Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • POLITICAL BIASES AS REFLECTIONS OF THE VALUE OF THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS. Just lik

    POLITICAL BIASES AS REFLECTIONS OF THE VALUE OF THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS.

    Just like Engineers and Creatives think in different universes, libertarians and communalists think in different universes.

    For a libertarian (most of whom are very bright) other people’s opinions and knowledge aren’t very useful. Neither are social rewards. Or signals.

    For a communalist, (most of whom are around average) other people’s opinions and knowledge, are comforting, helpful, useful and necessary.

    This difference in the perception of the value of others thinking, and therefore the SIGNAL value of the approval of others, explains the political biases of the different groups.

    Likewise the dunning-kreuger curve demonstrates why the very lowest classes feel that the world actively conspires against them, because in fact, their opinions, approval, signals aren’t of any value except to satisfy the confirmation bias of peers as a defense against self loathing.

    We seem to think these differences are choices.

    They aren’t. They’re incentives. They’re logical. They’re necessary.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 17:04:00 UTC

  • MURDEROUS US GOVERNMENT

    http://blog.independent.org/2014/01/14/license-to-kill/THE MURDEROUS US GOVERNMENT

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 16:56:00 UTC

  • SOCIAL SCIENCE : THE PHRASES THAT SELL ON KICKSTARTER 🙂

    http://scienceblog.com/69625/study-finds-phrases-that-pay-on-kickstarter/#cmqSVFWWt4QDETRB.01GOOD SOCIAL SCIENCE : THE PHRASES THAT SELL ON KICKSTARTER 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 16:54:00 UTC

  • PROHIBITING MAGICAL, SOCIALIST, POSTMODERN, AND PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS AS IM

    PROHIBITING MAGICAL, SOCIALIST, POSTMODERN, AND PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS AS IMMORAL DECEPTIONS

    (This is profound, and a lot to grasp. I have copied it here from elsewhere.)

    While one might say that ‘it does not matter what we do, that discipline over there, is none of our concern, because whether true or not, this technique is useful to us’. The fact is that such a statement is arbitrary and preferential and not ‘true’ remains.

    If instead of placing higher value on one’s personal utility in an isolated domain, one places higher value on suppressing immoral political speech such that freedom is possible, one might reach a different conclusion.

    Just as high trust ethics are possible by the suppression of additional immoral actions over low trust ethics, higher trust ethics are possibly by the suppression of further immoral actions.

    In low trust ethics, asymmetric knowledge is an ethical means of profit. In high trust ethics profit from asymmetric knowledge is immoral.

    In ‘higher trust ethics’ (In propertarianism) we place a greater ethical constraint, such that profit from obscurantism, mysticism, and platonism are prohibited.

    If operational language will allow you to express an idea and serves the needs of one’s function, then it is immoral to rely on platonic argument.

    If symmetrical knowledge will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral to express your thoughts in asymmetric terms. (incomplete information).

    If telling the truth will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral and unethical to express your thoughts in fraudulent terms.

    If voluntarily cooperating with someone such that you can obtain something without stealing, then it is immoral to steal from them.

    If is possible to cooperate with someone such that you can both survive then it is immoral to kill them.

    So, we must, in order to suppress increasingly complex forms of crime, ethical violation and immoral violation, we must forgo opportunities for self benefit by restraint, then to suppress the use of obscurant, mystical, platonic deceptions requires that we refrain, even at cost, from obscurant, mystical, and platonic statements.

    That this is in fact, what is required of Science (to make statements in operant language), then why is it that we cannot require this level of TRUTH in all other disciplines – especially if it prevents criminal, unethical, and immoral behavior, and enables as great a leap in cooperation as the high trust ethic did over the low trust ethic?

    Again, I believe I have solved the problem. But it may be just too much to ask for someone else to understand unless I am able to either condense it to a Confucian riddle, or extend it to a Hayekian narrative, or a Darwinian exposition of cases.

    ETHICAL BEHAVIOR COMES AT A HIGH COST.

    Ergo:

    If you want a politically ethical society we must pay this cost: the abandonment of the convenience of imaginary objects and confusing the utility of a conceptual tool with the existence and truth of that tool as a construction.

    This is how to make politics ‘scientific.’

    We outlawed violence.

    We outlawed theft.

    We outlawed fraud.

    We suppressed fraud-by-omission with warranty.

    We suppressed free riding with marital structure and property rights.

    We tried to suppress corruption with the constitution, but it failed. It failed because the constitution was not precise enough – in no small part because it should have specified original intent.

    We have failed to suppress mysticism, monotheism, marxian obscurantism, and Hegelian and postmodern conflation of mysticism and obscurantism.

    The requirement for scientific speech makes such arguments impossible. It means that public discourse is a property-commons, and one may not free ride or privatize it for one’s own convenience.

    Because it is immoral to do so.

    This is pretty profound. But again, it may be that such a profound statement is not of interest to you. But to me, as someone who has tried to solve the problem of ethics in an ethically and morally heterogeneious polity and to protect us from another dark age of ignorance and mysticism that Marx, Freud and Cantor have tried to drive us into, it is of a greater priority, and it is entirely worthy of the cost.

    -Cheers

    ================

    END NOTES FOR LATER REFERENCE

    1) If i say that the square root if two is the name for a function but is not reducible to a number, and cannot be demonstrated to be possible, that does not in fact prevent me from using the name of that function as a symbol in deduction, because in no circumstance is infinite precision applicable.

    2) (Lest we lose sight of the source of my argument here, I am trying to define extensions of political morality such that we can create institutions that permit the cooperation of individuals and groups holding heterogeneous moral codes, each of which reflects a different reproductive strategy. If you are going to create a means of resolving differences between moral codes, what constraints does one place upon the formation of argument, procedure, policy, and law, such that suppression of discounts would be possible, and theft by obscurant means would be impossible.

    How do we prevent the use of deception via various forms of obscurantism in a polity consisting of morally and ethically heterogeneous individuals and groups?

    If, as I’m arguing, mathematics is justificationary, but need not be, and need not be without sacrifice of functionality, and if it can be such that mathematicians (or members of this group) can be fooled into justificationary positions, then how would we prevent the ‘leakage’ from either this group’s ideology or the platonism of mathematics, (or that of socialists and totalitarians) into law?

    3) limits solve the problem of arbitrary precision (general rules) when in physics, correspondence with reality provides the ‘limit’ of precision. This is the difference between math (the study of pure relations independent of context) and the study of reality (relations within context).

    But that does not mean that when we make a reference to any mathematical object, we are naming a function (label for the result of operations) not naming an extant entity.

    That by definition a number system can be used to construct the rules for any n dimensional construct deterministically because of the constancy of relations, we should not confuse the determinacy we have ourselves described in constant relations, with existence.

    I cannot speak something into material existence other than the vibrations caused with my voice.

    I actually find this subject fascinating because it sort of renders most of the world ‘childish’.

    4) what good does a personal philosophy of ethical (interpersonal) action, and moral (political) action do you when the others do not share a marginally indifferent ethic and moral code?

    So, for example, what good does it do you if the vast majority economically, politically, or physically deprive you of any ability to act on this code?

    Politics is a contract, not a personal philosophy. And you might say that you will offer others these terms that you prefer. But if you must construct a contract (constitution) what terms must exist in this contract to make your personal philosophy both ethical and moral, possible to act upon?

    5) a) Empirical means “observable”, not quantifiable: “based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.” Which is of course, the difference between the motion of planets vs unicorns (and infinity). That which is empirical is different from that which is imaginary. It is observable in time. (Very common mistake btw. You are not alone.)

    b) So, again, existence is different from utility. I can tell a fable with a unicorn, and I can imitate arbitrary precision with infinity. But that is different from saying such a thing exists scientifically (empirically). When you say that something is infinite, you are in fact, RELYING ON INDUCTION. (Ouch. I know.)

    c) God, and magic for that matter, are ‘older’ old hat. And they well served the purpose of their authors. Just as does infinity.

    d) Why is it that we need the ‘concept of limits’ (a form of justification)? It’s arbitrary precision instead of contextual precision – general rules independent of context versus precision determined by context. Why is it that we can use boolean logic (boolean algebra) for computation? (see Turing) And what utility does the function limit() serve in transforming contextual precision into arbitrary precision (general rule)?

    e) Constructivist, Intuitive, computational, operational, empirical, natural – all are expressions in math, logic, philosophy and science of attempts to circumvent the problem of reliance on justification.

    Departmental math, is justificationary.

    f) So, again, given that the difference is unnecessary and justificationary, and imaginary, while if stated operationally, math is descriptive, deductive, natural and ‘real’, and that the necessity of this conversation is DEMONSTRATION of the very problem of justificationary logic, even among people who assert that they deny the existence of justification, it should be somewhat obvious by now that there exists in fact the problem of externalizing immoral, unreal, illogical, platonism that is exported by justificationary departmental mathematics.

    g) Given that mathematical platonism is, like divine intervention, the hand of god, or some other magical mater of existence, ‘correctable’ without sacrifice of functionality in mathematics, then I will return to my asserted thesis that it is immoral to use non-operational, non-constructivist argument in public discourse (the export through obscurant language of error), because the institution of politics, exists for the purpose of transfer of wealth. Further, that we can, by placing the reuqirement for constructivist, operational, language on public discourse, we can (at least in theory) prohibit organized theft, corruption and immorality via justificationary psuedoscience, magic, or the pretense that mathematics can be used to describe phenomenon that is absent of constant relations (economics).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 07:54:00 UTC

  • I thought it would be hard to defeat rothbardian ethics while preserving Hoppe’s

    I thought it would be hard to defeat rothbardian ethics while preserving Hoppe’s insights.

    Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak.

    But it turned out that hoppe was right as far as private property was concerned.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 08:06:00 UTC

  • The hard part of philosophy, at least for me, is not so much understanding a giv

    The hard part of philosophy, at least for me, is not so much understanding a given problem, as it is understanding what others do not understand.

    I don’t attribute this to any particular genius, but rather the natural byproduct of an autistic bias for correspondence with reality, as a natural defense against the variation in human interpretations, because of the framing provided by language.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:57:00 UTC

  • RIFFING A CRITIC: THE IMMORALITY OF PLATONISM (important piece) CRITIC: –“The w

    RIFFING A CRITIC: THE IMMORALITY OF PLATONISM

    (important piece)

    CRITIC:

    –“The word ‘operationalise’ is a mantra for you. I understand many things without being able to operationalise them, such as how to use English, how to ride a bicycle, etcetera . But it’s important to pint out that most of our understandings are incomplete – and sometimes for insuperable logical reasons. Understanding a scientific theory is never complete. It’s information content ( that set of statements that it logically excludes) is infinite and thus cannot be completely grasped by any mind. For example , newtons theory contradicts Einstein’ and therefore each is part of the information content of the other . It would be silly to require Newton to know this, and ipso facto silly to have required him to operationalise his understanding of his own theory. The point is understanding is much more than making operations.”–

    CURT:

    (a) operationalizing, demonstrating, constructing, using as instrument, each of these terms implies action in time. Each is is a test of whether something can exist or not; and whether something is loaded or not; and whether something is obscured or not.

    (b) There are many things I can do, but there are many things I should not do. I should not shout fire in a theater. And my question is whether it is moral, once understood, given that plantonism produces such externalities as it has, to refer to platonic NAMES as extant, rather than as names of functions for the purpose of brevity (and possibly comprehension.)

    I dont so much care about what one does in one’s bedroom, or in one’s math department, as I do about the construct of moral argument and law. However, since math is the gold standard of the logics (despite being the simplest of them), and contains the same errors, mathematical philosophy is useful in demonstrating the problem in a more simplistic domain. If such an error can occur in math (it does), then of course it can happen anywhere (it does).

    (c) In response to your question above, I would have to understand the meaning of “understand” as you use it.

    If you can ride a bike you can demonstrate it, whether you can articulate it or not. You understand how to RIDE. And it’s observable that you can ride.

    You can think without articulating it, and I an observe (and test via turing) that you appear to be thinking.

    But you would have to tell me how ‘understanding’ applies to abstract concepts like a large number (which you cannot imagine except as a name) or the square root of two, or, infinity. Both of which are concepts that you can use, but not understand.

    Because you can fail to use something. You can USE something even if you do not know how to construct it. You can construct something. You can possess the knowledge of how to construct something.

    But understanding of use is different from understanding of construction. And one must make different claims depending upon which of them one is referring to.

    You can say you understand how to USE something, but you may not in fact understand how to construct it.

    This lack of understanding (constructive vs utilitarian) places constraints upon your truth claims. Just as it places limits upon the math (which consists of proofs) and logic (which consists of proofs) but both of which may or may not correspond to reality – and instead only demonstrate internal consistency. In other words, internal consistency is a demonstration of internal consistency but it is not a demonstration of correspondence.

    Given a distinction between internal consistency and external correspondence, which is a higher standard of truth? What does internal consistency demonstrate and what does correspondence with reality demonstrate?

    What is the difference between that which is BOTH internally consistent and externally correspondent, and that which is EITHER internally consistent OR externally correspondent?

    (c) I am hardly scorning scholarship given that it’s pretty much what I do: read all day. But demonstrating the point that one can ride a bike and show me that he can, and one can conduct an argument and show me that he can, or one can say he can ride a bike, and one can say he can conduct an argument.

    But demonstration is a property of correspondence, which is a higher standard of truth than internal consistency. Because GENERAL RULES that are used for internal consistency come at the sacrifice of external correspondence – almost always because contextual correspondence provides greater precision (information) than does general rule independent of corespondent context.

    (d) Mathematics is quite simple because it is used to describe constant relations. It can describe more variation than the physical universe can demonstrate (which is both advantageous and a weakness). Economics does not consist of constant relations so that mathematics is of less use in predicting the future because those relations are not constant.

    Now, there is a great difference between internally consistent disciplines ( logic and math) and externally correspondent (science and economics). Mathematics and logic contain statements that are internally consistent yet not externally correspondent. Science and economics prohibit these statements. In those circumstances where there is a conflict, which is true?

    Furthermore, if something can be described in terms of correspondence why does one describe it in terms of internal consistency, except to create a general rule, through the loss of information provided by the context?

    (e) Now, the open questions apply to all of the logics: I can logically deduce general rules from the names of those functions that are incalculable and impossible (which is why mathematicians wish to retain the excluded middle, and require the axiom of choice). So why should I be prohibited from the logic of the excluded middle and the axiom of choice, when doing so comes at the cost of my ability to create general rules independent of context? Why should I be prohibited from using these deductive tools if their only purpose is to covert the analog (precision in context) to the boolean (general rule independent of context)?

    And the answer is, that of course, these “named functions” are entirely permissible for the purpose of creating and deducing general rules. These general rules demonstrably apply in a multitude of contexts.

    But just as calling fire in a theatre, or telling a lie, or stealing does in fact ‘work to achieve one’s ends’ that does not mean that it is moral to do so, because by such action, one externalizes the cost of one’s efficacy onto others (society).

    We do not permit theft. We do not permit fraud. We do not permit privatization of the commons. We resist privatizations of even the normative commons, and we try to resist socialization of losses. So, therefore why should we not resist efficacy in a discipline if it likewise produces externalities?

    Because that is what immorality and morality mean: the prohibition on the externalization of costs.

    Now, one could say that we should all have the right to pollute equally. One could say that we have the right to lie equally. One could say that we have the right to create obscurant language equally. One could say that we have the right to create Religious (magical) language equally. One could say that we have the right to create platonic language easily. Because in each of these circumstances, the utility to the users is in obtaining a discount on the cost of action, over the cost of NOT engaging in pollution, lying, obscurantism, mysticism, and platonism, because each is a form of theft from others for the purpose of personal convenience.

    So if you deny that one can use the falsehood of induction, or the falsehood of religion, or the falsehood of lying for utilitarian purposes, then why are you not equally prohibited from using the falsehood of infinity, and imaginary existence?

    Or are you selectively immoral when it suits you?

    CLOSING

    This should be a sufficient description of the relatedness of fields once they are united by morality. And that is the purpose of philosophy: comprehension that facilitates action by providing a framework for criticism of ideas.

    It should be sufficient for anyone with any philosophical or logical training to at least grasp.

    It should also be obvious that you will not be able to circumvent this argument.

    Thus endeth the lesson.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:53:00 UTC

  • Jesus vs Aristotle Marx vs Smith Freud’s vs Nietzsche. Cantor vs Poincaré. ??? v

    Jesus vs Aristotle

    Marx vs Smith

    Freud’s vs Nietzsche.

    Cantor vs Poincaré.

    ??? vs Turing (there is no answer to turing)

    Do you see a pattern?

    I do.

    A desperate attempt to retain the dream state.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:39:00 UTC

  • What is the likelihood that attempts at saving money in research in the physical

    What is the likelihood that attempts at saving money in research in the physical sciences, by reliance on mathematical analysis rather than experimental science, has delayed development of the physical sciences?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:09:00 UTC

  • (Sketch) Solipsistic < ---- > Autistic (relation with the self) VS ( Empathic <-

    (Sketch)

    Solipsistic < —- > Autistic (relation with the self)

    VS

    (

    Empathic <——> Sociopathic (relation to others)

    AND

    Submissive <—-> Dominant

    )

    The desire for stimulation remains constant.

    The formation of higher brain areas exhibits variability.

    Brain structures

    Important research on personality traits and brain structures have been conducted, providing correlations between the Big Five personality traits and specific areas of the brain.

    Some research has been done to look into the structures of the brain and their connections to personality traits of the FFM. Two main studies were done by Sato et al. (2012)[67] and DeYoung et al. (2009).[68] Results of the two are as follows:

    Neuroticism: negatively correlated with ratio of brain volume to remainder of intracranial volume, reduced volume in dorsomedial PFC and a segment of left medial temporal lobe including posterior hippocampus, increased volume in the mid-cingulate gryus.

    Extraversion: positively correlated with orbitofrontal cortex metabolism, increased cerebral, volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex.

    Agreeableness: negatively correlated with left orbitofrontal lobe volume in frontotemporal dementia patients, reduced volume in posterior left superior temporal sulcus, increased volume in posterior cingulate cortex.

    Conscientiousness: volume of middle frontal gyrus in left lateral PFC.

    Openness to experience: No regions large enough to be significant, although parietal cortex may be involved.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:07:00 UTC