Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • WHY WE NEED THE “DARK ENLIGHTENMENT” Why was anglo objective, universalist empir

    WHY WE NEED THE “DARK ENLIGHTENMENT”

    Why was anglo objective, universalist empiricism intuitive and acceptable to the British, while a duty-bound subjective hierarchy intuitive and acceptable to the germans? Why are order and duty more important to germans than to the english? Is Raico right that it’s just geographic?

    I can understand why the counter-enlightenment (the continentals) fought against the anglo social construct, although I cannot really grasp why they didn’t simply try to solve the problem empirically rather than mystically. The germans at least, were correct. Anglo civilization degenerated rapidly, while german society at least for now, survives. Anglo civilization I suspect, without some event, will survive only in the protestant religions. We are, without our insular island, fragile.

    Isn’t providing a RATIONAL and EMPIRICAL institutional solution to uniting germanic order and duty with anglo individual empiricism something that can reunite the two strains? I don’t think so. They are fine. We’re in trouble. I don’t see how to unite us.

    Are we forced for some reason, into a choice between anti-rationalist socialism, and scientific and rational, individualist, universalist, self-destruction?

    Or, is it possible to solve our cultural problem by creating institutions that acknowledge that the universalist property of the enlightenment was a failure? That equality and universalism are incompatible, just as freedom and democracy are incompatible?

    Science and Reason, Naturalism and Correspondence need not be abandoned. But it appears that we must abandon the belief in universalism and equality, in exchange for nationalism and relative equality within a meritocratic hierarchy?

    But given the lack of our individual power under capitalism, and the presence of mass political and economic power under all forms of representative government, can we create a hierarchy of meritocracy rather than pure political power? I don’t see how that can be accomplished without violence.

    Our political history is masculine – the paternal family with private property. But women, in the work force and in politics, try to restore the feminine – the socialist model of common property. So that they need not form micro tribes of one man and one woman but instead, can force the support for their children onto the rest.

    It must be visible that the system will not work before an alternative is an acceptable compromise. Monogamous marriage was a compromise. One that must return for a society to be economically viable, I think. I do not see it possible any other way, for the high costs of single parent families to compete with the lower cost of double income families. Nor do i see double income families continuing to support those who breed without double incomes. This is just a recipe for a caste system.

    In the end, the family structure provides the morality that sustains the society and fulfills the demands of production. So I cannot see how

    The reason that we need the “Dark Enlightenment” is because we need to use MORE science, not less. We need to use science to demonstate that the german social model is correct, but that anglo ratio-empiricism is correct. We need the common law. But germanic morality, community and duty.

    Because we anglos have no community at all any longer.

    And without community we are dead.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 06:36:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY (MAYBE IT’S THE COFFEE) I was just going to sit and relax and listen to

    LIBERTY (MAYBE IT’S THE COFFEE)

    I was just going to sit and relax and listen to a book on tape today before designing this one feature that needs some of my attention.

    And then one particular post just made me lose my patience.

    Why the hell do I want to reform libertarianism?

    Because I spent most of my life trying to solve the problem of CONFLICT. And I spent most of my early adulthood trying to find a language that would give aristocratic conservatives the ability to defend their ideas in ratio-scientific rather than purely moral and allegorical terms.

    And then, by accident, in a speech by Hans Hoppe I saw that he had made necessary, not preferential arguments. I knew something was wrong. I intuited that something was wrong with his logic. And it bothered me. But the fact that he had found a path through democracy was enough of a starting point.

    It has taken me twelve years from hearing that speech, to base his arguments on science rather than rationalism. And to correct libertarian arguments by returning them from the ghetto to the aristocracy where they came from.

    The kernel of the solution to political conflict is in Hoppe’s work. It’s not right yet. His Argumentation is a DESCRIPTION not a CAUSE. But it allowed me to find the CAUSE and with that cause, explain all moral codes and how we can cooperate across them, rather than the need for a monopoly of moral codes that imposes one morality by political force upon others with different moral preferences.

    Libertarians need not be so self impressed. Conservatives, without reason and science, are much more effective at politics that we are. And that is because they correctly understand human nature.

    We have an INCORRECT (arguably semitic) assumption about human nature in our rothbardian arguments that is scientifically false, demonstrably undesirable, and demonstrably ineffective. The aristocratic west is the only high trust society in existence. And we accomplished that using the moral code of conservatives, not rothbardian libertarianism.

    We were wrong on morality. The conservatives were right. Hoppe is right on institutions. But we must understand that we were wrong on morality and as such we are INSUFFICIENT in our institutional solutions.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 06:20:00 UTC

  • INDUCTION AND HUMAN SOCIETY The world is a lot easier to understand if you think

    INDUCTION AND HUMAN SOCIETY

    The world is a lot easier to understand if you think in terms of incentives that exist in the present, rather than ‘what has happened before’.

    Induction is a problem everywhere. The past repeats itself where the incentives are repeated. It’s not that we necessarily will do what we did before, if the incentives are different. Economic history helps us understand that beliefs justify incentives, but that history is a product of incentives. Beliefs and reasons are part of justification. And justification is misleading.

    We can’t learn from our justifications what we can learn from reconstructing our incentives.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 05:18:00 UTC

  • IN POWER AND WEAKNESS It’s interesting to watch both sides collapse while they t

    http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7107CHANGES IN POWER AND WEAKNESS

    It’s interesting to watch both sides collapse while they think the other is at fault. Over the past few months I have watched the left realize that they have failed to change economic policy because conservative morality reigns both here and in europe.

    We have also seen conservatives and libertarians change their strategic objectives.

    But we have not see western culture change it’s objectives quite yet – not at its institutional or spiritual level.

    But our perception, our belief, our literature, our philosophy and our actions for the past 500 years at least, has been those of power.

    And we’re adopting weakness.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-27 11:01:00 UTC

  • (Funny). Hadnt thought of this meme before

    (Funny). Hadnt thought of this meme before.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-27 04:04:00 UTC

  • I dont want to force a libertarian society on you but i will happily do so if yo

    I dont want to force a libertarian society on you but i will happily do so if you force something else upon me.

    There is no virtue is pacifism, tolerance or submission. Violence is the highest virtue and the virtue from which all prosperity must originate.

    There is no freedom without arms

    There is no freedom at a discount.

    Freedom is a form of rule.

    And rule requires rulers.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-27 03:56:00 UTC

  • MORE ON MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM (For me. Pls ignore.) “Famously, Tarski (1936) pr

    MORE ON MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM

    (For me. Pls ignore.)

    “Famously, Tarski (1936) proved that no classical formal language could contain its own truth predicate, due to Liar’s paradox. As such, if we want to include a truth predicate, we are committed to a hierarchy of languages. Moreover, if consisting only of formal languages, this hierarchy does not collapse: at no level will a language Lm provide a truth predicate for a language Ln, where n ≥ m.”

    CD: Yes, but I can see that this is starting to go south already, confusing sets with semantics…

    “If one is not committed to strict formalism, there are far less

    problems with Tarskian truth. In particular, the hierarchy of

    languages can be collapsed. There are two ways of doing this. One

    can either move from formal to informal languages – where Tarski’s

    undefinability result does not hold in the strict sense – at some

    point in the hierarchy, or one can hold some level in the hierarchy

    to be of the language-to-world type. Philosophically these two

    strategies are largely equivalent, since we seem to have no way of

    describing the world outside language. This makes the job a lot

    easier for the non-formalist. Rather than try to explain a

    problematic relation between mathematical languages and mathematical reality, we can concentrate on characterizing the

    connection between our formal and pre-formal mathematical

    languages.”

    “What proof is to formal mathematics, truth is to pre-formal. We

    deal with mathematical proofs syntactically, but at the same time

    we as human beings think about them semantically.

    CD: Yes.

    “We cannot deny pre-formal thinking, and its need for semantical truth. However, this alone is not enough to show a substantial difference between truth and proof. Even though the existence of pre-formal mathematics cannot be reasonably contested, there is always the possibility that when it comes to truth, it is essentially superfluous; whatever we can achieve with truth, we could also achieve with proof alone.”

    CD: First, there is a very great difference between truth and proof if mathematics is platonistic and set based. But if it is marginally indifferent and non-platonic then there is no difference. So that’s my concern. But the question I have is, what externalities are produced? It’s a moral question. I know that’s hard to grasp. But a biologist who plays with viruses and a mathematician that teaches platonism both export risks onto others.

    “The second problem that the lack of reference causes for

    formalism is one that does not require semantical arguments, or

    indeed any sophisticated philosophical devices.”

    CD: I do not see that as a problem. Nor do I see the need for, or desire for, formalism.

    “It could be plausibly claimed that human thinking as we know it could not exist without some mathematical knowledge.

    CD: yes, this is correct. But the reason is not stated here.

    “But if mathematics has absolutely no reference, what reason do we have for picking one theory over another? It must be remembered here that this reference does not have to mean anything resembling a Platonic universe of mathematical ideas. Simply put, if we believe that 2 + 2 = 4 rather than 2 + 2 = 3, we must believe in some kind of reference. (It must be noted that I do not mean to use “some” as a hedge word here. My point throughout this work is that the relevant dichotomy is reference against no reference, rather than no reference against Platonist reference.)”

    CD: Yes, but if you wrote the argument as human actions in operational language you would not have this problem – which is purely linguistic. And obscurely so.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-26 14:25:00 UTC

  • THE ASIAN-WHITE-ASHKENAZIM GAP “In 1989, the Law School Admission Council commis

    THE ASIAN-WHITE-ASHKENAZIM GAP

    “In 1989, the Law School Admission Council commissioned a study of bar passage rates. Its report, The LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study was published in 1998, with results disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Linda F. Wightman, the project head, collected data from more than 27,000 students who entered ABA approved law schools in fall 1991. The study found that only 80.75% of Asians passed the bar on the first try compared with 91.93% of non-Hispanic whites. This corresponds to a white-Asian mean-score difference of 0.53 standard deviation or in IQ terms a verbal gap of 8 points”

    Basically, we’re in the middle between Jewish verbal aptitude and east Asian spatial aptitude. Specialization matters.

    The advantage we have is in ethics.

    We have such a thing as universal ethics.

    They don’t.

    Our advantage is predicated on maintaining a certain amount of the population with an IQ over 106, and preferably over 115, in control of property and institutions.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-26 06:08:00 UTC

  • EVOLUTIONARY RAPIDITY UNDER PATERNALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY Because evolution h

    EVOLUTIONARY RAPIDITY UNDER PATERNALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

    Because evolution has apparently accelerated under agrarianism and property rights, I am slowly beginning to think that I can make the case that evolution is faster under paternalism and property rights than under maternalism and communism. So not only is maternalism dysgenic, but it prevents adaptation? Not only are paternalism and property rights eugenic, but accelerates adaptation despite the fact that we are no longer under environmental selection pressures?

    That’s a pretty interesting moral argument against matrilinealism: that it’s not only dysgenic, but maladaptive. Which would certainly explain its absence.

    I keep finding correlations between property and genetics. I don’t mean to find them. They just happen to be there.

    This correlates with the book I read this weekend: Butler Schaffer’s Boundaries of Order. I really don’t like the soft structure of his argument by analogy – which I object to almost always – but it is apparently the case that property is necessary for evolutionary competition.

    FYI: Michael J. McKay

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-26 04:46:00 UTC

  • NOTES ON MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY “…Mathematics is an established, going concern.

    NOTES ON MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY

    “…Mathematics is an established, going concern. Philosophy is as shaky

    as can be.”

    CD: This seems quaint, as it is meant to seem quaint by the author to illustrate the point. However, the problem of philosophy is one of “intermediacy”, rather than ends. To incorporate new discoveries and ideas into our system of thought. To develop some means of conceptual commensurability. WHile in the past, all domains were at some point parts of philosophy, the success of philosophy has been at casting off those domains. At present, the only remaining domain philosophy addresses is that of the commensurable integration of knew ideas into our body of knowledge. For this reason, philosophy, like money in the calculation plans, makes the moral and ethical world of action commensurable despite the disciplinary differences in method and goal. It may be that all philosophy does is protect us from catastrophic errors that may cause us harm, rather than provide any particular innovation. But the works of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Smith, Hume, Jefferson and Darwin are evidence enough that at times, our entire systems of thought must be reordered, and new values attached to causes and consequences. Or by contrast, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Freud, Heidegger and Rorty, who have tried to do the opposite: To restore immoral obscurantism as a revolt against modern empirical thought.

    “a distinct history in which philosophical theories of mathematics have not been required to conform to the practice of mathematics”

    CD: True, but I’m not doing that at all. In Propertarian ethics, I place no constraint on the practice of mathematics. We constrain only what can be SAID about mathematics, for ethical and MORAL reasons. I think that this is the problem that the various Revisionists have tried but failed to address: that philosophy is a social science, and mathematics is a pattern science, but when mathematicians speak of their discipline in public, or to students, or in writing, they are entering the public domain. In all manner of life we place limits on private activity if it has public consequences. In particular, we constrain the conceptual, verbal and physical creations of moral hazards. My criticism of mathematics on Propertarian grounds is not how math is practiced, it is the justification used in mathematics to explain it’s platonism-of-convenience, which in turn, as a matter of public discourse, creates the hazard of mystical platonism.

    So if the only constraint is that you must not communicate moral hazards, and that this merely alters the language of your justifications, then this is an internal cost that you may not morally export onto others just because it is convenient to do so.

    “One of the most important forms of revisionism in philosophy of mathematics of the latter part of 20th century has been extreme (strict) formalism (nominalism), and its ontological conclusion, Hartry Field’s (1980) fictionalism. According to it mathematical objects do not exist, and the formal axiomatic systems that form the core of mathematics do not refer to anything outside them. In other words, for the extreme formalist rules of proof and axioms

    are all there is to mathematics.”

    …

    “One main purpose of this work is to show that we do not. In this work that is called the problem of theory choice, and I will try to show it to be the most fundamental problem with strict formalist philosophy of mathematics. Simply put, I will argue that when taken to its logical conclusion, extreme formalism implies completely arbitrary mathematics: we would have no reason to prefer one set of axioms and rules of proof over another. That is a staggering conclusion, but we will see it is the only one that can be plausibly made if we reject all outer reference from mathematics. Fortunately it never comes to that, since mathematics without any outer reference does not make sense. We need to explain why we prefer some rules of proof and some axioms to others, and without any concept of reference this cannot be done. In this work I will argue that without any outer reference, mathematics as we know it could simply not be possible: it could not have developed, and it could not be learnt or practised. Sophisticated formal theories are the pinnacle of mathematics but, philosophically, they cannot be studied separately from all the non-formal background behind them.”

    CD: Agreed. It is impossible to escape correspondence between method and reality. But lets see where the author takes this…

    “In contemporary philosophy of science there is a visible emphasis on what may be called the sociological aspect. Rather than following the Carnapian ideal of neatly structured formal scientific theories, we are now more convinced that the actual practice of science should also have its mark in the philosophy of science. Overall, this is a healthy development, even though it has sparked off less than healthy theories where philosophy of science has become a bastardized form of sociology of science.”

    CD: I am a bit troubled by the difference between philosophy of science as a pursuit of truth and the sociology of science as moral and practical counsel. If they are not materially different then this statement makes sense. If instead, that philosophical pursuit of truth is substantially different from the moral and ethical pursuit of social inquiry then I think that this is a failure to understand the function of philosophy as commensurable and ethical, rather than consisting of metaphysical truths.

    “We seem to have a great deal of humility toward the methods and practices of

    physicists, but in mathematics we reserve a different, much more powerful and revisionist, role to philosophy. It is hard to see the reasons behind the difference in approaches. Perhaps it is because most philosophers of mathematics are more familiar with mathematics than philosophers of physics are with their subject. Modern physics requires, as well as a great deal of expertise, access to a lot of expensive equipment. Mathematics, for the most part, only requires the expertise. In this way most philosophers cannot understand the nature of modern physical inquiry as well as the nature of mathematical inquiry.”

    CD: I think the author is mistaken, just as philosophers are mistaken. The philosophical criticism of mathematics is precisely over its abandonment of correspondence and our failure to state the method of correspondence. I see philosophical criticism in the Revisionist and Intuitionist movements as moral objections to the recreation of magic and those criticisms, even if poorly conducted, poorly articulated, are correct. I don’t want to claim that Propertarianism solves this problem I simply think that propertarianism makes it possible to determine the cause of conflict between philosophers and the platonism of classical mathematics. That philosophers mistakenly see their discipline as the pursuit of truth rather than commensurability of systems of recipes is the causal problem. The criticism of the morality of mathematical platonism stands.

    “While ontologically minimal, extreme formalism makes mathematics impossible as a human endeavour – which is much more alarming than any intricate philosophical problems. In a nutshell, I will argue that if extreme formalism were correct, mathematics could not have developed in the first place – nor could it be practised today. It must not be forgotten that mathematics is a human endeavour just like all other sciences. If something is essential to mathematics as a human endeavour, we would seem to have good reason to believe it is also a factor in the philosophy of mathematics – or at least something we should expect a theory in philosophy of mathematics not to conflict with.”

    CD:I’m not sure where he’s going with this. I agree with the argument that there must be some sort of correspondence in mathematics, and I have argued that this correspondence is reducible to the practical limits of the human mind, which mathematics serves to compensate for. And I think that’s a sufficient argument when combined with commensurability and moral constraint. But perhaps I will learn more from the rest of the paper.

    Right now, I must go to the office and do my other job. 🙂

    https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/19432/truthpro.pdf?sequence=2

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-26 03:39:00 UTC