Author: Curt Doolittle

WE NEED ONE HUNDRED

My job, I think, is to solve the problem of western ethics as an evolutionary strategy, formally, and if possible reduce it to aphorisms. I’ve had very good advice to leave dumbing it down so to speak, to others.

But I always keep both Einstein and Darwin in mind: for all the people who talk of Einstein, very few understand the central idea in context of the history of ‘thinking’ rather than the history of science. And Darwin to this day is constantly misunderstood even by people who claim to. Relativity(invariance) shouldn’t have been an intellectual problem, and directionlessness (outside of complexity) shouldn’t be either. Science as a discipline is not even understood by philosophers of science.

As far as I can tell one or two humans define something useful, some small fraction of a percent of people understand it, and talk about it. Some slightly larger fraction of people teach and employ the application of it. And everyone else treats it as a given because someone can demonstrate the application in some way or another.

When you talk about ethics, and the institutions that enforce ethical action, and the philosophy that defends those propositions, all that matters are the institutions, the few guardians of them, and everyone else runs on Epstein’s ‘Simple Rules’: aphorisms in my case. They have to. They don’t have any other choice. Understanding at any depth is not only impossible for most but unnecessary. Imitation provides what understanding fails to.

So when I say ‘understanding is overrated’ that’s what I mean. Knowledge of construction is necessary for truth statements, but knowledge of use (application), and the recognition that the conceptual tools work for purposes intended, is all that is POSSIBLE, for all but a few members of a society. I dont confuse understanding with utility, acceptance, or at least non-rejection.

I just need 100 people (aspie-leaning guys preferably) who can:

(a) to argue aristocratic egalitarianism as the only possible source of liberty, and the necessity and utility of violence for the construction of good.

(b) argue in the propertarian method: using economic language to reduce all of ethics to the grammar of voluntary exchanges.

(c) argue propertarian ethics: the spectrum of free riding, imposed cost and involuntary transfer.

(d) argue the structures of the family, production, and property rights in the development of trust and reduction of transaction costs, in creating the demand for, or lack of demand for the state.

(e) at least hobble their way through testimonial truth, operationalism. empiricism, and instrumentalism. The deeper arguments here are fairly difficult I think.

There are plenty of sub-arguments, but if people can master the (bullshit) of rothbardian drivel, or argue with the (nonsense) of conservative romanticism, or spew the various forms of (lying, deceitful) postmodernism, socialism, and marxism, then arguing the propertarianism instead of errors, fallacies and lies ought to be fairly easy.