Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • GOOD FRIENDS, GOOD BUSINESS, GOOD FAMILY : GOOD LIFE You know I have issues like

    GOOD FRIENDS, GOOD BUSINESS, GOOD FAMILY : GOOD LIFE

    You know I have issues like everyone else, like post-divorce legal nonsense, and a daily war with a touch of Aspergers that requires an extraordinary and unwavering effort of will to contain – I need more than a finger stuck in the dike to hold it back. And god knows I’ve had enough health problems to take down a dinosaur — but I keep on fighting the good fight.

    But if a man puts together a business, has good friends to run it with, has good family to love and be loved by, and at least one hobby or interest that allows him to escape into a cave and relax, then life is pretty good.

    Life is pretty good — even if you have all sorts of problems. It’s pretty good.

    (PS: if it weren’t for the government it’d be great, not good.) 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-21 10:45:00 UTC

  • IGNORANCE AND REPRODUCTION IN POLITICAL AGREEMENTS ON IGNORANCE The problems wit

    IGNORANCE AND REPRODUCTION IN POLITICAL AGREEMENTS

    ON IGNORANCE

    The problems with erasing ignorance are, in stages, a) Having knowledge of your own ignorance on a topic b) Having sufficient knowledge to discount what passes for popular knowledge of the topic. c) Having sufficient knowledge of a topic that you do not rely upon the opinions of others for your own. d) Sufficient knowledge of a topic to know the current limit of understanding in the topic. e) sufficient knowledge of a topic to extend the limit of understanding

    In other words, ignorance is a spectrum, and at each point in that spectrum listed above,

    The only reason to claim knowledge is to act or to coerce. To act risks only your time, effort and money. To coerce by argument is to take from others time, effort and money from that which they plan to achieve to something you prefer to achieve.

    We can never say we have certain knowledge. Only that we have erased all possible ignorance, and have embarked upon the process of invention.

    We can only say we have the knowledge required to take action, and the self awareness of our ignorance to know the current stage of the uselessness of our opinons.

    Since politics is not a process of debate for agreement on true statements but at best, agreement on consensual statements, or at worst, under majority rule, agreement by one group to oppress another — and since political debates must be made in a state of necessary ignorance about the nature and future of man, if not the resources available at the moment, they are, in fact, arguments made in ignorance.

    And since political decisions are made in ignorance, they must be made according to some method or other.

    Demonstrably, human beings make political decisions on moral instinct. And the interesting thing, is that by and large, moral instinct reflects their reproductive strategy.

    And with this understanding we see how simple all of this nonsense we call politics really is. A complex device for conducting evolution of ourselves and our allies by the proxy violence of government rather than the direct violence of the human body.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-21 10:13:00 UTC

  • MAXISMS: NEW TERMS A) “Bunny Boiler” See fatal attraction. B) “Dormant Sociopath

    MAXISMS: NEW TERMS

    A) “Bunny Boiler”

    See fatal attraction.

    B) “Dormant Sociopath”

    Self explanatory

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 21:39:00 UTC

  • RECORD AND IMPROVABILITY OF ECONOMIC FORECASTING “…economist Victor Zarnowitz

    http://m.nber.org/papers/w2099.pdfTHE RECORD AND IMPROVABILITY OF ECONOMIC FORECASTING

    http://m.nber.org//papers/w2099.pdf

    “…economist Victor Zarnowitz wrote in “The Record and Improvability of Economic Forecasting” that there was too much reliance on trends, and he also noted that predictive failure was also due to forecasters’ incentives. Zarnowitz wrote: “predicting a general downturn is always unpopular and predicting it prematurely—ahead of others—may prove quite costly to the forecaster and his customers”.

    Incentives motivate Wall Street economic forecasters to always be optimistic about the future (just like stock analysts). Of course, for the media and bloggers, there is an incentive to always be bearish, because bad news drives traffic (hence the prevalence of yellow journalism).

    In addition to paying attention to incentives, we also have to be careful not to rely “heavily on the persistence of trends”. One of the reasons I focus on residential investment (especially housing starts and new home sales) is residential investment is very cyclical and is frequently the best leading indicator for the economy. UCLA’s Ed Leamer went so far as to argue that: “Housing IS the Business Cycle”.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 15:48:00 UTC

  • A HISTORY OF “YOU” “Using a plural to address a single person was once reserved

    A HISTORY OF “YOU”

    “Using a plural to address a single person was once reserved for the very highborn, but made its way down the social ladder until any social superior was to be addressed with you. It didn’t stop there, though, as vous and Sie did. Instead, having once crowded out ye, you now edged out thou in the early modern period.

    To recap: you began as as objective, then became usable in subject position too. Then it went from plural only to singular too. Then it went from formal use to informal use too. Ye, thou and thee (the objective form of thou) were all left behind in the history books. Quite the conquering pronoun. Good job, you.”

    (From The Economist)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 11:10:00 UTC

  • ON WRITING SKILLS About two years ago I began to realize that my writing, and po

    ON WRITING SKILLS

    About two years ago I began to realize that my writing, and possibly my mind, had been dramatically impacted by the time I had spent with software.

    SOFTWARE AND THE MIND

    When you write software, the computer has perfect memory. You don’t have to drag the computer along with you using constant reminders. 🙂 You don’t have to draw connections, if they’re logically dependent. And you don’t have to appeal to sentiments – the machine doesn’t have any. 🙂

    So if you write human language the way that you write software it is absurdly dense. It must be studied not read. And any reader who does not have mastery of the subject will certainly not grasp your argument – since most of it is not directly stated but implied.

    This violates Spinoza’s advice. Advice that I took to heart a long time ago in my spoken words: “…endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people.”

    Writing software is writing logic. Writing database software is writing logic that corresponds to the real world. Both of these forms of logic are very precise, intolerant and much of their content is IMPLIED. It is exceptional training for the mind. And it is exceptional training for life: programming teaches you that the human mind is fragile, imprecise and prone to error. It teaches you that consensus and opinion are rarely right. It teaches you about the fragility of complex systems. It teaches you about human hubris. The singular difference between progressives and conservatives is this judgement about the nature of man. And programming confirms the conservative vision, while literature tends to confirm the progressive illusion.

    Which is why programmers wax libertarian and conservative.

    For about three months I was very troubled by this realization. What I am trying to write about – Propertarian Philosophy as the solution to the problem of politics, needs to be reduced to something that is accessible in order to be successful. It mustn’t be accessible to the common man. But it must be accessible to someone with a university education in a technically difficult discipline.

    I am daily aware that Hoppe, from whom I literally learned almost everything of value about politics, is all but ignored despite the fact that he has solved one of the most important parts of the 2500 year old problem of political institutions. But because he based it on Rothbard and argumentation ethics, he is descriptively correct, but not causally correct. Or perhaps, he does not address causation. Which is why it’s complicated to convey to others. Hoppe is inaccessible. All language is an allegory to experience. And all communication must be delivered as an allegory to experience. Argumentation is an improvement on Rothbard’s natural law. But it is still incomplete without a cause.

    And I wanted to be accessible. What good is it if I repair Praxeology, Rothbardian property, and extend Hoppe’s institutional solutions to address heterogenous populations, if it’s incomprehensible to other humans?

    So I set out trying to write sentimentally again. To try to move from proofs and programs to narratives. And I feel that of late I’m beginning to get there.

    The problem now, is that I’ve sketched out the entire book and argument and I must now go back and rewrite fifty pages of definitions, finish writing the conservative (Aristocratic Egalitarianism) history of philosophy, and flesh out the institutional solution that I’ve worked on.

    So I have so much work to do. I never feel I am intellectually capable of taking on task as comprehensive as this. I never feel I have the time for it. And I feel that I will fail – if only because I started late in life on this problem, and it has taken me over a decade of hard work to get to this point. And I see years worth of work ahead of me.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 10:54:00 UTC

  • WE LEARN FROM WHO WE CAN UNDERSTAND If you can access Sowell, Hoppe, Hayek, Haid

    WE LEARN FROM WHO WE CAN UNDERSTAND

    If you can access Sowell, Hoppe, Hayek, Haidt, and Mises then you will make better arguments. If you can access Bastiat, Rothbard and Friedman you will make adequate arguments. But if pop-libertarians activate your sentiments, and with activated sentiments you promote libertarian ideas, then I’m perfectly happy that you do a good yeoman’s labor, even if your arguments aren’t as strong as they could be or your solutions as complete and possible as they seem to be.

    Liberty need not be for philosophers alone. If you have libertarian sentiments, you need not have libertarian economics, history and analytical philosophy. All you need is a handful of moral parables to promote libertarianism.

    You will reach a lot more people more effectively than those of us who write convoluted philosophical proofs referring to empirical evidence in an effort to combat the propaganda, proofs and evidence of the opposition.

    At about every fifteen points of IQ we think very differently. Some of us in layers of abstractions, others in empirical analysis, others of us historical references, others in moral analogy and still others in moral sentiments. We think differently even if we all value liberty similarly, regardless of our method and mode of thinking.

    The desire for Liberty at its core is a sentiment: a desire, an instinct, an emotional affiliation, a preference. No matter how we express it, and which level of experience or abstraction we use to argue in favor of it – we all express our preference for liberty to those with whom we share a common language.

    Liberty doesn’t need to be precise. It needs to be popular.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 10:18:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIANS MAY BE RIGHT ABOUT INSTITUTIONS. BUT CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT ABOUT

    LIBERTARIANS MAY BE RIGHT ABOUT INSTITUTIONS. BUT CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT ABOUT HUMAN CAPITAL

    “Superficial statesmen and politicians — always too plentifully represented in every Reform, Radical or Revolutionary Party — constantly make the mistake of assuming that if a well-tried and old-established institution begins to reveal serious flaws, the fault must inevitably lie with the institution itself and not with the men trying to run it.” – Anthony Ludovici

    (HT to Traditionalist)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 09:56:00 UTC

  • I HAVENT LIVED IN SEATTLE FOR A YEAR. BUT ALL THE RESTAURANT VALETS STILL REMEMB

    I HAVENT LIVED IN SEATTLE FOR A YEAR. BUT ALL THE RESTAURANT VALETS STILL REMEMBER.

    What should I learn from this?

    ’cause I’m not sure.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-19 16:44:00 UTC

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM : WESTERN PHILOSOPHY : INCOMPATIBILITY What is wrong

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM : WESTERN PHILOSOPHY : INCOMPATIBILITY

    What is wrong with conservatives who adhere to the Aristocratic Egalitarian ethic? It’s premise is that you earn your rights, you are not born with them.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone by birth, as if they were possessed of original sin.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone into aristocracy if aristocratic values are learned.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone into into an aristocratic model of society if they have no desire, and not biological incentive to be aristocratic.

    The aristocratic egalitarian model is a strategy for a superior minority to defend itself from the communalism of an inferior minority. It is the only successful model for controlling alphas, while creating alphas.

    Universalism of the church and of progressive whites, is incompatible with aristocratic egalitarianism.

    And liberty is *only* compatible with aristocratic egalitarianism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-19 13:34:00 UTC