When I went to Mises for the Austrian Scholars Conference the first time, I was struck dumb; first, by the incredible genius of the economic calculation argument, second by hoppe’s solution to the problem of institutions… But then equally by the failure to see that that BOTH Hayek and Mises were very close but wrong; the failure to grasp the importance of Popper’s contribution; the failure to grasp that no, the calculation issue was not ‘complete’.
I realized something was wrong with Rothbard fairly quickly. It took me a few years to understand what Mises had done wrong with Praxeology, and only recently how to solve it completely. Hoppe was right about just about everything, but still had both Rothbard’s and Mises’ errors. But even so, he’d managed to get it all right anyway. Which, to me, is an even greater statement of his brilliance. Although, I’m still frustrated by his fascination with Argumentation.
But it is this emphasis on experience and morality and preference instead of calculation that is everyone’s distraction. ( A topic that needs some reflection and exposition. And so I’ll return to it.)
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS AND REFORMATION
So strange. You know, there is this strange anti-computer-science bias in academia. But since the majority of intellectual revolution has come out of Mencius’ application of Austrian thought to conservatism, and my application of Austrian thought to libertarianism, while political science is fascinated by democracy, philosophy still squandering in the artifice of metaphysical pseudo-rationality, and mainstream economics is fascinated by growth and efficiency, and the left (literature) with obscurantism, pseudo-science, equality, diversity, and central control.
And since, computer science is the only discipline that intersects between theoretical constructs and human interaction directly, I kind of think that, empirically speaking, computer science has more right than math, and certainly more right than economics. And political science and social science don’t even register signal above noise.
Economics is a process of deduction from aggregation. Computer science is atomistic by its nature. It’s not deduction. It’s calculation. And therein lies an amazing difference in perception. We do not HAVE the economic data to tell us about human behavior at the level of atomicity we do with computers that interact with people on a daily basis. This teaches you about the hubris we must avoid when interacting with human beings.
Math is platonic. Economics is idealistic. Computer science understands ‘ignorance, bias, incentives, and the limits of calculation’. Which is probably why we solved the political problem and the other groups didn’t.
