Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • ABSOLUTELY TRUE OR TRUE? —“Is the term ‘absolutely true’ necessary? Or, is the

    ABSOLUTELY TRUE OR TRUE?

    —“Is the term ‘absolutely true’ necessary? Or, is the use of ‘absolutely’ extraneous?”– A Friend

    Great Question.

    Well, it’s extraneous in fact among professionals. But the problem is we use ‘true’ in the vernacular as a general category conflating all sorts of claims (including ‘true for me’ – which is absurd).

    So when I hear it I understand that you mean “Truth Proper” as in “analytic truth” in logic and mathematics, “Ideal Truth” when in the context of rational statements, and “Truthful” when in the context of the physical sciences.

    And I suspect most people who have some skill in this field would do the same if you gave them a survey, and asked “if I say the words Absolutely True’ does that mean (a, b, c, d).” And if you asked that question in giving a statement that conveyed the context I’m pretty sure again that they would choose the right ‘true’ accordingly.

    I think this is the right answer. It is unnecessary (and possibly confusing) when talking both in context, and to professionals in each discipline.

    The problem is that we often speak in audiences that do not know the difference in parsimony between analytic, ideal, and scientific truth. And we have some in our audiences that live under the postmodern influence that ‘what works’ to achieve my ends is ‘true’.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-29 16:58:00 UTC

  • A LOT OF TRUTH SCIENTIFIC METHOD (DUE DILIGENCE FOR TRUTH) Truth as used in scie

    A LOT OF TRUTH

    SCIENTIFIC METHOD (DUE DILIGENCE FOR TRUTH)

    Truth as used in science : the study of the elimination of ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit) by the construction of physical and logical methods of measurement that reduce the imperceptible and incomparable and undecidable to that which is perceivable, comparable, and decidable given the limits of human ability.

    D]EFINITIONS OF TRUTH.

    1 – [T]RUTH: That testimony (description) you would give, if your knowledge (information) was complete, your language was sufficient, stated without error, cleansed of bias, and absent deceit, within the scope of precision limited to the context of the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possessed of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.

    2 – [T]RUTHFULNESS: that testimony (description) you give if your knowledge (information) is incomplete, your language is insufficient, you have performed due diligence in the elimination of error, imaginary content, wishful thinking, bias, and deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and which you warranty to be so; and the promise that another possessed of the knowledge, performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.

    3 – [H]ONESTY: that testimony (description) you give with full knowledge that knowledge is incomplete, your language is insufficient, but you have not performed due diligence in the elimination of error and bias, but which you warranty is free of deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.

    4 – [D]emonstrated Preference: – Evidence of intuition, preference, opinion, and position as demonstrated by your actions, independent of your statements.

    5 – [P]reference (rational expression) : a justification of one’s biases (wants).

    6 – [P]osition: (criticism) – a theoretical statement that survives one’s available criticisms about external questions.

    7 – [O]pinion: (justificationism) – a justified uncritical statement given the limits of one’s knowledge about external questions.

    8 – [I]ntuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, uncriticized, response to information that expresses a measure of existing biases (priors).

    THE DEMAND FOR TRUTH

    1 – True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship

    2 – True enough for me to feel good about myself.

    3 – True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.

    4 – True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.

    5 – True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.

    6 – True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.

    7 – True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.

    8 – Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

    CATEGORIES OF FALSEHOOD

    1 – ignorance

    2 – error

    3 – bias

    4 – wishful thinking

    5 – suggestion

    6 – obscurantism

    7 – fictionalism (PseudoMythology/Theology, Pseudorealism/Idealism, Pseudorationalism, Pseudoscience)

    8 – deceit.

    THE SPECTRUM OF TRUE TO FALSE

    +5 – The Analytically True (Tautological). Logical

    +4 – Apodictically True (non contradictory) Rational

    +3 – The (ideally) True (most parsimonious possible in human language) Rational and Scientific

    +2 – The truthful (that which we have performed due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit, by the tests of consistency in the categorical, logical, empirical, operational, rational-incentive, reciprocal-moral, and fully accounted.)

    +1 – The truth candidate (that which we have not yet found false but have not yet fully exposed to due diligence)

    0 – The undecidable (that which we can say is neither true nor false nor possible)

    -1 – The False candidate ( which which is possible in the process of failing due diligence)

    -2 – The Falsified (that which has failed due diligence and cannot be otherwise than false.)

    -3 – The (ideally) False (the most parsimonious possible in human language)

    -4 – The Analytically False (Self Contradictory)

    DIMENSIONS OF ACTIONABLE REALITY

    1 – categorical (identity)

    2 – logical (internal consistency)

    3 – empirical ( correspondence. external consistency.)

    4 – operational (existential, temporal, experiential consistency )

    5 – rational (rational choice given incentives at the time)

    6 – moral (fully reciprocal: productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of imposition upon others by externality.)

    7 – scope (fully accounted – without cherry picking)

    DUE DILIGENCE NECESSARY FOR WARRANTY OF TRUTHFULNESS

    1) Have we achieved identity? Is it categorically consistent?

    2) Is it internally consistent? Is it logical? Can we construct a proof(test) of internal consistency?

    3) Is it externally correspondent, and sufficiently parsimonious? Can we construct a proof (test) of external correspondence.

    4) Is it existentially possible? Is it operationally articulated? Can we construct a proof (test) of existential possibility? And is it free of imaginary content when we articulate it as such?

    5) is it a rational choice by an actor at the moment in time with the information at his disposal?

    6) Is it morally constrained? Does it violate the incentive to cooperate? (Meaning, are all operations productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers, free of negative externality of the same criterion?)

    7) Is it fully accounted? Do we account for all costs to all capital in all temporal and inter-temporal dimensions? (Have we avoided selection bias?) Can we construct a proof (test) of full accounting? (Is information lost or artificially gained?) Is it limited? Do you know it’s boundaries (falsification)

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-29 14:35:00 UTC

  • TRUTH: ENDING SPECIAL PLEADING IN EVERY SINGLE DISCIPLINE (excerpt) So just as w

    TRUTH: ENDING SPECIAL PLEADING IN EVERY SINGLE DISCIPLINE

    (excerpt)

    So just as we prohibit special pleading in theology, just as we eliminate special pleading in philosophy, if we eliminate special pleading in logic (the study of constant properties of categories and sets), an if we eliminate special pleading in mathematics (the study of constant relations between types), we are reduced to existential (testimonial or performative) truth as used in science (the study of the elimination of ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit) by the construction of physical and logical methods of measurement that reduce the imperceptible and incomparable and undecidable to that which is perceivable, comparable, and decidable.”

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-29 14:16:00 UTC

  • I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME IN MATH AND LOGIC USING SPECIAL PLEADING. 😉

    I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME IN MATH AND LOGIC USING SPECIAL PLEADING. 😉

    —“We are talking about logic and mathematics; areas where American low quality of education and rhetoric is irrelevant.

    All Statements are: (either True or False)

    Whether a statement is undecidable in a system is irrelevant; it is still a statement and thus either T or F. End of story

    No amount of poor education from you; knowing no significant logic or mathematics will change that.

    As an aside if you foolishly imagine that all of math is either trivial or tautologous then why have you not presented your proofs of : Fermat’s last theorem, The Continuum Hypothesis, Goldbachs Result

    I will tell you. It is because you do not even have a high school level of competence and your poor education is devoid of any significant logic and mathematics.”—- Robert Mosimann

    CURT’S RESPONSE

    That is very interesting because I have a far greater grasp of these things than you do, I am certain. Much of my work involves the falsification of the special pleading employed in mathematics and logic – and particularly the logic of ordinary language.

    Is it true that all statements can be demonstrated to be true or false? No. Because a proposition or statement must be decidably true or decidably false, otherwise it is undecidable. And if you understood Kripke in philosophy, and Goedel in mathematics, and even Poincare, Hilbert, Brouwer in math, and Bridgman in physics (and even Mises in economics) then you would know that. And that’s before we bring in Turing.

    Decidably true, and Decidably false both require our ability to decide

    The trope: [everything in this box is false] is undecidable. It is not true. It is not false. It is undecidable.

    So you might engage in special pleading (making excuses) which is common in philosophy, logic, and mathematics, but you cannot testify that an undecidable statement is false without employing special pleading and therefore falsifying your statement.

    At best, you can say, “In logic we are concerned only with deductibility, and we can only deduce from true(not false, not undecidable) statements, and therefore out of convention we attribute to the statement itself, that which is a property of its use in deducibility (service as a premise).”

    So just as we prohibit special pleading in theology, just as we eliminate special pleading in philosophy, if we eliminate special pleading in logic (the study of constant properties of categories and sets), an if we eliminate special pleading in mathematics (the study of constant relations between types), we are reduced to existential (testimonial or performative) truth as used in science (the study of the elimination of ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit) by the construction of physical and logical methods of measurement that reduce the imperceptible and incomparable and undecidable to that which is perceivable, comparable, and decidable.”

    4 – The Analytically True (Tautological).

    3 – The (ideally) True (most parsimonious possible in human language)

    2 – The truthful (that which we have performed due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit, by the tests of consistency in the categorical, logical, empirical, operational, rational-incentive, reciprocal-moral, and fully accounted.)

    1 – The truth candidate (that which we have not yet found false but have not yet fully exposed to due diligence)

    0 – The undecidable (that which we can say is neither true nor false nor possible)

    -1 – The False candidate ( which which is possible in the process of failing due diligence)

    -2 – The Falsified (that which has failed due diligence and cannot be otherwise than false.)

    -3 – The (ideally) False (the most parsimonious possible in human language)

    -4 – The Analytically False (Self Contradictory)

    The question then, is why does one need to employ and defend special pleading other than to hide behind a veil of ignorance or deceit?

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-29 14:16:00 UTC

  • IT’s not the nouns that” fool you” it’s the grammar – or rather, the absence of

    IT’s not the nouns that” fool you” it’s the grammar – or rather, the absence of grammar.

    Primary culprit behind which all fictions hide is the verb to be. If you eliminate it, then it’s extremely hard to create false equivalencies (which is what you’re describing). If you add operational grammar Meaning complete sentences that name actors, objects, actions, transformations, and consequences, then it is almost impossible to state an undetectable false equivalency. If in addition you require any noun or verb be stated as a member of a series, then it will be all but impossible to employ the pretense of knowledge.

    English is a high precision, low context language. That means it is burdensome, can be wordy, but can be very precise – if you use the language. But we tend to use substitution for either brevity, or to obscure our ignorance – which is which is only decidable if the person can state that which he states in brevity, in full sentences of operational grammar. In other words, if we deflate our sentences from approximations to names of actors, actions, and objects, it becomes almost impossible to state a falsehood.

    (see E-Prime, which I’m sure you’re aware of. See Operationalism int he scientific method, operationism in psychology, proofs in mathematics and logic, and the failed program of praxeology – operationalism in economics and ethics.)

    The problem is the grammar: what surrounds the noun and provides context and limits. Not the noun. A noun is just a name. A category if broad, a type if narrow, and an entity if unique. But the limits of that noun, whether category, type, or entity are provided by context (limits) produced by the grammar.

    So, I might go back to casting but suspicion on the noun, then saving the noun and blaming the grammar, and because of that, the speaker – because it is the speaker who exercises the pretense of knowledge without testing whether he knows of what he speaks (or reads), whenever he does not speak it in burdensome grammar – and instead he avoids that burdensome grammar, for the purpose of either brevity, approximation, pretense of knowledge, or outright deception.

    (if you note that last sentence you’ll see what I mean by the use of series to deflate a category into a spectrum.)

    -Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-28 13:26:00 UTC

  • COMPLETING THE RELATIVE REVOLUTION People had a very hard time transitioning fro

    COMPLETING THE RELATIVE REVOLUTION

    People had a very hard time transitioning from the selfish point of reference (geometry and justificationary truth) to the reciprocal point of reference (calculus and evolutionary epistemology) that the discourse on ‘freedom’ is likewise tapped in the selfish (static) point of reference, and that reciprocity and marginalism are lagging darwinism in adoption in the philosophical discourse (or that philosophical discourse is an unscientific prison just as theology was).

    As I understand it, (because these things have become very clear to me) the problem is that philosophy is the same kind of prison that was theology. And that the lessons of the 20th century (all logic is but tautology) is not yet learned.

    Once the fixed point of reference is eliminated, we have only relative frames to work with. This is the insight of calculus, darwinism, of marginalism, and of relativity – and of reciprocity.

    The fixed point of reference is merely an artifact of slow relative points of change at human scale. Beyond human scale, and in large numbers, at high causal density, we must seek measurements (reciprocity, survival, equilibria, lie groups/intermediary patterns) to test relative change.

    And that is just very hard for humans to learn without playing games on computers which allow us to model time at different rates.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-28 11:50:00 UTC

  • CAN WE MEASURE TRUTHFULNESS? (reposted to the main page for others to view) Degr

    CAN WE MEASURE TRUTHFULNESS?

    (reposted to the main page for others to view)

    Degrees of Precision In Truthfulness

    4 – Imagined = we imagine it is possible because we cannot reason that it is impossible.

    3 – Empirical = Correlative, observable, measurable (not quantifiable)

    2 – Narrative = Sympathetic (sequential, brevity).

    1 – Demonstrable = causal (descriptive, operational).

    0 – Perfect (ideal) Parsimony (Name(referrer) of transformation rules (referent). In other words, names of functions, and functions.

    The problem as I see it is that any narrative (form of brevity for the purpose of meaning) must both add information (sympathetic analogy for transfer of meaning by association) and remove information (operational detail overloading sympathetic analogy), thus leaving us with Names that refer to sequences (recipes) of operations (or natural transformations), or the sequences (recipes) for statements of Truthfulness (warrantied by due diligence of knowledge of Truth).

    Since all knowledge is fungible and justification impossible, I do not make the traditional error of categorizing knowledge as justified belief (confidence in knowledge). I treat every opportunity-for-knowledge (hypothesis) from identity through causality as knowledge and truthfulness and falsehood as a measure of it.

    I treat truth candidacy as an estimate by triangulation of the survival from due diligence under testimonialism – which unlike CR includes provides a checklist of due diligences (measures) for each dimension of reality, including costs of transformation – which we can use to compare estimates of truth. This differs from CP in that I am unable to falsify the hypothesis that cost of transformation is a proxy for opportunity cost, and therefore in matters physical(natural) and sentient(human), all other things being equal, appears (empirically and rationally) to inform CP if not solve it. Neither nature nor man refuse optimum opportunities. Nature cannot. Man appears not to. (he does err however.) I can find no existential counter examples. This roughly equates to the scientific method’s rational(logical) use of ‘parsimony’ and provides explanation for it.

    Justification is necessary in matters of the export of ethical and moral risk. So it’s not that justification has no value to man. Justification is how we defend both error (loss), and success (gain). But justification is a moral-ethical question, whereas adjudication (truth) exists independently of consequences.

    The fact that we must struggle to deflate our own behaviors in this way is indicative of our evolution as negotiating and cooperating creatures not tellers-of-truth. We evolved sympathy and utility. And truth is but a consequence of the pragmatism of negotiation.

    So to some degree I tend to think in terms of the truthfulness (survival from due diligence) of our knowledge, not ‘knowledge of truth’ (justification of our knowledge). But in practice they are the same thing from different sides of the coin: survival from due diligence against falsehood. I think I am more sensitive to this matter because CR/CP provide no means of measurement (deflation), whereas I have provided the same deflation in all possible dimensions of knowledge that has been applied to existential and pure relations by mathematics.

    I hope this is interesting for you. I don’t mean to change your mind, but merely to walk through it and see if you have criticisms, as well as to provide others with an education in what seems to be a fairly rare bit of expertise: the transition from justificationary(constructive) to evolutionary(survival) truth.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-28 10:17:00 UTC

  • NON PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY #1: “WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING”. This

    NON PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY #1: “WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING”.

    This is an illogical question – another pseudo-rational word game. A conflation of the ideal and the real. In order to ask this question, something must exist – namely the person asking the question – and we must be able to identify some ‘nothing’ to refer to. The word nothing, as far as I know, can only mean ‘nothing exists of consequence’ not the absence of existence. So, as far as I know, ‘nothing’ is impossible. In other words, nothing still requires existence (persistence) of whatever you call ‘nothing’ in contrast to ‘something’. I can’t imagine any ‘nothing’ that isn’t ‘something’ or a category of something within something. I can imagine various combinations of ignorance, error and falsehood. But I can’t imagine something that both exists (a referent of nothing) and does not exist at the same time. In other words, this is another problem of nonsense language. If operationally stated we find: “If I can perceive persistence, then why does that which I perceive persist? And so far we are at least close enough to an answer that we can say something always persists, the question is reducible to (a) what is its lifecycle? And (b) is that lifecycle unique, iterative, or a subset of a larger lifecycle?

    I keep a catalog of the kinds of bias and error man man suffers from in each era of his evolution of his knowledge. And if we subtract the theories reliant upon the errors and biases man suffers from, and leave only those theories that reflect constant simple observable laws of the universe, then the universe is merely constructed from a portfolio of positive and negative forces that act upon one another, and is constructed of a regular geometry of those forces little different from the ordinary universe we perceive at human scale, with the remote possibility that some of those forces propagate at speeds different from (both faster and slower) than the electromagnetic spectrum that we are currently able to react to and act upon.

    The error (evil) of platonism (Idealism) exists everywhere, just like the other forms of fictionalism. But just as categories must be tested by logic, and logic tested by correspondence, and correspondence tested by operations, and operations tested by full accounting, fictionalism cannot survive tests of operational construction. Whether that fictionalism be the supernatural(pseudo mythical), the ideal (pseudo-real), the pseudo-rational, or the pseudo-scientific. The reason all those forms of fictionalism exist, is simply the failure to fully test the available dimensions against ignorance, error, bias and deceit.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-27 20:00:00 UTC

  • “To report not on facts, but instead on narratives that yield high ratings, is e

    “To report not on facts, but instead on narratives that yield high ratings, is exactly the definition of fake news,” said James O’Keefe. “We said we are going after the media, and there is a lot more to come.”

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-27 17:28:00 UTC

  • MY VIEW OF TRANSCENDENCE: TRANSCENDENCE IN FACT —” high trust methods of scien

    MY VIEW OF TRANSCENDENCE: TRANSCENDENCE IN FACT

    —” high trust methods of scientific testimony “—

    Well yes, you are correctly defining my objective.

    How about my version of transcendence, a higher plane of existence, and a higher experience, and ‘godhood’, is one different from the synthetic(drugs), the submissive(divine), the unburdened(occult) the immune(buddhist), and the real(stoic) and that is agency(power/reason): transcendent in fact in the next, not pretense of transcendence in the present.

    So lets say that of the experiences of transcendence I am proposing an additional way. and that it is the only way that is not an illusion in the present, but an achievable fact in the future.

    If I work very hard I can reach a certain state – a state which all other specialists in the technique describe and pursue. A frictionless state of experience where we are free of the frailty of our reason. the question is, which experiences do you seek to free the base of the reptile? the social of the pack? the intelligence of the human? And do you seek freedom FROM something, or freedom of limitations to do something. Do you seek exit or agency?

    I understand what Gautama Buddha was looking for. I can understand what the most disciplined and pious are looking for. I can understand what the lost-lamenting catholics are looking for. I can understand what the german idealists are looking for.

    But there are good ideas and bad ideas, there are good gods and bad gods, and good means of transcendence bad means of transcendence, because those gods and those means of transcendence either produce transcendence by agency or not. And those that do not are no different from shooting heroin. They provide the feeling without the achievement.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-06-27 17:05:00 UTC