DUE DILIGENCE
Science: A Warranty of Due Diligence
SCIENCE: The use of logical and physical instrumentation for the purpose of eliminating ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion and obscurantism, Fictionalism and deceit from our free-associations by the systematic deflation and attempted falsification (survival) from criticism in eight dimensions of actionable reality: categorical, logical, empirical, operational, rational, reciprocal, fully accounted including scope and limits – and coherent across those dimensions.
Science is a moral discipline wherein we criticize our ideas, so that we can speak them truthfully:
— We test our categories using differences to eliminate conflation.
— We test our reasoning with logic for internal consistency.
— We test our observations with external correspondence.
— We test the existence of our premises with operations.
— We test the rationality and volition of choice through sympathy
— We test the reciprocity and volition of choice through changes in capital
— We test the scope of our theory with falsifications.
Once we have tested our theories by these means, then we can say that we speak truthfully – and as such do no harm.
The central argument regarding truth:
1) That in order to cooperate, humans evolved sympathy for intent – and are marginally indifferent in their judgment of intentions. This allows us to sympathetically test most human incentives if subject to the same stimuli (information). It is also why juries can functions, since this sympathetic testing of intentions is the criteria by which juries render decisions.
2) That however, we cannot sympathize with the first principles of the physical universe – the equivalent of intentions. So while we intuit and can test man’s intentions, we cannot measure and test the universe’s first principles. As such, the best we can do is testify to observations and measurements of those phenomenon until at some point we know those first principles – if that is ever possible.
3) But our observations must also be reduced to stimuli that can be sympathetically tested by others, and insulated from our deception, bias and error.
4) We call this process ‘science’, but the practice of science is little more than a set of moral rules that instruct us as to how to eliminate deception, bias and error. The scientific method then, is merely a moral discipline: the means by which we struggle to speak the truth, as truthfully as we may possibly accomplish given the frailty of our reason.
5) That giving witness to one’s observations, is testable by reproduction of a set of operational definitions. That operational definitions produce the equivalent of names, just as positional numbering provides quantities with names. Such names are insulated from deception, distraction, loading, framing and overloading. Theories are not. While we cannot demonstrate the absolute parsimony of a theory (that we know of), we can demonstrate that we truthfully conveyed our observations. In other words, we can testify truthfully to an ordered set of facts, even if we cannot testify truthfully to parsimony of a theory.
6) That it is possible to state instead that all outputs of scientific investigation are truthful, if they are truthfully represented – where ‘scientific investigation” refers to the use of the scientific method, regardless of field of inquiry. But that we seek the most parsimonious statement of a theory, and we can never know that we have obtained it, we can only develop consensus that we cannot cause it to fail. This is, as far as I know, the best non-platonic description of truth available. Everything else is a linguistic contrivance for one purpose or another – possibly to obscure ignorance, and possibly to load ideas with moral motivation. Scientists load their contrivance of truth, and mathematicians load their contrivance of numbers, limits, and a dozen other things – most of which obscure linguistic ‘cheats’ to give authority to that which is necessary for the construction of general rules. (ie: the problem of arbitrary precision).
7) That Popper did no investigation into science or the history of science prior to making his argument, and that as yet, we do not have a systematic account of the history of science. However, what history we do have, both distant and recent, is that science operates by criticism upon failure, where failure is demonstrated by via overextension of the theory.
8) The reason for overextension rather than criticism as the operational preference being that it is economically inefficient (expensive) to pursue criticism rather than to extend a theory to its point of failure then criticize it. And as far as we know, this is how science functions in practice, and must work, because it is how all human endeavors must work. Because while a small number of scientists may seek the ‘truth’ (or whatever a Platonist means by it), what scientists try to do is solve problems – i.e. to manufacture recipes for useful cognition.
9) Popper’s advice was merely moral given that the scope of inquiry in all human fields had surpassed that of human scale, where tests are subjectively verifiable. (I think this is an important insight because it occurred in all fields.) Einstein for example, operationalized observations (relative simultaneity for example) over very great distances approaching the speed of light using Lorenz transformations. And as Bridgman demonstrated, the reason Einstein’s work was novel was because prior generations had NOT been operationalizing statements ,and as such, more than a generation and perhaps two were lost to failure of what should have been an obvious solution. (See the problem of length, which I tend to refer to often as the best example.) I addressed this in a previous post, and what popper did was give us good advice, and while he made an argument that appears logical, like most rational arguments, unsupported by data, it is not clear he was correct, and in fact, it appears that he was not. The question is not a rational but empirical one. (Note: I seek to codify this moral insight into law. Thus ending all deception by not only Fictionalism, but all other means.)
10) Popper unlike Misesian Pseudoscience, or Rothbardian Immoral Verbalisms, was engaged in a moral attempt both in politics and in science, and perhaps in science as a vehicle for politics, to prevent the pseudoscientific use of science – particularly by fascist and communists, to use the findings of science as a replacement for divine authority by which to command man. What popper did, particularly with his Platonism, was to remove the ability for the findings of science to be used as justification for the removal of human choice. Popper, Mises, and Hayek were responsible for undermining pseudoscientific authoritarianism. Of the three Popper is perhaps less articulate (possibly to obscure his objective), but certainly not wrong, so to speak. While Mises’ appeal to authoritarianism (which is part and parcel of his Jewish culture) was entirely pseudoscientific, by claiming that economics was deductive rather than empirical, and justifying it under a priorism, instead of as I’ve stated, understanding that he was merely trying to apply operationalism to economic activity, which would merely demonstrate that Keynesian economics was immoral and deterministic, not unscientific.
11) But Popper, Mises, Hayek, Bridgman and Brouwer, did not find a solution to restoring the western aristocratic conditions for public speech. They too were a lost in Platonism a bit. Bridgman and Brouwer did understand that something was wrong, and were very close, but they could not make the moral argument. We have had a century now of attacks by verbal contrivance and we can demonstrate the destruction of our civilization by way of it. So the moral argument is no longer one of undemonstrated results. WE have the results. And we have a generation of men, myself included, trying to repair it.
One must speak truthfully, because no other truth is knowable. Intellectual products that are brought to market must be warrantied just as are all other products that are brought to market, and the warranty that you can provide is operational definitions (recipes, experience), not theories (psychologism, projections). And if you are not willing to stand behind your product then you should not bring it to market. Because you have no right to subject others to harm.
Intellectuals produce ideas (myself included), that is our product. We are paid in measly terms most of the time, for our product, but that is what we do. But it is no different from serving too-hot coffee or selling dangerous ladders, or manufacturing defective gas tanks – intellectuals do plenty of harm in history. Perhaps the most harm of all. Between Abraham, Paul of Tarsus and the Byzantine Emperors, Mohammed and his real author,; Marx, Boaz, and Freud, it is hard to envision any worse catastrophe perpetrated by man.
THEREFORE:
Why is it that the informational commons, and by consequence the political and normative commons, are not – in an age of information – as subject to warranty and liability as pollution or harm to physical commons, life, body, and private property?
Truthfulness – testimony that has been subject to due diligence – is a non trivial cost. And economists are too happy (as it appears all social scientists have been) to produce defective products for personal gains, without the warranty that all other products have been subject to.
Why is it that free speech is not limited to free truthful speech? After all, the cost of producing truthful scientific testimony under due diligence and warranty is much higher than the cost of producing untruthful pseudoscientific testimony without due diligence or warranty. Doesn’t mere free speech without warranty of due diligence of truthfulness construct an impossibility under which the production of high cost truth and the production of low cost fantasy, bias, error and deceit must eventually win?
There is a great difference between the terms “empirical” (observable and measurable) and “scientific” of which empirical criticism is but a minor subset of the criterion necessary for the production of warranty of due diligence against fantasy, bias, error, and deceit.
We have had a century of economists running with intellectual scissors, causing inter-temporal externalities of profound consequence. And the Cosmopolitan (freshwater) rationalist’s justification of priors is only more visible than the mainstream Anglo empirical (Saltwater), justification of priors under the pseudoscience of Rawlsian Justificationism – itself a fascinating example of the logically impossible, yet pervasively persuasive.
So just as all enlightenment adaptations were plagued with errors – Anglo, French, German and Jewish – both freshwater and saltwater economics are plagued with pseudoscience. The freshwater try to justify objective morality, by argumentative construction (pseudoscience), and the saltwater try to justify immorality by intentionally failing to account for profound normative, institutional, civilizational, and genetic consequences (pseudoscience).
So it’s one thing for all of us to point the finger of the accusation of pseudoscience one place or another. But it is quite another to realize that the minute you draw the lens of truth upon either freshwater or saltwater economics, you will discover that both are pseudosciences that merely confirm ideological priors.
INNOVATION IN SCIENCE, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND TRUTH
In the last century intellectuals tried and failed to complete the scientific method and thereby create a test of non-falseness like we do in law. They couldn’t do it.
What I’ve done, because I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of my life working with “computable” systems – meaning that which is existentially possible to construct through a series of operations is supply the habits of strict operational construction with requirements for existential possibility, to the scientific method, and complete what those thinkers failed to discover.
KARL POPPER
Popper applied Jewish critique, (criticism), to science, as “falsificationism”. Meaning, the way to avoid pseudoscience is to require that a statement be falsifiable.
He did this because pseudoscience was rapidly expanding under the popularity of authoritarian socialism, as much as because he was simply interested in philosophy. He was trying to preserve intellectual cosmopolitanism (Jewish diasporism), and this culminated in his work “The Open Society” which is what Soros uses as his ‘plan’.
Now, in his efforts to correct science, he developed a set of ideas that I will try to reduce to these:
1) Falsification (critique, criticism) vs. Justificationism (excuses)
2) Critical Rationalism: we can know what is false but not what is true.
3) Critical Preference: we cannot know which theory is more likely true. there is no method of decidability.
4) Verisimilitude through Problem->Theory->Test
5) That science, by verisimilitude (markets), is conducted as a MORAL (social, normative) process, and that scientific discovery was accomplished by moral means.
BUT THIS IS THE PROBLEM
Unempirical: his statements are logical not empirical, and he never did any research, nor has any been formally done.
Costs: he, like most philosophers, continues the Aristotelian tradition of ignoring costs. Costs provide us with information about which theories we can afford to pursue. Historically then, we can empirically demonstrate that man uses costs as methods of decidability.
Decidability: Costs provide decidability, for the simple reason that just as we pursue the least cost methods of research, nature evolves using the least cost method of evolution. It’s only humans that can choose to do the expensive thing and take a risk. Nature can’t do that. Nature is tightly deterministic. Man is only loosely deterministic. Because all of us guess a future and see if we can achieve it.
Falsification: Falsification is not very precise, and he did not see the dimensions. So he did not restate the scientific method as a series of dimensional tests equal to the dimensional tests of mathematics. So categories(identity), math(relations), logic (words/membership), operations (costs/existence), morality (choice/cooperation), and scope (full accounting) were each methods of falsification, that a scientific statement would have to pass. (Rather than the competition between consistency, correspondence, completeness, and coherence.)
Verisimilitude: (Rather than Markets.) Because costs do determine the progress of our investigations, our knowledge evolves just as organisms evolve, planets evolve, solar systems, galaxies, and the universe. What differs is the cost of inquiry in each culture. White people happen to have the lowest cost of inquiry because they have a high trust civilization where the norm of truth is highly defended as (nearly sacred) public property.
Physical absence vs Social presence of first causes. Unable to distinguish between the problem of instrumentation in the physical sciences in the absence of knowledge of first causes (‘nature’s choice’), versus the problem of subjective instrumentation in the social sciences, in the presence of first causes (sympathetic choice)
The Epistemological Cycle …
Problem -> Theory -> Test
… is incomplete.
The complete epistemological cycle is:
Perception(Chaotic) ->
…Opportunity (Free Association) ->
……Hypothesis (way-finding) ->
………Criticism(individual investment) ->
…………Theory (outputs a recipe/opportunity narrative) ->
……………Social Criticism (market investment) ->
………………Law (exhaustion – return on investment) ->
…………………Survival (Perfect Parsimony – incorporation into norms) ->
……………………Tautology ( invisible – assumed world structure )
This long chain that represents the evolutionary survival of ideas, can be broken into these sections:
1 – Perception -> free association(searching) -> identity (opportunity)
2 – Question (Problem)
3 – Iterative Criticism ( Survival!!! )
………..way-finding (criticism) / Hypothesis.
Way-finding is a form of criticizing an idea.
………..criticism / theory / personal use
………..testing / law / general use
………..recognition / survival / universal use
………..identity / tautology / integration into world view.
The Continuous Recursive Disambiguation (falsification) of our free associations.
IMMANUEL KANT
3) A Priori: Or, “independent of observation.”
There are three dimensions to claims of an a priori truth claim:
- i) A priori vs. A posteriori,
- ii) Analytic vs. Synthetic, and
iii) Necessity vs. Contingency
Therefore we can produce at least the following spectrum of a priori claims.
(a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: “2+2=4 and all deductions thereof.”
(b) Synthetic A Priori : “Increasing money increases inflation.”
(c) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: “Childless women will have no grandchildren.”
(d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.”
This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision:
(a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori
(b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori
(c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori
(d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori
Which corresponds to the testable dimensions of numbers (ideals)
(a) identity (numbers)
(b) logical (sets)
(c) empirical (ratios)
(d) existential (constructible)
Which corresponds to dimensions of physical reality
(a) point
(b) line
(c) shape
(d) object
(e) time (change)
(f) relative change
Which corresponds to a subset of the dimensions of actionable reality , the full set of which we express in fully express in Testimonialism as:
(a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)
(b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)
(c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)
(d) Existential: (operational consistency)
(e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)(time)
(f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between actors) (relative change)
Which together account for the totality of actionable reality (by man) that we currently know of (and its quite hard to imagine anything else is possible).
The test of speech then consists of dimensional deflation and spoken conflation into parsimonious testimony:
1 – Identity tests categories – differences (deflation)
2 – Logic tests internal consistency – membership (deflation)
3 – Empirical actions test correspondence – measurement (deflation)
4 – Operational Language tests existential possibility (deflation)
5 – Rational action tests incentives – rational choice consistency (deflation)
6 – Reciprocity tests moral – rational exchange consistency (deflation)
7 – Full accounting and limits test scope consistency. (deflation)
8 – Narrative by analogy to perception describes reality – coherence (total consistency) (conflation)
Reality is explained by narrative, and the narrative survives falsification by identity, logic, action, reason, reciprocity, and scope.
We test statements about the world by deflating each dimension and testing each for consistency.
Each sub dimension can only be tested by use of the next dimension.
The only native skill we possess is the test of “differences”. Because our brains use samples of inputs in combination with memory to predict results and alert us through new stimulation to the differences.
Our brains sample senses, provide certain services, the hierarchical (distilled) result of which are combined (conflated) through memory and backward propagation into ‘experience’.
It turns out that except in rare cases we ‘experience’ a fairly accurate model of the physical world – but an absurdly inaccurate model of the social world, and completely nonsensical model of our personal value to that world. All of which are precisely what is necessary to survive as sentient (feeling of changes in state) and conscious (self aware) life form when possessed of uncomfortable knowledge in a universe of consistent risk.
This is a simple way of explaining Hume, Kant, and the Phenomenologists.
DEDUCTIBILITY FROM A-PRIORI PROPOSITIONS
Ergo, while one can claim the tautological truth (the Analytic A Priori), and one can claim the ideal(logical) truth (the Necessary Synthetic A Priori), one cannot ever know the non-tautological(identity, The Synthetic A Priori), non-ideal(Contingent Synthetic A Priori ) truth, because we rarely possess sufficient information to do so. As such there is a vast difference between an a priori rule of thumb, and a …..
What does this mean? It means that we can deduce from Analytic A Priori and Necessary Synthetic A Priori, but we cannot deduce from General Synthetic A Priori, or Contingent Synthetic A Priori Statements because we cannot know if such deductions are true (for specific cases).
So the problem with making a priori claims in economics is that you can say statements about statements but not about consequences in reality. You can only say ‘all other things being equal’, we should observe this effect. You cannot say, “we will always observe this effect’. Or even that the effect will appear in the given circumstance. Why? Because we don’t always observe such effects, and economics is rife with examples, the most commonly cited being unemployment does not necessarily increase, and prices are sticky – and for good reason.
The innovation that Menger brought to the table was to bring the principle of relative change from calculus to economics. The principle contribution of Hayek was to transform the use of materials to the use of information as the model for all social phenomenon. The principle contribution of Popper was to bring the information model to philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of science and to model scientific investigation on a market. This followed the transition in physics from the use of electromagnetic fields to that of information. Which then brought physics and mathematics into full correspondence.
What Hayek and popper and the Classicals and the Keynesians all missed and Brouwer in math, Bridgman in physics, and Mises in economics, and the entire analytic and continental movements missed was that man cannot make truth claims.
For example, we did not think the ideas of time(velocity of change), length(distance), and space(volume) varied. Einstein’s discovery was the same as Mises’, Brouwer’s and Bridgman’s: that all our pretense of axioms are false. If our idea of length and time can be false, every other idea that is obvious to our senses and reason can be false.
The difference between economics and physics is in
(a) volition vs. determinism
(b) reciprocity vs. transformation
(c) sympathetic testing of rational choice vs. entropy.
In simplest terms I translated Hoppe’s “Kantian Justificationism” into Anglo scientific terms, and in doing so completed the scientific method, uniting science, philosophy, morality, and law. Its uniting these fields by explaining the proper function of Praxeology that is the innovation.
The primary difference is that I show that you can’t produce a libertarian commune so to speak, and instead have to produce a full scale political order under ‘natural law of reciprocity’ where property rights apply to any demonstrated investment no matter how abstract. Otherwise demand for authority increases, or retaliation increases, or trust and economic velocity decreases, and competitiveness decreases, with all instances of differences not resolvable under law.
Therefore you cannot ‘exit’ to create a condition of liberty, you must conquer and hold territory in the market for territories against all possible competition. And this requires you produce an economy capable of producing the means of doing so. And that economy will always look something like a parliamentary monarchy but with purely empirical natural law.
In other words, you can only get liberty by permission and you can only get sovereignty by force.
So, while you cannot obtain borderland European liberty or separatist, ghetto, and borderland Jewish ‘liberty’, and if you want a condition of Anglo-Saxon liberty for the individual, it’s only possible if you create sovereignty in fact for the polity.
And the only way to create sovereignty and liberty is using (a) a militia, (b)natural law of reciprocity, (c) the markets that are made necessary by the natural law of reciprocity, (d) including the markets for association, cooperation, production, reproduction, commons production, polity production. And in order to do so you must produce a competitive market between the family(church/school), the commons (houses for each class), and judiciary (monarchy, judiciary, military).
In other words, by restoring the pre-revolutionary path, of Christian monarchies, and converting from mere common law, to strictly constructed judge discovered, law. And eliminating the parliament’s ability to create legislation and regulation – limiting them to contracts of the commons. And transforming the treasury into a purely empirical insurer of last resort for whom regulation is merely a matter of actuarial calculation.
GETTING TO THAT DIFFERENCE
(undone)
COMPLETING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Properly understood, the Scientific method, at least as practiced in the physical sciences, if extended to include tests of volition, reciprocity, and full accounting, serves as nothing more than a warranty of due diligence upon our speech about the world.
In other words, the scientific method demands due diligence in the distribution of information just as we demand due diligence in the market for goods and services, and claims about goods and services, by force of involuntary warranty.
THE SCIENTIFIC (UNIVERSAL EPISTEMOLOGICAL) METHOD
“DEFLATION“, DEFLATIONARY (de–conflate)
(undone)
“DIMENSION”
(1) We can make:
(a) statements about experiences(metaphysical), or
(b) statements about statements(ideal), or
(c) statements about existential properties(existential/real), or
(d) statements about existential cause and effect(change).
(e) statements about volition
“CLOSURE”
(2) No test of any dimension can be completed without appeal to the subsequent dimension. (i.e. Gödel. this is profoundly important. no dimension can provide a self-test.) Ergo, all speech is deflationary.
“CRITICAL RATIONALISM”
(3) All descriptive propositions of existential cause and effect (change) are contingent.
“CRITICAL PREFERENCE”
(4) The only method of decidability between two or more non-false cause and effect propositions(change) is cost. This is a clarification of Occam’s razor. And appears to be true, for the simple reason that nature cannot but choose the least cost method, and man generally chooses the least cost method – even if we cannot know the full causal density of his considerations.
“FALSIFICATION”
(0) The purpose of the scientific method is to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, Fictionalism, and deceit from our statements about reality.
DUE DILIGENCE AGAINST IGNORANCE, ERROR, BIAS, DECEIT
(5) The only method of making a truth claim is to perform due diligence in each dimension of reality (a ‘premise’ of the consequential dimension) applicable to the cause and effect phenomenon. (i.e. physical world can’t engage in rational choice, or voluntary exchanges)
Again, those dimensions are:
(a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)
(b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)
(c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)
(d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object)
(e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)
(f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes)
(g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?)
(h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.)
DARWINIAN SURVIVAL OF IDEAS
(6) All propositions (facts, propositions, theories) must survive the markets for criticism at the observer-mental-testing, observer-action testing, market application testing, and market survival testing. In other words, the universal epistemological method follows this lifecycle:
(a) observation
(b) Free association (F -> observation)
(c) test of reasonability (F -> free association )
(d) Hypothesis
(e) Perform Due Diligence (a-h) above. (F -> free association )
(f) Theory
(g) Publish to the market for application
(h) Survival in the market for application(F ->observation – of failures )
(i) Law
(j) Survival in the market for refutation (F-> observation – of failures)
(k) Habituation into metaphysical assumptions
SPECIAL CASES
7) This epistemological process is universally applicable despite the fact that various results can be identified with it. Because just as we find prime numbers largely by trial and error we find special cases of statements by trial and error. But when we find these statements we have to ask ourselves what is it we are finding?
(a) Sensations: statements about experiences(metaphysical), or
(b) Logic(analytic): statements about statements(ideal), or
(c) Fact: statements about existential properties(existential/real), or
(d) Theory(Synthetic): statements about existential cause and effect(change).
(e) Morality: statements about volition
(f) Testimony: statements about the fully accounted change in state of a given instance of the statement we are making (I have a credit card report that shows John Doe, on 1/1/2018 at 4:06:32 exchanged $2.00 for a Hershey’s candy bar at Don’s newspaper stand then existing on 225th and Main in Cityname.”)
EXAMPLES
The most common special cases that we find are those that are impossible to contradict at the same dimension. (a,b,c,d,e) above.
(a) Sense(Metaphysics): we cannot sense a ball is green and red all over at the same time.
(b) Logic: If I issue credit on fractional reserves, I will increase the supply of money.
(c) Fact: The differences between commodity money and note money include but are not limited to: liquidity, demand, exchange fee or interest gain, portability(weight/volume), reserve risk, vendor risk.
(d) Theory: All other things being equal, if we increase the supply of money, prices will eventually increase accordingly and lower the purchasing power of payments against debts.
(e) Morality: All other things being equal, when we force majoritarian decisions on the polity by using representative democracy, we create a monopoly out of the market for the commons, and eliminate the possibility of cooperating on means even if we pursue different ends.
“ECONOMIC LEVERS”
Polities can generally use this series of levers to affect the economy.
-Near Term-
(a) Monetary Policy
(b) Fiscal Policy (Spending)
-Medium Term-
(c) Trade Policy (import export policies, foreign trade policies)
(d) Regulatory/Legislative Policy (also includes price controls etc)
(e) Immigration-Deportation policy / Expand military, WPA etc.
-Long Term-
(f) Human Capital Policy (Education policy)
(g) Institutional Policy (laws, regulations, bureaucracies, institutions, banks)
(h) Strategic (military) Policy
