Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • Steering Libertarian Criticism Away From Socialism to Postmodernism, and The Completion Of The Anarchic Research Program

    [I] am trying to steer some of libertarian criticism away from socialism onto Postmodernism. And that’s partly why I spend so much time on the “Dark Enlightenment” and their attempt to dethrone universalism. The question is, if we dethrone universalism and admit our differences, then moral ends and therefore moral statements will be likewise different. And as such we would need institutions that did not depend upon moral or ideological homogeneity, but that still assisted us in cooperating on means, even if we possess different ends. All current political models were developed under ‘national’ homogeneity. Or like Chinese, forcible homogeneity in order to simply allow their political system to function. yet, we evolved the market to assist us in cooperating on means, even if we have complex or opposing ends. Given that the market functions by forcing all undesirable involuntary transfers (violence, theft, fraud, and free riding) be converted into desirable involuntary transfers via competition. And given that the investment in and development of commons cannot possibly be constructed via competition in the market because competition is an undesirable involuntary transfer in the context of a commons, then government is necessary in order to assist us in producing commons. However, how do we create government that cooperates as does the market, without involuntary transfer via competition? The European princedom model was in fact, little more than corporatist city states – because city states were in fact, private corporations. Thats where they came from. But acknowledging this fact casts doubt on the legitimacy of liberty. So we avoid it. I think I have solved this problem. If I HAVE done it, then for all intents and purposes, the Anarchic Research Program started by Rothbard will be complete: 1) Rothbards rule of the homogenous by homogenous morals (anarchic religion) 2) Hoppe’s rule of the homogenous by competing institutions (anarchic nation state) 3) My rule by of the heterogeneous by heterogeneous institutions (anarchic federation) There is no other combination that we yet know of that cannot be satisfied by these three solutions.

  • WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE Using the methods of science we reduce phen

    WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE

    Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.

    (Excerpt from longer post.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 07:41:00 UTC

  • YES I’M WRITING A LOT RIGHT NOW. SORRY IF I’M SPAMMING. IT WILL END SOON. 🙂 (FB

    YES I’M WRITING A LOT RIGHT NOW. SORRY IF I’M SPAMMING. IT WILL END SOON. 🙂

    (FB is such an awesome substitute for a classroom.) 🙂

    I’m trying to finish my work on reforming Austrianism in the context of libertarianism. And I have only one problem left, and that is this damned point of demarcation between the scientific and real, and the logical and platonic. (And I don’t find it interesting really. I actually find it ridiculous. )

    But I’m close enough that I need only follow bibliographies and read a bit in order to understand the current state of the argument. And as such undermine the attack on skepticism as psychological and moral rather than a description about the universe.

    Mathematical and logical platonism being a substitute for scriptural wonder isn’t actually good for anyone. Because it certainly looks like Hayek was right: The twentieth century was an era of mysticism. He said it was created by Marx and Freud. But at this point I’m going to have to throw in Cantor and Chomsky. With the opposition provided by Nietzsche, and Hayek and any number of finitists. And the absurdity is that this certainly looks like a conflict between the Jewish cultural predisposition for magianism and opposition to land holding norms, and the germanic cultural predisposition for mechanism and the necessity of land holding norms.

    I hate it when these big ideas turn out to be complex silly fantasies that we and our cultures bring with us. The world is quite simple. Even the physics of the universe appears quite simple when we understand it. The complex mystical nonsense, as always, involves some sort of magical anthropomorphization or deification of simple processes, whether they be Religion, Philosophy, Logic or Mathematics. The reality is that the world is not very complicate. We make it complicated. If you go SEARCHING for a way to make numbers and sets infinite you will find it, because any ratio is an infinite expression. But measurements are REAL and finite even if RATIOS can be infinite. Sets are a simplistic function once you separate them from the universe of human knowledge. Of COURSE you can create infinite sets that way. But in human REASON using LANGUAGE that’s not possible. Look at the tricks Godel had to come up with – a variation on Cantor, to make his mystical game come true. But he went LOOKING for it in a platonic universe. Science looks for phenomenon using measurements in the real universe.

    Why we desire the world to seem mystically complex, I think, is so that we can, like every mystic in history, use that pretense to take control over others – power from the presumption of knowledge to invalidate normative statements, even if one cannot provide a replacement answer to it. If instead, we admitted that the world was indeed as simple as it is, then most people who are public intellectuals would have very little to do.

    The world is very simple really. The problem isn’t in collecting the 1500 or so ideas that constitute the entire human conceptual vocabulary. It’s in distinguishing them from the extraordinary number of permutations of error.

    Mysticism is mysticism. Nothing real is infinite. Zero is a symbol that exists when we want to represent the idea of nothing countable. The infinity symbol is a shorthand for ‘I have no idea’: when we want to represent more than is countable. That’s it.

    Platonism is silly.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 07:24:00 UTC

  • MORE ON BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS (AND CAPLAN’S CRITICISM OF HOROWITZ) : WHY AUSTRIAN

    MORE ON BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS (AND CAPLAN’S CRITICISM OF HOROWITZ) : WHY AUSTRIANS ARE’T MAINSTREAM

    Caplan has it correct in his own odd way, as usual. Then he proceeds, as he does with ‘Why I’m not an Austrian’ to contradict himself with the same kind of logical problem he accuses others of making. (In the most famous case, that incentives are more important than calculation. And failing to realize that such a statement is meaningless, since incentives require calculation – the terms are mutually dependent.)

    BARRIER TO ENTRY

    The barrier to entry for quantitative macro economics is higher than the barrier to entry for subjective MORAL politics. Because of this, of course there will be more ridiculous ‘austrian’ advocates than there are ridiculous amoral quantitative macro economists like Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong. And its easier to criticize abuse of an ISLM vs ISMP curves because there isn’t any subjective loading possible. They aren’t’ dependent upon norms. Whereas it’s very easy to criticize abuse of involuntary transfers according to whatever set of norms we have learned over our lifetimes.

    PRAXEOLOGY

    I’ve consistently criticized Praxeology – which is a narrower discipline than austrian economics, because it does not treat opportunity costs as real costs, and as such, both Mises’ and rothbard’s deductions from it are mistaken – because they do not account for the cost of norms, and as such, they assume that the market is sufficient for the constraint of norms – or at least sufficient to constrain norms to the point where private property is possible because of high trust. And Mises and Rothbard are wrong on this. And because they are wrong, the entire libertarian movement has tried to base the justification for private property on natural law, argumentation, and abstract morality rather than something scientific and explanatory of all moral codes – as I have done.

    NORMS, TRADITIONS AND TRUST AS CAPITAL

    I don’t put a lot of stock in Austrian ‘Economics’ because it’s frankly all been assimilated by the profession. It’s that the long term consequences to norms and institutions have NOT been incorporated into the mainstream profession, and are treated as irrelevant. While in Austrian terms, norms are not – particularly if we include Hayek.

    It turns out that norms are VERY important. They are the most expensive kind of capital a nation can build. Norms are a living monument. Thats’ why younger civilizations with less scientific maturity have trouble creating them.

    So I tend not to make Austrian versus the Mainstream a question of empirical science, but a distinction in WHAT MUST BE MEASURED in order to make sure that we are in fact creating rather than consuming or destroying capital. This is not an argument over method per se. The progress in the empirical method, do more to the contribution of Experimental Psychology than to economics in my opinion.

    I criticize the mainstream for not measuring changes to normative (informal capital) because it is convenient to ignore it, and by ignoring it they justify both the progressive and statist agenda.

    The problem is that it is very difficult to measure such changes to norms, traditions, and other factors that we tend to bundle into the abstract but somewhat measurable distinction between TRUST and CORRUPTION. Or, what is more accurately described as the extension of the familial (kinship) trust, to others (non-kin) by the suppression of all involuntary transfers except market competition, and the systemic enforcement of warranty to prevent fraud by omission.

    GENES AS CAPITAL

    As a member of the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, I consider a gene pool a form of capital. I also think that Austrianism, like Aristocracy (and what we call Conservatism) implicitly favors beneficial market-based eugenics, while progressivism implicitly favors destructive dysgenics by not allowing families to concentrate capital behind productive genes, and transferring reproductive ability from better genes to worse genes.

    SUMMARY

    So Austrianism is flawed because it has a low barrier to entry, because praxeology as articulated is false, and has led libertarianism into catastrophic errors even Hoppe has only marginally been able to rescue it from.

    But Austrianism is useful in that it a) allows us to test the rationality of actions and incentives, b) makes visible involuntary transfers c) tries to account for increases or decreases in informal institutional capital d) implicitly represents the conflict between dysgenic and eugenic reproduction that is the natural conflict between male and female reproductive strategies. And as such Austrianism helps us understand why there is political discord, and provides us with clues, that I have made use of, to provide explanatory power in politics, that is not provided by correlative macro mathematics.

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    (For Reference)

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    BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS WHY AUSTRIANS ARE NOT MAINSTREAM

    “Verbal logic is not adequate to explain economic relationships. In the absence of formal logic, one cannot really test propositions. In other words, syntactic logic matters more than semantic logic.” (Hypothesis H4)

    AND

    “Science is not about absolutes, but about refutation. If AE is about (apodictic) certainty, then it is not a science, but a pastime.” (Hypothesis H5)

    Well I disagree with AE as apodictic unless it’s complete. As I’ve written elsewhere it’s not complete. However, if expressed as complete, then it’s possible to propose means of falsification. And “m not sure it isn’t possible to model. Just very, very difficult, because we need much, much more data than we have today. Tis is where experimental psychology comes in.

    In this sense, AE has a higher bar, because it tries to provide greater explanatory power than mainstream economics.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 07:03:00 UTC

  • FINAL WORD ON METHOD: AUSTRIAN AND OTHERWISE Any statement about human behavior

    FINAL WORD ON METHOD: AUSTRIAN AND OTHERWISE

    Any statement about human behavior that cannot be expressed as a sequence of human actions open to subjective, sympathetic, testing of the rationality of the individual’s incentives, is in fact, not scientific.

    The reason we like to use correlative aggregates is that they obscure involuntary transfers. The reason we like to use causal, operational language, that describe human actions, is because it makes visible involuntary transfers.

    And while morality APPEARS to differ around the world, because different cultures use different allocations of property rights between the commons, family, Pater, and individual – because the productive and reproductive strategies must be reflected in a group’s property rights – the fact is that human morality, universally, without exception, is determined by a prohibition on involuntary transfer according to those cultural allocations of property. Period. Morality is property. Period. End of discussion.

    This fact illustrates the difference between progressive (mainstream) economics, and conservative (austrian) economics, Progressives want to hide and conservatives want to draw attention to, involuntary transfers. And the reason is that Progressives favor the feminine reproductive strategy of limitless population growth that all other non-sentient creatures demonstrate. And conservatives favor improvement of the tribe in relation to other tribes – which is something only humans do with intent.

    Everything else is just propaganda.

    Apodeictic nonsense included.

    Philosophy is justifying your preferred reproductive strategy and nothing else. The fact that we use language and reason is arbitrary. We are just like any other species, using what is available to us to reproduce. We’e just invented a very complex verbal dance. But its still a dance.

    And that’s all our nonsense is : a dance.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 06:09:00 UTC

  • CANTORS PROOF? I hope this isnt a stupid question. Can someone explain to me why

    CANTORS PROOF?

    I hope this isnt a stupid question.

    Can someone explain to me why cantor’s infinity isnt trivial? Im not the only person in the world who thinks this. But as far as i can tell whether you adopt finitism or infinity is pragmatic utility not truth. And if you dig into Godel, Cantor or ZFC, its platonic and does not represent except loosely, language and science.

    Arent we just extrapolating the platonic to the real? Isnt that an error? If thats true then gods exist too in the same form as mathematical objects. And if thats the case there is no discipline of science as we understsnd it.

    All that exists are real numbers. Everything else is platonic.

    The constraint that we place upon our theories is needed to compensate for observability, cognitive limits – mostly to short term

    Memory – and for cognitive biases.

    That we should avt as if our theories are unbounded is not because they are unbounded, it is because its useful to limit error.

    I have to keep working on this a bit.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 05:00:00 UTC

  • Why Would A Civilian Living Peacefully Need A Semi-automatic Gun?

    Because if he is living peacefully, he lives peacefully because he and those like him have guns.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-civilian-living-peacefully-need-a-semi-automatic-gun

  • Has The Quality Of Content And Interactions On Quora Gone Down Drastically In The Recent Past?

    It appears that way.  Yes. It is declining.

    What is the difference between Quora and Yahoo forums or internet Newsgroups if there is no way to insulate questions and answers that meet scientific standards of argument from segmental and moral opinions and surveys?

    None.

    For example. A few commenters have referred to physics as a good topic to follow.  However physics has a high barrier to entry and a low sympathetic access and low normative content. There is nothing special about quora – its the nature of the topic. All discussions if physics are of this nature. 

    My specialty is political theory.  Political theory is extremely difficult to insulate from cognitive bias and logical error. This is because not only is it difficult to test, but political ideology unlike the the discipline of political economy, has evolved, largely by design, to insulate ideological statements from rational and empirical criticism, by adopting the rhetorical techniques of the monotheistic religions.

    And so separating ideological statements from institutional statements is nearly impossible. Ideology works precisely because it is non rational and it amplifies our biases and preferences. Ideology is populist, and political economy is organizational theory.

    Statements in political theory can correspond with the facts or fail to, but those facts are open to subjective interpretation.

    Means and ends produce empirical truths not subjective preferences, but means and ends are chosen by subjective preference. 

    Humans say and desire many things, but  humans demonstrate, and we can empirically measure, their actual behavior – and there is very little relationship between the two.

    Morals and norms are habits not truths, that largely reflect structures of production and reproduction – and some are necessary for certain outcomes and some are arbitrary, and some produce ‘bad’ outcomes over time. But humans almost universally defend habits as true goods.

    The relationship between logic math science and philosophy has been based on only one or two specious mathematical arguments using irrational sets.  The profound implication of Einstein has been mysticized by Cantor, and given permission to philosophers to undermine the institution of reason.

    Rights for example must be contractual. Some may be necessary, and some preferable, and some luxuries. But they cannot be intrinsic.

    Socialism and communism arent possible because economic calculation isnt possible nor can people possess incentives to act without the information in prices made possible by money, property and contract. Its not a choice.

    These are just some of the scientific criteria that bounds the discipline.  Yet almost all questions are some variation of “chocolate ice cream tastes good”. They are not rational.


    So, likewise, any CURRENT survey of Quora users will of necessity produce nothing more than the confirmation bias of users making self judgements. But empirically speaking, unless there is some way to filter ratio-scientific questions and comments from sentimental-moral-normative questions and comments, then it is an unstoppable race to the bottom for Quora.  Just like amy other commodity, value is the result of scarcity and quora is making the mistake of a mass market consumer companies : destroying the brand by overextending its market, thus degrading booth supply and demand.

    That my argument is a description of a socioeconomic law, is probably lost on the audience.

    But unless quora creates a barrier to entry, or a veil between each category of argument from the sentimental to the ratio empirical, then surveys will continue to present a positive opinion but quality of the product will in fact decline until a precipitous decline.

    This is deterministic.

    It cant change.





    https://www.quora.com/Has-the-quality-of-content-and-interactions-on-Quora-gone-down-drastically-in-the-recent-past

  • Why Would A Civilian Living Peacefully Need A Semi-automatic Gun?

    Because if he is living peacefully, he lives peacefully because he and those like him have guns.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-civilian-living-peacefully-need-a-semi-automatic-gun

  • VAMPIRES IN WASHINGTON DC You know, this whole ‘farming’ the productive citizen

    VAMPIRES IN WASHINGTON DC

    You know, this whole ‘farming’ the productive citizen thing is really a wonderful analogy to what the federal government has become.

    In one of the Stargate science fiction worlds, there are these vampires that treat human populations as herds of cattle, and they ‘cull’ the herds to feed off of every so often.

    Now, the federal government doesn’t do that. THey just make sure that none of us will ever be self reliant enough to do without them, and so they harvest enough of our productivity through taxation that we continue to labor, but then, have to spend our old age in poverty.

    So, I tend to think of the federal government as an enormous vampire clan.

    Because it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 16:39:00 UTC