Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • WHICH IS MORE CRANKISH? SIMPLE SCIENCE AND LOGIC, OR RATIONALIST PSEUDOSCIENCE?

    WHICH IS MORE CRANKISH? SIMPLE SCIENCE AND LOGIC, OR RATIONALIST PSEUDOSCIENCE?

    I am pretty confident that the praxeological line of reasoning, as currently constructed, is a dead end, as I’ve argued elsewhere. In no small part because it cannot compete with the universality of the language and processes of the ratio-scientific method. But while an inferior method, it’s still a useful method. And if it helps people understand micro and ethics then that’s good enough.

    The challenge at this inflection point in intellectual history, is that Hoppe has created the formal language of political ethics and political economy, and taught most of us to argue politics ethics and morality in economic terms. Yet that language is unnecessarily dependent upon Argumentation, Continental Rationalism, and a misguided attempt to conflate logic and science, in order to defend against a positivism that is not present in the philosophy or practice of science – if it ever was.

    Logic is axiomatic, and therefore both prescriptive and deductive. Science is theoretic, and therefore descriptive and deductive.

    But we can make statements in logic that are internally consistent yet not externally correspondent, yet we cannot make theories that fail external correspondence, whether or not our language is internally consistent.

    But the empirical test is obvious: if praxeology and rothbardian ethics are correct, then why are they both rejected almost universally? If these things are true, then why do we fail?

    Comparative ethics, empirically studied, yields a universal descriptive ethics that is theoretically rigid and more sustainable from criticism than rothbardian ethics.

    —“in all cultures and all civilizations, manners, ethics and morals reflect the necessary rules for organizing reproduction (the family) and the polity of families, such that they may cooperate in whatever structure of production is available to them. The content of those rules, under analysis, can be represented as property rights, each of which is distributed between the individual to the commons. Demand for third party authority as a means of resolving differences (the state) is determined by the degree of suppression of free riding (parasitism), and the number of competing sets of rules (family structures and classes) within any given structure of production. These sets of rules can be expressed as a simple formal grammar, which allows us to render all moral and ethical systems commensurable.”—

    Macro economics, experimental psychology, and cognitive science have contributed all economic insights over the past three decades, and none of these insights were deducible (cognitive biases in particular), or were emergent effects of economic cooperation (stickiness of prices, the time delay until money achieves neutrality, and the quantitative impact on interest and production in the interim, within each sustainable pattern of specialization and trade.)

    So, WHICH IS MORE PARSIMONIOUS A THEORY?

    Which theory is easier to understand?

    Which theory is more obscurant?

    Which more accurately reflects reality?

    I can explain and demonstrate this theory to anyone with a ratio-scientific background. I know this because it is simply an advancement to Ostrom’s work on institutions and she was able to do so.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-29 06:08:00 UTC

  • MORE ON THE AXIOMATIC(CONSISTENT) VS THEORETIC(CORRESPONDENT) 1 – axiomatic (ind

    MORE ON THE AXIOMATIC(CONSISTENT) VS THEORETIC(CORRESPONDENT)

    1 – axiomatic (independent of action and observation) versus theoretic (action and observation)

    a) Axiomatic systems allow us to make statements independent of any correspondence with reality.

    b) Theoretical systems require us to make statements dependent upon correspondence with reality.

    c) It is universally possible to create axiomatic systems by copying theoretical statements.

    d) But it is not universally possible to create theoretical statements by copying axiomatic statements.

    2 – Testing against our perception in an empirical test. Not a logical one. If economic statements are reduced to human actions which we can observe, then we are not in fact making a logical test, but an empirical one.

    3 – What separates economics from the other sciences, (where science means observation) is that we can sense and perceive changes in state without the use of instrumentation. That does not mean that because we do not require instrumentation, we are not making observations. Introspection is still observation. Our statements are not logical, they are empirical because they are based upon that form of observation we call introspection.

    4 – Praxeology, if it’s a science, cannot depend on axiomatic statements since sciences are not axiomatically based, but theoretically based. But if we claim it is axiomatic then it does not require observation and if it does not require observation than must include a prohibition on introspection as a means of testing, and that all such tests are truth or false independent of our sense perception.

    5 – metaphysics states that reality is deterministic or knowledge of the universe is impossible. This stipulation required prior theory or axiom. Reason is impossible without it. We must assume regularity of the universe, even if we tend to construct history in retrospect for our ease of use.

    BACKWARDS

    Mises got it backwards. Economics is an observational science which we have the power of introspection to test. We can, from those observations both introspective and external, We can test the rationality of any statement (it’s truth content) but we cannot deduce much of anything from it. Because complex properties of action are emergent and impossible to forecast.

    Kant was an intellectual criminal, and the continental and cosmopolitan schools have done nothing to help us eliminate obscurantism and pseudoscience favored by the left. In fact, All the triumvirate have seemed to want to do is create yet another pseudoscience.

    I can’t save Hoppe unless I can fix this problem. Otherwise our movement is done when he is. Either we reform this nonsense, or libertarianism dies as a continental and cosmopolitan pseudosciences like the rest of the 20th century pseudosciences, or we convert libertarian language from the pseudoscientific to the scientific.

    Science won. Cognitive science, experimental psychology, and empirical economics have provided all the insights. Meanwhile we’ve spent thirty to forty years now masturbating with a pseudoscience only an autistic moron could possibly fall for.

    Time for libertarians to grow up.

    If you can’t answer my objections above, with statements of human action you’re just a sucker for pseudoscience. Because that’s what Praxeology is. It doesn’t have to be. But that’s what it is.

    LIBERTARIANS OUGHT TO STUDY MORE THAN “SCRIPTURE”. Because while knowledgable about economics, libertarians tend to be absolutely ignorant of anything outside the approved canon. I gain more understanding of the autistic nature of libertarians every day. Even though I’m one of them. I see that the lack of empathic comprehension applies to all disciplines.

    Time to grow up kiddies.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 18:47:00 UTC

  • MISES IS A KANTIAN SHOULD WE CONVICT HIM OF CONSPIRACY TOO? Innovations are good

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/no_author/hoppe-is-hot/IF MISES IS A KANTIAN SHOULD WE CONVICT HIM OF CONSPIRACY TOO?

    Innovations are good. Better innovations are better. And, yes, Mises made an innovation, but the expository and explanatory power of the deductive and axiomatic method is LESS than the expository and explanatory power of the ratio-empirical method – not more.

    Congratulating Mises on improving Kant, who was probably the single greatest contributor to philosophical obscurantism and the destruction of reason in human history, is hardly a compliment. Its an accusation of conspiracy. (See Rand on Kant. Kantian pseudoscience is part of the reason the libertarian project from the continent has failed.)

    Hoppe’s argument is stated within the context of economic action. He is arguing that economics is purely deductive rather than like all other ‘sciences’ a mixture of:

    (a) the limits of our biological ability to perceive in real time,

    (b) a theory describing a general rule,

    (c) the use of logic to test the internal consistence of the theory,

    (d) and instrumental tests that replicate and falsify the theory

    But he misunderstands (or intentionally mischaracterizes) the development of theories. There is no point in retesting them if they’ve been sufficiently tested and criteria for falsification defined. We can develop economic laws just like we can develop physical laws. But we cannot develop economic axioms because axioms are not required to be correspondent with reality, while theories are – and human action exists in reality.

    Philosophy itself, when expressed operationally, as action (realism), rather than as analogy (platonism etc), or as experience (phenomenalism etc), results in a statement of the ratio-empirical method. The philosophy of action is science, not rationalism, precisely because only science requires demonstration of action. Reason does not. Reason is a continental attempt to conflate authority, morality and reason as a reaction to ratio-empircal science, and commercial morality which would upset the hierarchy as it has in the anglo countries.

    It’s nonsense though. Economics, and human action, are empirical sciences that may, for the purposes of convenience be reduced to laws that are expressible in axiomatic terms. But axiomatic systems are not dependent upon external correspondence, and as such economics cannot under any circumstances be reduced to a logic. It is a science. It is the most challenging science because it lacks causal relations but it is a science born of observation, reducible to theories, we can use as laws, but these laws are not equivalent to axioms because axioms are not bounded by reality.

    Period.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 16:05:00 UTC

  • LOGIC VS SCIENCE (on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)

    LOGIC VS SCIENCE

    (on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)

    So, if the defining property of the discipline of science is observation, and praxeology is purely deductive independent of observation, then how can praxeology honestly be termed a science? It cannot. Praxeology can be defined as a logic, but not a science. Formal Logic and mathematics are branches of logic that produce proofs, but not truths. Truth, to have any universal meaning at all must mean correspondence to reality with increasingly weaker definitions in niche application as we move into various branches of logic.

    Yet while truth is constrained by reality, axiomatic systems are not constrained by reality. We may produce theories, and rigid theories at that, but correspondence with reality is never axiomatic – axioms are limited to internal consistency. We are certainly missing a logic of cooperation with which to repair ethics. (I think I have articulated the criterion for that logic as voluntary transfer, symmetrically informed, warrantied, and free of externality.) But, I do not yet understand why we require a logic of action – or if there is any value in such a thing. But regardless of that question, logics are not identical to sciences and sciences not identical to logics, any more than proofs are identical to truths, or axioms identical to theories.

    We may pretend for amusement purposes that human actions are, by analogy, functionally axiomatic rather than functionally theories in a given context, but this is a mere pretense. Theoretic systems must retain correspondence with reality, while axiomatic systems are not bound by correspondence with reality. Human actions occur within reality and are bounded by reality. Axiomatic systems are imaginary and are only bounded by imagination. For this reason human actions can only be theoretically constructed as correspondent with reality, just as logical systems can only be axiomatically constructed.

    As such axiomatic systems tell us only about the internal consistency of our statements, and theoretical systems tell us only about the external correspondence of our theories – but not the internal consistency of our descriptions of those theories. If we use both tests of internal consistency and tests of external correspondence, and our statements are demonstrably valid proofs, and our theories are demonstrably valid tests, and both proofs and theories are stated operationally, then we can attest to the truth of our theories.

    And the only means by which we can subjectively test either axiomatic or theoretic statements is to reduce them to analogies to experience, by stating them in operational sequence – which we call “Constructionism”.

    If we cannot test the internal consistency or our arguments and external correspondence of our actions, then we cannot EVER honestly attest that our theories are true to our knowledge and understanding.

    This is the only standard of truth for any theory that I know of: attestation. If a theory is both externally correspondent, internally consistent, operationally stated, and falsifiable, then to our current knowledge that theory as stated is true – one can attest to its truth, and not commit unethical attestation. This does not mean that the theory cannot be improved upon. But it means one’s attestation about it is true. And that is the best that we can ever hope for.

    There is a great difference between a true theory and a complete theory. At some point any theory must evolve into a tautology, at which point one cannot attest to one’s hypothesis (theory, conjecture). Than is non-sensical. So a theory free of attestation is merely complete – tautological. Identical. Not correspondent dependent upon attestation ‘true’, nor imaginary and proven ‘proof’.)

    Getting closer. It should be possible, if difficult, to follow that argument. I bet within six months I can get lightbulbs to come on. Not quite there yet. But very close. This approach reduces all statements to human actions and truth to attestation rather than the platonic.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 15:45:00 UTC

  • ADDING KANT TO HISTORY’S MOST DESTRUCTIVE MINDS I’m going to add Kant (obscurant

    ADDING KANT TO HISTORY’S MOST DESTRUCTIVE MINDS

    I’m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).

    Intellectual Sainthood

    – Aristotle

    – Machiavelli

    – Bacon, Newton and Leibniz

    – Smith, Hume and Jefferson

    – Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;

    – Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.

    – Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb

    Now, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.

    Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.

    Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 11:07:00 UTC

  • SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT (mix of modern and postmodern) (worthy o

    http://www.edge.org/responses/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirementWHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT

    (mix of modern and postmodern) (worthy of repost)

    I’m glad that we see postmodernism slowly dissipating from the domain of science. But there are still a few holdouts.

    Otherwise this series of opinions is some of the most thought provoking. Not in terms of the future. But in terms of the illusions that we have had in the past.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-19 11:55:00 UTC

  • create theories. run tests. analyze the results. revise theories. doesn’t matter

    create theories. run tests. analyze the results. revise theories.

    doesn’t matter if its science, business or politics. it’s all the same.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-11 12:47:00 UTC

  • If you want to get rid of mysticism and pseudosciences like freudianism, marxism

    If you want to get rid of mysticism and pseudosciences like freudianism, marxism, scientific socialism, Postmodernism, then you also have to get rid of Continental Philosophy, Cosmopolitan Philosophy, Rights theory, Austrian Economics and Praxeology.

    And if you do that you will also by consequence get rid of mathematical and logical platonism, and the much of cheap mathematical physics.

    That is the price of honest politics.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-11 09:31:00 UTC

  • CAN WE DEVELOP A PILL FOR NEURO AND SYNAPTOGENESIS? What if we can encourage neu

    CAN WE DEVELOP A PILL FOR NEURO AND SYNAPTOGENESIS?

    What if we can encourage neurogenesis and synaptogenesis? Can we break the brain size problem?

    Not just anti-depressants, but nootropics: increasing synaptogenesis and neurogenesis. Or conversely, discovering what is prohibiting ITGB3 and necessary synaptogenesis and neurogenesis?

    –“..in order to make up for the lull in SER.T, more ITGB3 is produced, which then goes to work in bolstering synaptogenesis and neurogenesis, the true culprits behind depression. “There are many studies proposing that antidepressants act by promoting synaptogenesis and neurogenesis,” Gurwitz says. “Our work takes one big step on the road for validating such suggestions.”–

    (from David Gurwitz and Noam Shomron , Tel Aviv University in Israel)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-09 06:52:00 UTC

  • DECLINE The author and the commenters are, I think, not clearly stating the dist

    http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/03/if-you-dont-believe-that-intelligence.htmlIQ DECLINE

    The author and the commenters are, I think, not clearly stating the distribution problem. Those of us at the top remain constant or decline, while tho se at the bottom breed faster.

    Liberals are more selfish and breed less.

    Conservatives are less selfish and breed more, while preserving the absolute nuclear family.

    The bottom classes just breed a lot more by not preserving the absolute nuclear family.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-09 05:59:00 UTC