Category: 3.3-Epistemology

3.3-Epistemology · 3.6-Politics

Decreasing The Error, Bias, And Deceit, To Identify Cheaply Opportunities To Seize

Curt Doolittle1 Comment

The political questions we face are very different if we seek to eliminate error, bias, and deceit, rather than if we seek to identify optimums by which to obtain discounts. People will seize the discounts no matter what. the problem is in decreasing the error, bias, and deceit, so that those opportunities are more readily visible. It’s not that we should ignore error bias and deceit so we must constantly thrash through them to find the opportunities amidst the clutter.

3.3-Epistemology

Epistemology is a Simple Thing (Really)

Curt Doolittle1 Comment

(propertarianism) (core)

Recipes describe actionable knowledge that we can use to transform state.

Theories describe an Opportunity Field.

There exists only one epistemological method for the discovery of recipes and theories:

– Observation->perception,
– Free association-> wayfinding,
– Hypothesis->construction,
– Theory->survival from criticism,
– Law->survival in the market for criticism,
– Habituation -> survival,
– Metaphysical inclusion -> replication.

Within this method we find special cases of the epistemological method: non-contradiction, apriorisms, simplicity – in the same way we discover special cases of prime numbers – and for the same reason: coincidence of simplicities amidst the chaos of possibilities.

But we eventually run low on simplicities at any given level of precision, and must develop new logical and physical and moral instrumentation in order to obtain sufficient information to discover more simplicities at greater precision.

All the while defending against our tendencies to engage in error, bias,wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, pseudoscience, pseudorationalism, pseudo-moralism, and deceit.

To warranty our speech against the dark forces of error, bias, and deceit, we can test each existentially possible dimension – in which humans can act – against error, bias, and deceit.

– Categorical Consistency – identity
– Logical Consistency – internal correspondence
– Empirical Consistency – external correspondence
– Existential Consistency – operational correspondence
– Moral Consistency – reciprocal correspondence
– Scope Consistency – full accounting – dimensional correspondence.

This process constitutes the completion of the scientific method for the warranty of due diligence of one’s testimony in every domain of human inquiry without exception.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine

3.3-Epistemology · 3.4-Ethics · Uncategorized

Taleb vs Doolittle: Demanding Skin-in-the-Game vs Involuntary Warranty

Curt DoolittleLeave a comment

Nassim Taleb and I are working on the same problem, which we identified by similar means: designing models. He was inspired when he designed financial risk models, and I was inspired when I designed artificial intelligences for games in anticipation of the kind of warfare we are seeing emerge today.

I work bottom up (operationally), and Taleb works top-down (statistically). But this is the same problem from two ends of the spectrum. (He publishes books on the mass market to make money, I build software and companies for a limited number of partners and customers.) I want to find the mechanism and he wants to quantify the effect. But we are looking for the same thing. What is it?

Computers are useful in increasing our perceptions. The game of Life is an interesting software experiment in that if you vary the rate (time) you see different patterns emerge. If you vary the scale you see different patterns emerge. But in the end, these patterns, while they appear relatively random at slow (operationally observable) rates, turn out to be highly deterministic at faster ( consequentially observable) rates.

And this single experimental game tells us a lot about the human mind’s limits of perception. We see what we can, and the longer we observe the more consequential the patterns are that emerge, and the more deterministic is any system we observe.

We have all heard how few behaviors ants have but what kind of complexity emerges from it. During a vacation in southern Oregon one year I observed ducks for a few days as a way of distracting myself from business stress. Ducks are not smart like crows. They have just a few behaviors (intuitions is perhaps a better word). And their apparent complexities emerge from just those few behaviors. But if you watch them long enough you see machines that do about four or five things. And that’s all.

So, there is some limit to our perception underneath man’s behavior that is ascertainable: the metrics of human thought.

And I would suggestion without reservation that this research program is at least – if more – profoundly important than the research program into the physical structure of the universe.

This mathematics is achievable, but we don’t yet know how to go about it. And I am pretty certain that it’s a data collection problem: until we have vastly more data about our selves we probably cannot determine it. (emphasis on probably).

We may solve it by analogy with artificial intelligence. Or we may not. I suspect that we will. We will develop a unit of cognition wherein x information is required for every IQ point in order to create a bridge between one substantive network of relations and another.

But Taleb and I issue the same warning – although I think I have an institutional solution that can be implemented as formal policy and he has an informative narrative but no solution – as yet. Although his paper last year that shows just how extraordinarily large our information must be once we start getting into outliers.

We both use some version of ‘skin in the game’ as a guardianship against wishful thinking and cognitive bias. I use the legal term warranty and he uses the financial street name ‘skin in the game’ But the idea is the same.

In Taleb’s case, I think he is more concerned with stupidity and hubris as we have seen in the statistical (non-operational) financialization of our economy. Whereas I am more concerned with deception, as we have seen in the conversion of the social sciences to statistical pseudosciences in every field: psychology, sociology, economics, politics, and (as I have extended the scope of political theory) to group evolutionary strategy.

But whether top down or bottom up, statistical or pseudoscientific, skin in the game or warranty, hubris or deceit, the problem remains the same:

It is too easy for people in modernity to rely on pseudoscience in order to execute deceptions that cause us to consume every form of capital, from the genetic, to the normative, to the ethical and moral, to the informational (knowledge itself), to the institutional, to built capital, to portable capital, to money, to accounts, to the territorial, and destroying civilization, and in particular the uniqueness of western civilization in the process.

So to assert our ( Taleb and I) argument more directly: given that these people have put no skin in the game, and provided no warranty, but that we can impose upon them the warranty against their will for their malfeasance, what form of restitution shall we extract from them?

Territorial, physical, institutional, traditional, informational, normative, and genetic?

How do we demand restitution for what they have done?

How would you balance the accounts plus provide such incentive under rule of law that this would never happen again?

As for the Great Wars – all debts are paid.

Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine

3.3-Epistemology · Core · Uncategorized

What Does The Word ‘Is’ Mean? (The “Copula”)

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” I promise the subject exists as the experience of… “

The cat is black = “I promise if you look at the cat it will appear to reflect the color black to you, or anyone else that observes it.”

WHY DO I CARE? WHY DO YOU CARE?
If you cannot make your argument without the word ‘is’ then you are almost surely engaging in fallacy. Almost every criticism I receive is constructed out of conveniently self-deceptive confirmation bias using justificationary phrasings.
IS (EXISTS) REFERS TO:
1) Exists (identity)
3) Exists in this location or time (Space and Time)
2) Exists with this or these properties (Properties)
4) Exists with the properties of this class. (Categories)

We use the verb to-be for the same reason we give names to complex processes, and the same reason mathematicians call functions ‘numbers’: because it’s a verbal convenience that reduces our effort in organizing spoken words. ie:shortcuts.

MISUSE
We tend to misuse the verb ‘is’ in order
1) use the ‘verbal simplification’ of ‘is’ to obscure our lack of understanding of the subject matter – which if stated operationally would demonstrate our incompetence with the subject.
2) to equate that which is not equal in order to justify a fallacy.
3) conflate experience, action, and existence – which are three points of view. We do not conflate first, second and third person narration, so why would we conflate experience, action, and existence? We do so for a number of reasons not the least of which is to attribute to experiences the argumentative weight of actions or existence. In other words, to lie that an experience is a cost. (Although to women and beta males, untrained in mental discipline this solipsism seems to be a common defect they adhere to in order to preserve their illusions – almost always status related.)
4) All of the above: to obscure our ignorance, to equate as equal that which is not, and to conflate experience action and existence in order to attribute cost to the experience of emotions.

THE DISCIPLINE OF GRAMMAR IS BEHIND THE TIMES
The very reference to ‘joining’ or ‘the copula’ is archaic. All human language consists of the construction of sets of analogies to experience by the transfer of properties by analogies.

***The verb to be functions as a promise of perceivable properties***

Sure, grammar is helpful for teachers of the young that wish to explain word order, and usage, but word order and usage are different from meaning. We would be far better off in teaching grammar, logic, and rhetoric by reducing our study of language to it’s constituent parts of communication: analogies to experience through the use of category(set) and property.

It may be helpful teach the young grammatical usage by repetition(as a craft), but when we come to logic and rhetoric (adult conversation), and in particular argument (the pursuit of truth) then we can also teach grammar as the branch of logic that it is: sets and properties. Meaning that colloquial, craftsmanly, and logical language evolve with our abilities just as ethics evolve from imitative, to virtuous, to rules, to outcomes. Just as mathematics evolves from arithmetic, to accounting, algebra, to geometry and trigonometry, to calculus, to statistics. Just as science evolves from that which is observable(human scale), that which exists up to the limits of human scale(Newtonian), to that which exists beyond human scale (relativity), to that which exists at super and sub scales (the missing theory of everything).

So try to make your argument without the word ‘is’. Look at the paragraphs above and observe how infrequently I use it, and that those few times I do, I use it as reference to existential properties.

But then, it is not those of us who wish to advance false ideas that wish to study this technique, but those of us who wish to police the commons against the multitude of pollutions created by the wishful thinking and outright deceit of well meaning fools, and ill meaning craftsmen.

(chapter inclusion quality)

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine

3.3-Epistemology

A Hierarchy of Argumentative Truth

Curt Doolittle1 Comment

(very useful) (learning propertarianism)

[S]o, just take the next ten arguments that you run into (not by me, I have enough work to do, demonstrate your cunning elsewhere) try to categorize which level of truth the individual is relying upon to make his or her arguments. Once you do this a few times it will become natural for you.

1) MEANING (Awareness)
….True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship
2) PREFERENCE
….True enough for me to feel good about.
3) ACTIONABILITY
….True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.
4) MORALITY
….True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.
5) RATIONALITY
….True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.
6) DECIDEABILITY
….True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.
7) TRUTH
….True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.
8) TAUTOLOGY
….Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

Awareness, Preference, Actionability Morality, Rationality, Decidability, Truth(parsimony), Tautology.

3.3-Epistemology

The Costs of Truth

Curt Doolittle1 Comment

[T]RUTH, HONESTY, COSTS, JUSTIFICATION, CRITICISM

COSTS OF TRUTH
Hierarchy of Truths by internality to externality of costs.:
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 TRUTH

1) TRUTH: 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) TRUTHFULNESS: 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) HONESTY: 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.

….CATEGORIES OF HONESTY
….3.1 Demonstrated Preference: – Evidence of intuition, preference, opinion, and position as demonstrated by your actions, independent of your statements.

….3.2 Position: (criticism) – a theoretical statement that survives one’s available criticisms about external questions.

….3.3 Opinion: (justificationism) – a justified uncritical statement given the limits of one’s knowledge about external questions.

….3.4 Preference (rational expression) : a justification of one’s biases (wants).

….3.5 Intuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, uncriticized, response to information that expresses a measure of existing biases (priors).

JUSTIFICATION (SUPPORT) VS CRITICISM (SURVIVAL)

1) OBVERSE: We justify moral arguments given the requirement to preserve the disproportionate rewards of Cooperation, without which survival is nearly impossible. Law and Morality are Contractual, informationally complete, and open only to increases in precision – we know the first principles of cooperation.

2) REVERSE: We criticize intuitions, hypothesis, theories and laws to remove imagination, error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception from our imaginations in order to identify truth candidates. Reality is Non Contractual, informationally incomplete, and forever open to revision. We do not yet know the fist principles of the universe.

The reason it took us so long to identify the meaning of truth (Testimony) was that we evolved from moral and cooperative creatures, and we evolved science from moral and cooperative and therefore justificationary reasoning. However, now that we know the first principles of cooperation we can complete the evolution of physical science by adding to it the criticisms necessary for cooperative science:

Physical Science Criticisms
i. identity (category)
ii. internal consistency (logic)
iii. external correspondence (often called empirical testing)
iv. existential possibility (existence proof)
v. limits (falsification) (often called parsimony)

Additional Cooperative Science Criticisms:
vi. full accounting (prohibition on selection bias)
vii. morality (consisting of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers of property en toto)