Author: Curt Doolittle

  • ARISTOCRACY: “I’M WILLING TO DO THAT” If you want get into a dialog whose object

    ARISTOCRACY: “I’M WILLING TO DO THAT”

    If you want get into a dialog whose objective is to determine truth or falsehood, then I’m willing to do that.

    If you want to lower your standard, and enter into a utilitarian debate, then I’m willing to do that.

    If you want to lower your standard and get into an eristic debate, I am willing to do that.

    if you want to get into name calling, and threats, then I’m willing to do that.

    If you want to get into a fist fight, I am willing to do that.

    If you want to get into a gun fight, I am willing to do that.

    What I am not willing to do is let ignorant, stupid or evil people pollute the world of ideas in my presence, any more than I am willing to let them pollute the physical world in my presence.

    That is what it means to be an aristocrat.

    And aristocracy is what it means to be a gentleman.

    It has absolutely nothing to do with wealth.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-11 02:02:00 UTC

  • LOVING THE WORLD There are people on both sides of the spectrum that love life a

    LOVING THE WORLD

    There are people on both sides of the spectrum that love life and celebrate it. THere are people on both sides of the spectrum that criticize everything.

    I pretty much love anybody that is heroic. Whether it’s some proletarian who is looking under rocks for the bright things in life, or some conservative who is hero worshipping western art and architecture. Or some libertarian who hero worship’s technology and wealth.

    It’s all beautiful. And it’s all possible because none of them can get enough power in government to mandate that we share the same sense of joy, and therefore mandate that we pursue the same ends.

    Personally I’d like to throw the people who want control over government, regardless of ideology, into a cauldron and cook them slowly, and feed them to farm animals.

    At the end they would at least be useful as fertilizer. 🙂


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-11 01:10:00 UTC

  • Benford’s law of controversy: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount o

    Benford’s law of controversy:

    “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. The fewer facts are known to and agreed on by the participants, the more controversy there is, and the more is known the less controversy there is. Thus, controversies in physics are limited to areas where experiments cannot be carried out yet, whereas controversy is inherent to politics, where communities must frequently decide on courses of action based on insufficient information.”


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-11 00:13:00 UTC

  • What Should Be Humanity’s Goal?

    A homogeneity of interests would lead us to become evolutionarily vulnerable   The question implies it’s a good. When in fact, the question is rather, “humanity as a whole should not have a goal, only an agreed upon means of achieving dispararte goals. To do otherwise is the presumption of knowledge.

    Our only shared goal is to persist.

    https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-humanitys-goal

  • Aren’t Social Conservatives Always On The Wrong Side Of History? Social Conservatives Were Against The Ending Of Slavery. Social Conservatives Were Against Women Gaining The Right To Vote. Social Conservatives Were Against The Civil Rights Movement.

    Conservative means ‘in relation to the status quo, resist non-organic changes by force of law’.  In the USA it means conservative toward european aristocratic egalitarianism, and the nuclear family as an economic unit.

    Conservatives were against slavery (Democrats were for it), and against communism (Democrats were for it, and adopted the platform).

    I”m not sure you can really argue this out either way.  It is becoming clear that the postmodernist movement is both false and dangerous, but the democratic party, and liberals practice it as their social religion the way that conservatives practice the cult of the revolution.

    I can’t really address an issue of this scope here, but conservatives are decisively not always on the wrong side.  The conservative strategy simply requires that you achieve something through merit not by force.  So whatever you wish to accomplish (gay marriage) will be successful once you’ve demonstrated that you’ve ade your case and convinced the majority.  This is how they work.

    https://www.quora.com/Arent-social-conservatives-always-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-Social-conservatives-were-against-the-ending-of-slavery-Social-conservatives-were-against-women-gaining-the-right-to-vote-Social-conservatives-were-against-the-Civil-Rights-Movement

  • How Do Christian Conservatives In The Usa Explain The Very High Teen Birth Rates In The Bible Belt?

    INCREDIBLY FUNNY BUT TERRIBLY BAD ANSWERS : HERE IS THE CORRECT ONE.

    Here is the correct, and entirely impolitic one. It also accounts for poverty and IQ statistics.

    Diversity increases extremes.

    —PART 1 – CAUSATION—
    ECONOMICS OF RACE AND REPRODUCTION

    QUESTION: “Why is single motherhood so common in the south?”

    Well, of course I don’t like to say the impolitic truth and then have to fend off the ignorant. Quora is peopled by the demographic that does not rely on data. We know this because almost all questions there can be answered easily with available data. But since all data of meaning requires knowledge of economics and statistics, and ignorance of economics and statistics is pervasive, this prohibits access to comprehension of that data, and prohibits resolution of questions of popular opinion and political doctrine.

    As such, it’s tedious to answer impolitic questions here. That is why few people do it.

    That said, I will do my best:

    FAMILY STRUCTURE

    1) Family structure and family economic structures determine poverty. The nuclear family is highly efficient economic structure. The two income nuclear family is the most efficient economic structure. For a male it is the smallest tribe he can be alpha in, and maintain access to a female as he declines in desirability For a woman she is the alpha female in her tribe of one, and has a monopoly claim on his production for the duration of her childrearing, despite her declining ‘desirability’ during this time. The nuclear family also places asset demands on the male, and therefore delays marriage and mating, both of which increase the skill level, work experience of the members.

    2) Redistribution undermines the family and increases poverty, partly because men in the lower classes are less desirable (and able) than women in the lower classes, because men are more widely distributed in feature and ability than are women, with more men at the very top (nobel prize winners) and more men at the bottom (persistently impulsive criminality). Our Y chromosome is where nature experiements, and our wider male distribution affects mating under monogamy, and less so under polygyny, because under polygyny, a smaller number of more desirable males can be shared amongst a larger number of marginally more desirable females.

    3) Racial groups are more or less ‘desirable’ as mates worldwide, not just in the states. This has largely to do, as best as any of us can tell, with a mating preference for females with thinner skin in contrast to mates with thicker skin as a signal that is different from the thicker skin of males. Since the only uniform scale of beauty across all cultures, other than symmetry, is quality of female skin clarity, this is the only selection preference necessary to explain racial preferences, other than the rate at which we appear to have exited Africa and begun the process of near-speciation (racial diversification), and the problem of access to vitamin D in the northern climes. This research is impolitic and the people who pursue it are ostracized from academia so it has moved to being conducted under a different guise, or now to china where such things are considered only logical. But the research is available. And it shows that fairer, thinner skin on females with finer features, is more desirable regardless of racial group.

    4) People mate almost entirely within race (<15%) and prefer to associate, work, and live within racial groups. With the consumer marketplace for goods the only shared environment. Extremes can run counter to this fact with crossing occurring at the lower and higher ends of desirability where each individual has better options in mates and often better access to social class by crossing racial boundaries.

    5) Even where racial admixture occurs, it places downward pressure on extra-group status and opportunity (desirability). In other words, racially mixed children maintain the lower of their racial preferences. Altough in black and hispanic communities and families children are still ranked in preference by skin color because it grants access to status both mating and social.

    ECONOMICS
    6) Impulsivity (the ability to resist impulses) varies between the races, with the east asians the least impulsive distribution, and the subsaharan african population the most impulsive. Impulsivity is a positive reproductive strategy unless external (climate) pressures punish survival. Impulsivity places a high penalty on learning ability which favors long periods of ‘frustration’ and concentration.

    7) Impulsivity affects both trustworthiness and creditworthiness. Nuclear families have higher more stable incomes, and are more creditworthy, as well as more economically efficient. As such high densities of nuclear families will produce higher wealth. Higher wealth will generate greater opportunity. Greater opportunity within a geography will increase demand for housing in that geography. Housing in that geography will increase in price. People who live in more impulsive, less efficient groups will of course, be unable to gain access to that geography and its opportunities.

    8) For these reasons (Which I assume I should use graphs to illustrate) the reason that poverty and single motherhood are so prevalent in the south is that 74% of black mothers, and a high percentage of hispanic mothers are unmarried. And they live in close communities reliant on support from extended family members, with populations too high to integrate into more successful communities. White single motherhood is on the increase in the lower classes, and teh USA, Ireland and New Zealand, where the postmodernist and feminist movements have been most successful, have the highest rates of single motherhood among whites, and the countries of southern europe who remain familially integral the lowest: Italy, Greece, Spain and Luxembourg.

    TRUST AND OPPORTUNITY
    All humans are faced with opportunities for both cooperation and conflict at all times. We must choose how to apply our limited time effort and resources to a limited number of opportunities.

    All opportunities other than exchanges of commodities purely on price, consist of a network of cost and benefit tradeoffs. All cost and benefit tradeoff’s are simple.

    We trade (cooperate) on all sorts of terms, but economic status, social status, values, language, culture(mythology, habits) are significant terms. Every variation in every property that is not identical in interest is a negative.

    Status signals (status and reputation) have higher value in-group than across groups. Therefore status pressure to encourage each of us to adhere to agreements is of higher value in-group.

    Therefore we trust and cooperate in-group at lower cost and risk than across group.

    This is why people break into racial, cultural, socioeconomic, educational, generational, occupational groups. Because it’s the lowest risk pool of people with the lowest cost of cooperation, even if it’s less productive it may also be the only pool available to you where you can find someone willing to pay the higher cost of cooperating with you across groups.

    Political discourse assumes we want to help each other and we do. The problem is the logic of that statement -it’s meaningless when we CAN help everyone, we must still choose the best return on our help. And we do. And that is how it is. Anything else is irrational.

    SOUTHERN RELIGIOSITY
    Race is the reason for ‘everything’ in the south, including religiosity. Although southern religiosity we must understand is a rebellion against the state, after the north conquered the south. Race is the reason for everything in america. People are born, live, reproduce, associate, work with, and speak to, people within their racial groups except where they participate in the marketplace together.

    RATES OF POVERTY BY RACE
    Page on Carseyinstitute

    RATES OF SINGLE MOTHERHOOD BY RACE
    LINK: KIDS COUNT Data Center

    There is no end of data on this subject.


    —PART II—
    CORRELATION NOT CAUSATION

    States are, in general, rational economic alliances, usually run by an oligarchy, and usually the oligarchy grants monopolistic privileges to key industries in order to fund them sufficiently that they can compete outside of the local market where returns are highest.  We call this corporatism.  It is a rational system. Unfortunately, the natural incentive of all monopolies, and of course, a political bureaucracy is by definition a monopoly, are self interested and will prey upon their populations to the limits at which they can maintain power.

    Religions are ARATIONAL (not irrational) and they are a means of setting the moral limits to the actions of the state. Religions are resistance movements. Mystical religions consist of rational ends, but stated irrationally.  The only religion that is compatible with the state rather than an opposition to it is polytheistic, or what we today would call ‘history worship.”  The state will attempt to control religious doctrine to the best of its ability. In some cases it succeeds – theocracy results.  This is usually bad, because while oligarchic monopolies are self interested and predatory, they are also economically productive.  Theocratic bureaucracies are self interested and predatory but economically unproductive, and they manufacture ignorance in volume.

    The south is religious as a means of opposing the state. First, in response to the conquest by the north. Second as a resistance to the north.  Third as a resistance to racial integration.  Fourth as a resistance the feminist and postmodern attack on the family using redistribution and law. 

    I will leave it to you whether the use of arational methods to resist the state is effective (it is) or and whether or not it is right (it appears that the feminist, socialist, and postmondern movements have systemically increased poverty by destruction of the nuclear family.)

    —PART III – CONCLUSION—

    There is a correlation between southern religiosity and single motherhood, but there is no causal relationship.

    I hope that this was helpful and informative.

    Curt Doolittle

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-Christian-conservatives-in-the-USA-explain-the-very-high-teen-birth-rates-in-the-Bible-Belt

  • FOR MY RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN FRIENDS WHO WANT PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN TOLERANCE

    FOR MY RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN FRIENDS WHO WANT PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN TOLERANCE FOR FAILURE – ITS INFINITE.

    FROM: James Altucher (Who is smart but was a catastrophe.)

    Когда я построил свою первую компанию в 90-х годах я сделал все умные, пока я не сделал все глупо.

    Мы создали сайт для развлечений компании. Bad Boy записей, Miramax, Time Warner, HBO, Sony, Disney, Loud Records, Interscope, дальше и дальше. Ох, и Con Edison.

    Потом я увидел, что дети в средней школе учились HTML. Так что я продал бизнес. $ 15 мм. Примерно год спустя. Я хеджирования и обналичил. Продал все свои акции. $ 15 миллионов в настоящее время денежные средства.

    Я купила квартиру для миллионов людей. Я перестроил его. Фэн-шуй! Я купил искусства. Я много играл в покер. Я начал инвестировать в компании. Здесь миллиона. Несколько сотен тысяч там. Один IPO Я ставлю $ 2 млн. в $ 20 и смотрел, как пойти в $ 0. Они сделали беспроводных устройств для глухих людей. Огромный рынок.

    Я начал другую компанию. CMGI, Allen & Co, Investcorp, Henry Kravis и другие млрд инвестиций. Я начал венчурный фонд. Я вложил в более компаний.

    Тогда интернет акции начали снижаться. Это смешно, подумал я. Интернет здесь остаться. Я ничего не знал об акции или оценки, или ничего похожего рационального мышления. Я удвоил вниз. Тогда в четыре раза вниз. Тогда 8-upled вниз.

    С июня 2000 года до сентября 2001 года я, вероятно, потерял $ 1 млн в месяц. Когда кто-то говорит: “это смешно”, вот код для, “я собираюсь потерять много денег».

    Я не могла остановиться. Я был наркоманом. Я хотела, чтобы вернуться на вершину.

    Я хотел быть любимым. Я хотел бы иметь $ 100 млн, чтобы люди любили бы Меня.

    Я был худший идиот. Дать это сейчас я чувствую, как резка моих запястьях и животе. У меня было 2 детей.

    Я чувствовал, что я умру. Это один равно смерти. Я не мог поверить, насколько глуп я был. Я потерял все мои друзья. Никто не вернулся звонков. Я хотел бы пойти в банкомат и чувствую, что моя кровь проходит мое тело, когда я увидел, как много осталось. Я собирался к нулю, и ничто не могло остановить его. Существовали ни работы, ничего не было.

    Я потерял свой дом. Один уик-энд, когда мне пришлось $ 0 оставили на моем банковском счете я позвонил моим родителям, чтобы занимать деньги, но они сказали “нет”. “Колледж был достаточно”, они сказали мне.

    Я пытался медитации, чтобы успокоить, но она не работает. Я никогда не спал. Я потеряла 30 фунтов. Я 5’9 “. Я пошел от 160 до 130. Я не мог ни с кем разговаривать. Я не мог двигаться. Я остановился имеющих идеи. Я плакала каждый день. Я чувствовал, что я выиграл в лотерею (я ), и теперь не было бы никаких шансов для меня. Я хотел бы посмотреть на моих дочерей и думаю, что я погубил свою жизнь. Я пошел от чувства к чувству бессмертные мертвые во всем, каждый день. Существовал никогда не момент, когда я не чувствовал себя больных. меня были пусть все вниз навсегда.

    Мы переехали в 80 милях к северу от Нью-Йорка с чуть-чуть денег, которые мы взяли из нашей квартиры после продажи на миллион долларов убытка. Я не выходить из дома в течение трех месяцев. Я получил обратно все мои вес, а затем еще на 30 кг.

    Наконец, я должен был либо погибнуть, либо кормить свою семью.

    – Я начал тренироваться каждый день. Я стал лучше питаться. Один из вопросов, на завтрак. Здоровый обед. Крошечные ужин. Нет закуски.

    – Я начал быть только вокруг людей, которые любят и поддерживают меня. Я прервал все отношения с тем, кто я плохо себя чувствовал, чтобы быть рядом.

    – Я написал программу еще раз. Вместо слепого инвестирования на фондовом рынке, я скачал 50 лет данные о запасах и начал статистически моделирования, что происходит в сотнях различных ситуациях. Делая это, я разработал идеи для торговых систем, которые я поделился свободно с несколькими хедж-фонд менеджеров, некоторые из которых дал мне денег, чтобы управлять.

    – Я записал идеи каждый день статьях я мог бы написать об интернете и акции. Постепенно такие места, как thestreet точка ком, The Financial Times, Forbes, Yahoo Finance и другие места, начал публиковать их. Постепенно они начали платить мне за них.

    – Я молился каждый день. Я был благодарен за моих дочерей. Я был благодарен за то, что я имел. Я не бороться реальность или сожалеть. Это была моя реальность, и я должен был сделать это наилучшим образом.

    – Каждый день я пришел с идей для нового бизнеса. У меня был блокнот официанта. Я хотел бы пойти в кафе в 6 утра около 4 книги и читать на час или два, а затем начать записывать идеи для нового бизнеса, статьи, торговые системы и т.д.

    – Я начал хедж-фондов. Я начал фонд хедж-фондов. Я начал рассылку. Я сделал предложения. Я сделал введения каждый день, расширяя мою новую сеть с нуля. Я был вовлечен в психиатрической компании здоровьем я продал за $ 41 мм.

    – Я начал веб-сайт, Stockpickr! которые получили миллионы уникальных пользователей. Я нашел рекламу для него. Я продал ее фондового рынка – бизнес новости, рыночные данные, со Analysis – TheStreet

    – Я сделал миллионы с нуля.

    Тогда я перестал использовать фундаментальные методы, которые я описал выше. Каждый раз, когда я потерял деньги, это потому, что я растратил мое физическое, эмоциональное, умственное и духовное здоровье.

    Я была очень плохой.

    А потом я потерял все это снова.

    – А потом я построил его снова. В совершенно по-другому, но с использованием тех же основных фундаментальных техник здоровья, которые я описал выше. Из пытаются создать ценность для людей. Из пытается идти от успеха к успеху.

    И я надеюсь, что смогу сохранить здание. Я надеюсь, что я не вернуться обратно к моей привыкание тенденции. Я думаю, что на этот раз я узнал. Каждый день в обязательном порядке я сосредотачиваюсь на физическом, эмоциональном, ментальном и духовном здоровье.

    Но жизнь приносит с собой много проблем и много вещей, чтобы учиться. Я отрекаюсь к тому, что мне нужно еще учиться.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-10 11:59:00 UTC

  • “THE PROFITABILITY OF DAYDREAMING WITH REASON” QUESTION VIA EMAIL “Curt, how do

    “THE PROFITABILITY OF DAYDREAMING WITH REASON”

    QUESTION VIA EMAIL

    “Curt, how do you write all this stuff during the day? And still get work done?”

    MY ANSWER

    We all screw-off differently. When I’m working, I focus on some problem until I am not in the ‘flow’ — which means, working by effortless free association. Then I take fifteen or twenty minutes to eat a piece of fruit, have a cup of coffe, look out the window, walk across the room, or visit a variety of economics blogs, facebook groups, Quora, my web site’s draft pages, SSRN, whatever stack of books I have on the table, and whatever, and I let myself react to whatever it is that interests me, and I write about it.

    Then, when that’s done, after my short term memory has changed contexts, I go back to whatever I was working on, and keep going with renewed interest both conscious and subconscious, letting my short term memory do it’s work of free association for me. (This is the secret to all creativity.)

    In this way, I’m never really ‘working’ in the sense that most people mean it. I’m daydreaming and writing down the content of my dreams. It takes a very long time to develop this habit, which is why most writers and programmers will tell you ‘just write’, and most artists will tell you ‘just make work’. Reason is actually a pretty weak property of the human mind. If you can teach yourself to daydream (intuit) something useful, then it isn’t work. It’s just habit and its effortless – like watching a campfire, or boats on the horizon. And when that happens, you end up chasing your feelings rather than fighting to suppress your feelings. Discipline is a function of reason. Creativity is a function of intuition.

    I write software, proposals, arguments, and analytical philosophy by daydreaming. Seriously. The entire skill is just to teach yourself to type fast enough that you can narrate your dreams.

    I do not think in words. It’s a very visual process. I feel logic the way most people feel space, or emotions. I’ve just become adept at becoming an observer of those feelings and intuitions, and capturing them. Editing’s the hard part. That’s work. I don’t have much patience for real work. lol.

    The byproduct of daydreaming as a profession, is that you can literally work eighteen hours a day, because you can’t imagine doing anything more wonderful than daydreaming for a living.

    The mind is just an enormous volume of memory with a few primitive instincts. Fill your short term memory with stuff. Let it do it’s job. It helps a whole lot if you like the stuff you fill your memory with. And you can only make money at filling your memory with things that are scarce, because only those things that are scarce are things that are valuable. It doesn’t do much good to fill your head with pop music, and gossip, it’s just easy to acquire. So the trick is to fill your head, constantly, with something that is interesting but rare.

    Marginal differences in intelligence simply make it easier to acquire increasingly scarce information. Because marginal differences in the intelligence necessary to produces scarce information are rare.

    There isn’t much mystery to man really. We’re pretty simple. It’s just that every other creature we know of has to evolve by dying or breeding and incorporating that knowledge into genes. We have the ability to incorporate it into memory. Both serve the same purpose.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-10 08:05:00 UTC

  • What Is A Non-functioning Market?

    I am not sure that such a thing can exist. For a market to exist it must function. If it doesn’t function it’s not a market but the lack of one. So it’s not logical.  As Bertil Hatt asks, you can mean a market that exhibits certain categories of failure, or a market that is inefficient. But not a non-functioning market.  Can you clarify wat you’re asking?  GIve us some context?

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-non-functioning-market

  • How Many Of You Are Libertarian?

    You will be surprised by this, but, roughly speaking, a quarter of the population expresses surveyed preferences that are libertarian, a quarter conservative, a quarter liberal, and a quarter anti-libertarian.

    Power could be maintained in the USA with fiscally conservative, and slowly enacted socially liberal policies (which is what happens anyway, after a lot of distraction and infighting.)

    That this roughly reflects the gender distribution in the population, and a fairly even distribution between the genders, would actually make common sense. (It does). 

    What has altered the political landscape, and continues to, is the number of single women and single mothers in the voting pool has increased substantially since 1960.  At present, it’s arguable, that all other things being equal, single women and mothers decide elections. 

    That is one of the reasons that candidates now must be somewhat attractive. Because for single women, and single mothers, the attractiveness of a candidate is a meaningful reason for their vote. If a candidate is both attractive, and well spoken, and supports redistribution and equalitarianism – redistribution outside of the nuclear family, the vote is all but ensured.

    For most poeple who understand these demographic issues, it’s saddening, because american politics, and the politics of all democracies, are just form of  entertainment that is a vast waste of time and energy that is determined by a small number of axis of influence: the homogeneity (good) vs diversity (bad) in a population. The structure of the family unit from individual, to family, to extended family, clan and tribe.  The size of the population (big is bad, small is good.)   In other words, you will get a ‘Denmark’ if you have a small homogenous country of nuclear families, because in the nuclear family both genders have equal reproductive interests.

    I suspect that this is one of the most profound things you can learn – certainly on Quora.

    https://www.quora.com/How-many-of-you-are-libertarian