it would produce undesirable outcomes.

    2) arational: a statement that is not internally consistent in construction but whose use produces desirable outcomes.

    3) rational: a statement that is internally consistent, and whose use produces desired outcomes.

    As far as I know, an arational argument is scientifically demonstrable (knowledge of use), even if scientifically inexplicable (knowledge of construction).

    As far as I know, a rational argument must be both explicable (knowledge of construction), and demonstrable(knowledge of use).

    As far as I know, an irrational argument is neither explicable (knowledge of construction) nor demonstrable(knowledge of use).

    FURTHERMORE

    The absence of a logic of cooperation renders all moral arguments extant untestable, yet all political arguments are governed by moral constraints. As such no moral arguments can be rational?

    The use of language consisting of aggregated meanings (functions) masks the underlying assumptions and renders arguments untestable, and deceptive.

    The use of in-group identity bias literally ‘pays’ people to believe things that are irrational as stated, but rational to pursue for their group’s purposes. In other words, religious and cultural ‘beliefs’ produce high returns, and therefore may not be rational, or irrational, but arational.

    CONCLUSIONS

    Therefore unlike the calm, timeless, costless world of scientific philosophy, and its pursuit of platonic truth, the opposite is true, particularly under democracy: we are fighting, always, to use the violence of government to extract money from some purpose to apply it to some other purpose, in real time, with real consequences, and ignorance is a luxury in the philosophy of science but not in life.

    Scientists consider the pursuit of truth independent of cost. No one else has that luxury. Scientists are a privileged class and advocate the belief systems of a privileged class. Unlike scientists, who are not temporally bound, or theologians who are neither temporally, or existentially bound, human action requires we compensate for temporal and existential constraints, as well as opportunity costs.

    Because the purpose of thought is action. We do not live in the garden of eden. And that is the culture of the Academy: the Cathedral. The pretense of costlessness in a world constituted of the necessity of human action guided entirely by prices.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-22 06:46:00 UTC

  • If You Could Only Own One Libertarian Treatise, Which One Would You Choose: ‘human Action’,â  ‘man, Economy, And State’, Or ‘the Constitution Of Liberty’?

    Human action is a work of pseudoscience through chapter 15, and after 15 is fully integrated into mainstream economics.  So it is not useful.  Mises failed to discern that economics, like physics and mathematics was subject to an epistemic requirement for operational definitions. And while he intuited something close to correct, he was unable to solve it, and first cast praxeology as a ‘science’ without reliance upon the scientific method – which by itself is a definition of a pseudoscience, and second, stated that all of economics was deducible from the first principle of human action. Also demonstrably false, and solidifying his work as pseudoscientific.  The correct answer in operational terms is that if any empirical observation in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of rational human actions, then it cannot in fact be ‘true’.   The first 15 chapters are an elaborate attempt to justify his fallacy.

    Man economy and state ignores, and like all of Rothbard’s works,  intentionally attempts to undermine the western competitive cultural advantage that northern europeans, by virtue of constructing the only high trust society, are the only people on earth capable of constructing commons.  So, this book is actually half correct – bureaucracy leads to despotism.  And half deception: that does not mean that the organized construction of commons and the prevention of free riding upon or consumption of those commons is not a strategic competitive advantage, or that commons cannot be produced through alternative means.  It is an elaborate fallacy on the scale, if not quality, of Freud’s psychology, Marx’s Capital, Cantor’s sets and Mises’ Praxeology.

    The Constitution of liberty is an historical and scholarly work demonstrating that the only known means of preserving freedom is through a constitution of private property rights and the organic evolution of the common law.   Hayek’s failure in his work, was his reliance on what was know in his day, and his insufficient emphasis on the scope of property rights, original intent,  and strict construction, nor the institutional means of maintaining those three constraints.  Unfortunately for all three authors, computer science would rescue the world from platonism, where logic, math, science, and economics had failed: the existence proof, and our ability to promise that we make true statements.

    Of these three the only book of value is the Constitution of Liberty.  The rest is simply

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-could-only-own-one-Libertarian-treatise-which-one-would-you-choose-Human-Action-Man-Economy-and-State-or-The-Constitution-of-Liberty

  • If You Could Only Own One Libertarian Treatise, Which One Would You Choose: ‘human Action’,â  ‘man, Economy, And State’, Or ‘the Constitution Of Liberty’?

    Human action is a work of pseudoscience through chapter 15, and after 15 is fully integrated into mainstream economics.  So it is not useful.  Mises failed to discern that economics, like physics and mathematics was subject to an epistemic requirement for operational definitions. And while he intuited something close to correct, he was unable to solve it, and first cast praxeology as a ‘science’ without reliance upon the scientific method – which by itself is a definition of a pseudoscience, and second, stated that all of economics was deducible from the first principle of human action. Also demonstrably false, and solidifying his work as pseudoscientific.  The correct answer in operational terms is that if any empirical observation in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of rational human actions, then it cannot in fact be ‘true’.   The first 15 chapters are an elaborate attempt to justify his fallacy.

    Man economy and state ignores, and like all of Rothbard’s works,  intentionally attempts to undermine the western competitive cultural advantage that northern europeans, by virtue of constructing the only high trust society, are the only people on earth capable of constructing commons.  So, this book is actually half correct – bureaucracy leads to despotism.  And half deception: that does not mean that the organized construction of commons and the prevention of free riding upon or consumption of those commons is not a strategic competitive advantage, or that commons cannot be produced through alternative means.  It is an elaborate fallacy on the scale, if not quality, of Freud’s psychology, Marx’s Capital, Cantor’s sets and Mises’ Praxeology.

    The Constitution of liberty is an historical and scholarly work demonstrating that the only known means of preserving freedom is through a constitution of private property rights and the organic evolution of the common law.   Hayek’s failure in his work, was his reliance on what was know in his day, and his insufficient emphasis on the scope of property rights, original intent,  and strict construction, nor the institutional means of maintaining those three constraints.  Unfortunately for all three authors, computer science would rescue the world from platonism, where logic, math, science, and economics had failed: the existence proof, and our ability to promise that we make true statements.

    Of these three the only book of value is the Constitution of Liberty.  The rest is simply

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-could-only-own-one-Libertarian-treatise-which-one-would-you-choose-Human-Action-Man-Economy-and-State-or-The-Constitution-of-Liberty

  • Is Political Economy A Discipline? How?

    “Political Economy” refers to the pre-war term for the discipline of Economics.  However, because the discipline of 20th century economics evolved to emphasize Macro-Economics and Econometrics, we use Political Economy today to refer to the study of institutions that assist in the voluntary organization of production (which is what capitalism means), by allowing individuals to cooperate in production, and providing them the incentive to cooperate in production. 

    These institutions include numbers, counting, accounting, money, banking, and interest, private property, shareholder property, common property, promise, contract, and common law.  Legislative and Regulatory law, fiat money, fiat credit, Redistribution, Fiscal, Trade and Monetary policy. 

    In practical terms we tend to separate academic economics: macro economics and econometrics into short term spending and policy tactics, from political economy: the long term effects of formal institutions (governmental institutions etc) and informal institutions (manners, ethics, morals, norms, traditions, myths, eduction and religion).

    (I work in Political Economy not Macro Economics.)

    https://www.quora.com/Is-political-economy-a-discipline-How

  • Which Historical Figure Is Least Recognized For Having Caused A Tremendous Amount Of Harm, And What Harm Did They Do?

    Abraham for religious totalitarianism.
    Marx for economic totalitarianism.
    Freud for pseudoscience.
    Cantor for pseudoscience.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-historical-figure-is-least-recognized-for-having-caused-a-tremendous-amount-of-harm-and-what-harm-did-they-do

  • Which Historical Figure Is Least Recognized For Having Caused A Tremendous Amount Of Harm, And What Harm Did They Do?

    Abraham for religious totalitarianism.
    Marx for economic totalitarianism.
    Freud for pseudoscience.
    Cantor for pseudoscience.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-historical-figure-is-least-recognized-for-having-caused-a-tremendous-amount-of-harm-and-what-harm-did-they-do