Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • MARSHALL PLAN FOR UKRAINE!!!

    http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/bernard-henri-levy-a-marshall-plan-for-ukraine-367900.htmlA MARSHALL PLAN FOR UKRAINE!!!

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 22:41:00 UTC

  • Q: “What is your concept of god?” A: “I am happy to rest my head on a pillow of

    Q: “What is your concept of god?”

    A: “I am happy to rest my head on a pillow of ignorance.”

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 09:22:00 UTC

  • DELAYED REPRODUCTION AND SLOWING RELATIVE MUTATION ACCUMULATION —“Delayed repr

    DELAYED REPRODUCTION AND SLOWING RELATIVE MUTATION ACCUMULATION

    —“Delayed reproduction leads to more chance of mutations (eg from sperm) and problems with poorer quality control on release of older eggs (eg trisomy twenty one is probably the tip of an iceberg of similar problems).

    ***But late reproduction also reduces the number of generations and the possibility of mutation accumulation from that cause – so that modern people only have two generations (e.g. average thirty plus years) – i.e. two new lots of mutations in sixty-something years – where in historical times there would have been three generations per 60-70 years – three lots of new mutations****.

    So slowing reproduction (by increasing the average age of reproduction) may perhaps reduce mutation accumulation temporarily; given that the effect of aging on mutations may be less per decade than the effect of an extra generation of new mutations. “—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 06:42:00 UTC

  • ECONOMICS IS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE – ALL DISCIPLINES MUST BE CONSTRUCTED AS EMPIR

    ECONOMICS IS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE – ALL DISCIPLINES MUST BE CONSTRUCTED AS EMPIRICAL SCIENCES – AND THOSE THAT ONE ARGUES OTHERWISE DEMONSTRATE EMPTY VERBALISM ON THE PART OF THE ADVOCATE.

    (from elsewhere)

    a) to be classified as a science a discipline must practice the scientific method: observation (measurement to overcome limits to perception and memory), tests of external correspondence (experiments), tests of internal consistency (logic).

    b) empiricism (observation) is not equal to experimentation (positivism).

    c) economic properties are not deducible from first principles, and we have dozens of examples, the most common of which is sticky prices.

    d) humans are able to cooperate because of sympathetic intention, and could not do so without it. That is, we can (as can dogs, but not apes) understand intentions. We are also marginally indifferent in our incentives. As such we can test the rationality of incentives. Therefore all economic statements are empirically testable by sympathetic experience (the reduction of stimuli to that which we can perceive by our senses.) Or what is called ‘instrumentalism’.

    e) as such economics does not differ from any other scientific discipline in that we require instrumentation (both mechanical and logical) to reduce that which we cannot experience to that which we can experience, and upon experiencing, make a comparison. We simply need less instrumentation to perceive the data than we do in most other fields.

    f) the purpose of which is to develop general rules of arbitrary precision that we can use to model that which we cannot experience directly, from fragmentary information that we can experience directly.

    g) All statements of external correspondence are and always must be theoretical (in the spectrum intuition->hypothesis->theory->law.

    h) Since all hypothetical statements must include arbitrary precision, all general rules are limited by some scale or another(greater or lesser), beyond which the theory fails. In other words, all phenomenon demonstrate a distribution. That which does not is merely tautological.

    i) All axiomatic statements consist of constructions, with deterministic consequences, not observations – because all information that can exist, exists in the axioms.

    Ergo, economics is an empirical science as are all disciplines. All thought is empirical, hypothetical, theoretical, and bound by one or more axis of arbitrary precision. Logical MODELS consist of general rules. Axiomatic systems are TAUTOLOGICAL. Their value is in their tautology: which allows us to test the internal consistency of our statements.

    Mises failed to grasp operationalism which is why he had to create a lot of verbalist nonsense by equating verbal definitions with the properties of reality, so that he could justify his failure.

    (Honestly in retrospect, it’s amazing that like marx he could create that much nonsense – enough nonsense to overload the gullible.).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 03:48:00 UTC

  • HOPPE AS THE TURNING POINT FOR REACTIONARY THOUGHT – I DOUBT HE’D LIKE IT…. ..

    HOPPE AS THE TURNING POINT FOR REACTIONARY THOUGHT – I DOUBT HE’D LIKE IT….

    …But I am pretty sure that’s how it will turn out. He will be remembered as the bridge between the failed libertine (Rothbardian) program, and the reactionary program. And If I am lucky (luck being all I can count on) then my work in Propertarianism, Aristocratic Egalitarianism, and Operationalism/Testimonial Truth, will be the transition from Reactionary rationalism to a fully ratio-scientific argument for liberty.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 03:38:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/07/creative-writing-killing-western-literature-nobel-judge-horace-engdahl

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 01:52:00 UTC

  • THE ONLY REASON TO STUDY ECONOMICS IS TO JUSTIFY RULE OF LAW. (ok, yes, I”m taun

    THE ONLY REASON TO STUDY ECONOMICS IS TO JUSTIFY RULE OF LAW.

    (ok, yes, I”m taunting you with that statement)

    Humans are capable of four weapons of influence, and human institutions can be discussed using the frame of reference of any one of them – or all of them. I try to objectively address all of them in my work:

    1) Morality/Gossip/Ostracization/Cult/Religion : Priests and public intellectuals.

    2) Rules/force/punishment/law/Government : Warriors police, judges and politicians.

    3) Volition/exchange/reward/trade/Economics : traders, distributors financiers, bankers

    4) Production/education/utility/Knowledge : craftsmen, engineers, scientists

    Each group specializing in each frame of reference has evolved a language (a set of languages) and a discipline (a set of methods), and institutions (means of propagating, applying, organizing) for the application of their means of influence.

    I use the term ‘legal philosophy’ in the sense that the weapon of influence (force) using the institution of law, is different from the weapon of influence (morality) using gossip (public speech), in the institution of religion.

    Rothbard constructed a religious (cult) narrative, and hayek a legal narrative. My criticisms of mises is that he simply failed, because he conflated science, logic, and craft, thereby creating praxeology as a pseudoscience (by claiming logic constitutes a science). Just why the cosmopolitans (freud, marx, mises, rothbard, cantor, adorno, etc) created so many pseudosciences is something I have written quite a bit about, but can be boiled down to ‘verbalism’ and platonic truth, from the cultural emphasis on scripture and religion, rather than the western tradition of operationalism and testimonial truth, and the cultural emphasis on craft and martial order. (But again this is a very deep topic.)

    So It is not that I fail to grasp that economics must be stated in a particular language. Or that I fail to grasp the missing formal logic of cooperation that mises intuited must exist, but failed to develop. Or that it is possible to articulate economics objectively as a scientific discipline.

    ***It is that since the means of OBTAINING a free society MUST (as far as we know) depend upon the rule of law (Hayek), then the philosophical framework for CONSTRUCTING rule of law must be articulate as a legal one. In fact, no understanding of economics will meaningfully effect rule of law under property rights, other than to justify it. Or more strongly: it is unnecessary to understand economics except as a means of justifying the law necessary to construct the voluntary organization of production.**** (That should be slightly mind-bending for most people.)

    There are reasons why a small internal community like judaism or gypsies or any other cult can rely on the pressure of ostracism. But to possess land, and build fixed capital necessary for organized production, one requires the institution of law.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-14 01:51:00 UTC

  • NET/NET: Large groups cannot suppress the accumulation of mutations. We must of

    NET/NET: Large groups cannot suppress the accumulation of mutations. We must of necessity regress toward the ancient mean.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-13 22:13:00 UTC

  • NOT JUST ME: PUTTING A WOODEN STAKE IN VERBALIST PHILOSOPHY “Analytic Philosophy

    http://www.amazon.com/Empty-Ideas-Critique-Analytic-Philosophy/dp/0199330816IT’S NOT JUST ME: PUTTING A WOODEN STAKE IN VERBALIST PHILOSOPHY

    http://www.amazon.com/Empty-Ideas-Critique-Analytic-Philosophy/dp/0199330816

    “Analytic Philosophy Consists of Empty Ideas”

    http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/philosophy-is-a-bunch-of-empty-ideas-interview-with-peter-unger.html

    Like I said. The 20th century was an attempt at restoring mysticism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-13 21:16:00 UTC

  • FROM ELSEWHERE: CLASSIFYING ONE’S SELF AS ‘AUSTRIAN’: INVESTIGATION VERSUS EXPLA

    FROM ELSEWHERE: CLASSIFYING ONE’S SELF AS ‘AUSTRIAN’: INVESTIGATION VERSUS EXPLANATION.

    I think most people who self identify as austrian outside of their employment:

    (a) mean that they use the austrian model of incentives and partial knowledge to understand the world we live in.

    (b) are merely using “I am” for the purpose of brevity, rather than the fully articulated: “I practice austrian economic models when I think of social questions.”

    The thing is, we can test statement (b), and have tested it, and it turns out that people can actually make use of that model, and that their use of that model is highly predictive, and highly explanatory.

    So given that the misesian austrian program (versus the christian austrian program) evolved as a legal-rational one, rather than an empirical one, I am not sure that the average person who uses the Austrian model is not practicing Austrian thought. I disagree that he is practicing empirical investigation, but I agree that he is practicing rational explanation.

    So given that to ‘be’ something is a verbalism (obscurantism using the verb to-be), and that Austrian thought falls into both empirical study, and rational explanation, I think that the debate as to whether one self identifies as Austrian or not, is simply a verbal criticism in itself.

    The empirical economist investigates phenomenon, and the rational modeler explains phenomenon by deduction from incentives. And both classify themselves as Austrian but fail to distinguish between the two schools of Austrian methods.

    Unfortunately Mises (and all the fruitcake-fringe at the Mises institute) conflate the empirical attempt at defining general rules, and the deductive application of general rules (modeling) for the purpose of explanation.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-13 20:46:00 UTC