The Movement Against Pseudoscience Continues
[T]heories of perception not fact. —“We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be either abandoned or reframed as theories about the effects of perceived inequality”— h/t bryan caplan http://www.nber.org/papers/w21174.pdf Source: (1) Curt Doolittle
Definitions: Truth, Truthfulness, and Honesty
[D]EFINITIONS OF TRUTH. TAUTOLOGICAL TRUTH: That testimony you give when you promising the equality of two statements using different terms: A circular definition, a statement of equality or a statement of identity. ANALYTIC TRUTH: The testimony you give promising the internal consistency of one or more statements used in the construction of a proof in an axiomatic(declarative)…
Running with Hayekian Scissors
PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION —Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies to more than just economic issues. It also applies to social issues.—- RE: http://ow.ly/Ln3uF [W]hile, as I’ve written before, I agree with the general argument that women sense some things and men others (and progressives, libertarians and conservatives different things as well)…
EducationWP
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Using Income as a Measure Is a Pseudoscientific Distraction
[T]he question is better served by how we spend our time, what we consume, and what we worry about, than any measure of income. Income is a poor proxy for measuring inter-temporal changes in consumption, and is only a useful measure of temporal asymmetry. What is for example, the cost of not fearing the soviet…
Territorial, Institutional, Normative, and Technological Competitive Value
(profound) [I]’ve been arguing for two decades that we have had 500 years of ‘unusual’ as we spread the voluntary organization of production around the world (often by force), and conquered and exploited two new continents. And that what we see is the new normal. There aren’t enough asymmetries to exploit any longer to maintain…
The Cost of Learning Propertarianism
(worth repeating) [P]ropertarianism is like learning any other formal logic. It is non-trivial. But what you get from the effort of learning it is explanatory power. Unfortunately I am a much better philosopher than a teacher, or it would be easier to understand. Also, I’m just finishing it, so you’re trying to learn mid-stream. If…
The Most Profound 1000 Words You Can Read On Political Philosophy Today.
(worth repeating) [A]ll, Thank you for asking me to respond. I didn’t respond on LessWrong’s site because (honestly) I thought it was a rather pointless argument. But I’ll convert it from signaling (the author’s criticism and somewhat humorous demonstration of signaling), from moral to scientific language and I think it will be clearer: 1) All…
To Nassim Taleb re: A Decline in Violence is Not a Decline in Predation – But A Shift.
[N]assim (re: violence) I’d like to add an economist’s point of view: that the use of the term ‘violence’ is obscurant. (In my lexicon that is equivalent to pseudoscientific). Humans engage in a vast spectrum of parasitism whenever possible, and in production only when easy or necessary. Parasitism can be performed by violence, theft, fraud,…
Paining John Quiggin Over His Pseudoscientific Definition of Economics.
[I ]am singling out John Quiggin here. And singling him out, perhaps unfairly, because like anyone else, he is an econometrician flirting with philosophy that is far over his head – a mistake we all make in assuming skills are portable. But we all need examples, and this is an excellent example of someone attempting to justify…
Updating Our Ancient Trinity: Truth, Beauty and Morality
[T]he greeks just couldn’t figure out what they meant by “Goodness”. But, I have. It’s productivity on the Obverse, and prohibition of free riding on the Reverse. It’s do not unto others that you wold not have done unto you: impose no cost is the fee for entry into the fruits of the commons, and heroism:…
Our Classes
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Why Are Americans So Proud Of Their History When The Usa Has A Shorter History Compared To Some Other Countries In The World?
(a) Because we invented a new form of culture: a purely commercial one, absent of hierarchy.(b) Because we invented a new form of constitution and government by adapting the British to this new commercial culture.(c) Because we did not fall to the european suicide by internecine warfare (even if the brits suckered us into both…
Traditionalists Will Fail. But We Can Still Succeed
[C]onservatism, has failed because the enlightenment fallacy of an aristocracy of everyone could never come into being. Darwin put an end to it. We tried to turn our ancient aristocratic ethics into social science, but the european civil war exterminated Germany, where all our conservative aristocratic thought originated. Then the left created a pseudoscience to…
The Evolution of Suppression of Free Riding
[E]volution: 1) Higher Income reduces opportunity costs and risk (liberalism). Lower income increases opportunity cost and risk(conservatism). 2) Economic velocity is produced by the centralization of rents, which lowers local (productive) transaction costs at the expense of high total cost (taxation). 3) Once rents are centralized, we seek to obtain or privatize (redistribute) those rents…
Capitalism and the Capitalist System?
[A]ll Social, economic and political orders require: (1) The suppression of predation and parasitism, (2) the establishment of an allocation of property, (3) a construction of a means of resolving disputes, and; (4) a means by of organization of production. Totalitarian: It can be organized involuntarily: the elimination of private property, planning and slavery in…
The Demographics of Gun Ownership
A CORRELATIVE ANSWER, THEN THE CAUSAL ANSWER The Correlative Answer: Part 1: Social StructureNorthern Europeans above the Hanjal Line (The North Sea Peoples who successfully out-bred) sometimes referred to as the Protestant Peoples) retain an ancient set of traditions requiring all men to obtain legitimacy and honor (equal status) through participation in the militia, and…
The Operational Revolution
(important piece) [O]ne can describe events subjectively (how we feel about them); one can describe them objectively (how we observe others), and; one can describe them operationally (by the actions taken). One of the most useful methods of overloading, framing, and loading is to describe a process subjectively. Hence why physical scientists write operationally, why mathematics…
How Do You Enterprise Capitalism?
This is an illogical question. How do you “Fast” the color “Green”. It makes no sense. Capitalism is the voluntary organization of production through the use of private property, contract, law, money, prices, accounting, and interest. And the use of and reward for use of resources is allocated to those who most satisfy the demand…
What Is Capitalism?
The suppression of predation and parasitism, the establishment of an allocation of property, a means of resolving disputes, and the organization of production must be constructed. Totalitarian: It can be organized involuntarily: the elimination of private property, planning and slavery in many of its forms. Capitalist: It can be organized voluntarily by the use of…
Why Were All The Polls In The 2015 Uk General Election So Different From The Results?
THE CORRECT ANSWER Nate Silver is probably the world’s leading analyst of polls. His opinion, stated yesterday, is that –“The World May Have A Polling Problem,” Silver asserted. “In fact, it’s become harder to find an election in which the polls did all that well.” Silver went on to cite four examples where the polls…
The New Reconstruction of British and North Sea History
[O]ne of the great civilizations of human pre-history. A center not an outlier. Reincarnation. An underworld. Oak Trees Planted Upside down. The Hearth. Homes built around hearths. Stone circles built around homes. Feats of public engineering. A bronze age industrial revolution. The intentional destruction of our Priest-Judges and our civilization by Rome. The consequent destruction…
Is Philosophy Empty?
[I] can answer this question I think, as well or better than anyone living. (Despite the obscurant framing of the question.) 1) Rationalism and justification were dead ends. Theory and criticism have replaced rationalism and justification. We can justify contract, and therefore moral action, but we cannot justify truth. We can construct proofs of internal…
Life is Good
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Raise The Cost Of Tyranny Through Violence
[T]he only way to obtain liberty is to raise the cost of tyranny, just as the only means of constructing property is to raise the cost of parasitism. We can raise costs by a) gossip – meaning shaming, b) economic ostracization – meaning boycott, and c) violence. a) does not work for obvious reasons –…