Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546302111 Timestamp) GETTING TIRED OF LITTLE BOYS WITH COMIC BOOK IDEAS RIDING ON THE COATTAILS If anything is to be said, in furtherance of some set of ideas, it must be said about the totality of the market of ideas, not just me and mine. Or it is, as is obviously the case, in this case, just an attempt at drawing attention from that which is successful to that and those who are unsuccessful. Little boys have little boy dreams, of little boy complexity. Men raise, armies, organize logistics, and write laws, and build institutions, because men understand organization at scale – because they have built organizations at scale. Little boys likewise play ‘climb on to the coattails’ of better men. Because they have no experience with constructing ideas, organizations, or solving problems more complicated than those in comic books. Proclamations are not arguments. If it is necessary for me to invest time in further humiliation pretenders, I’m loathe to waste my time at it, but happy to do good service. But these feeble attempts at getting attention with sophisms are embarrassing. And frankly I consider responding beneath me. Since anyone stupid enough to be so fooled is not someone that is helpful to an intellectual movement, nor safe enough to allow to carry arms. Please stop wasting my time with coat-tailing. -Curt Doolittle — VIA ANONYMOUS — (1) Militia “sovereignty” and rule by law are myths. Someone must always rule, someone must decide on the exception. Pushing Middle sovereignty is just continuing the same liberal hysteria against authority, which has led to the HLvM as the logical result. The HLvM won’t stop until we either acquire language better able to validate sovereign authority or war and collapse our tribal structures down low enough where we are able to make such validations, which would represent a massive civilizational regression, all while not possessing those linguistic innovations we would need to scale back up. (2) In evaluating reciprocity, the dimensional tests of identity are not actually how humans evaluate a moral context. Human language is not a closed, declarative system, as much as Curt needs it to be. We wouldn’t even have self-consciousness if language was a closed system, recursive as he still will claim it to be. Curt is a computer scientist trying to force a computer paradigm on to humans, and he ironically hasn’t done the due diligence he speaks so much about by widely studying philosophy of language. Chomsky himself wouldn’t support the simple Shannon-Weaver model of language that Curt’s operationalism relies on, and the field of linguistics has gone so much further than Chomsky by now, into cognition and intentionality, not “signals” and identical “operations” (how computers “communicate,” except that they’re not even self-conscious agents, so it’s a projected metaphor by an anti-philosopher). I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it, again: what is good in Propertarianism (pragmatist legal theory, i.e. unloading claims into processable ‘chunks’) is unoriginal—jurists have naturally known and done such things since the very beginning. The problem would then lie in why our elites have incentives for a HLvM, and the solution to that isn’t doubling-down on why the elites have incentives for a HLvM (hysteria against pre-declarative authority). What is bad in Propertarianism is loosely ‘original’, but in the sense that it’s the latest iteration of the disease of scientistic liberalism. So, we’re left with what you concluded the show with: who watches the watchers, what are the mechanisms of moral accountability? Is it authoritarianism—’absolutism’? Is it rule by law—’nomocracy’? Well, we’d have to drill down on theory of language to answer that question (the short answer is that, yes, there must always be a leader of any size group—someone must always be leading discourse and shaping linguistic frames, but also that there is a moral feedback loop; it’s just not ultimately validated through declarative science), and I think once you do that you’ll see how empty Propertarianism comes up, but it’s okay, because there are plenty enough intelligent people who’ve come before you through his system and have been doing work exploring and filling in gaps that he refused to. I don’t mean that reassurance patronizingly. There are many reasons, trivial and dire, moral and practical, why these naive, young men shouldn’t get led astray with a half-baked, anti-human system.


    —- VIA MEGAN USUI Megan K. Usui —- Are you saying the Curt does not think there should be a ruler for a city and nation state in addition to the law? The ruler should follow the law in most cases but everyone knows about war and other extreme cases? — ???? via unknown — Oh, he has been known to talk about constitutional monarchy, but it’s the same anti-absolutism, for humoring ‘constitutionally limited’ (he also seems to think absolutism implies completely arbitrary, out-of-nowhere dictates, which is what a tyrant does, not a leader). When we can finally get past a naive view of language, absolutism (and everyday experiences inside human groups) makes complete sense. It opens up other areas of inquiry more helpful to resolving modern politics. Of course, I’m not going to be going around, trying to ideologically convince people of ‘absolutism’, like it’s some kind of historical aesthetic. We should use the discourse of the day and seek to be harmonizing the culture. Sometimes, self-defense will be necessary, but it’s a serious problem if a system only has threats of violence and bribery as motivations. A system with no way of speaking of the sacred is going to be left with only commerce and violence—very modern, very confused.

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546440685 Timestamp) I am going to enjoy increasing the scope of my reputation by gutting Taleb’s pseudoscience, and in doing so explain why a certain tribe commits so much evil.

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546440685 Timestamp) I am going to enjoy increasing the scope of my reputation by gutting Taleb’s pseudoscience, and in doing so explain why a certain tribe commits so much evil.

  • Curt Doolittle wrote on Peter Boettke’s timeline.

    (FB 1546612990 Timestamp) (Happy Birthday Peter. 😉 )

  • Curt Doolittle shared a link.

    (FB 1546739069 Timestamp) FROM DAN HOLLIDAY ON QUORA Why does the center not need the coasts?

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546655700 Timestamp) HOW TO MAKE A SHRUNKEN HEAD. (humor) Optional: the candidate can be alive or dead – choose per taste. 1 – Cut a large ‘bib’ into the flesh of chest to make a large flap to later close the bottom of the neck. 2 – Cut around the back of the neck and a one or two inches of the shoulders and back, completing the ‘bib’. 3 – Slit from the back to the base of the neck to the crest at the rear of the skull. 4 – Pull forward, peeling the skin off the skull. (Note: if candidate is living, assistants will be needed to hold the candidate in place.) 5 – Cook the head at a simmer for 90 minutes – any longer it will lose its hair. It should be 1/3 to 1/4 its original size. 6 – Turn the head, inside out, and scrape off any remaining flesh that may later spoil. 7 – Turn the head right side out, and sew up lips, eyes, back of skull. 8 – Fill with hot rocks to shrink the head further. 9 – Once rocks won’t fit, fill the head with hot sand to shrink it further. (Note: Some professionals only use repeated fillings of sand.) 10 – Fill with lightweight such as sawdust or dry grass, then sew the flap (bib) across the base of the skull. That’s it. Have fun!!

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546629233 Timestamp) Testing the political correctness of Reddit/23andme. Post copied to my site for those who are interested.

  • Curt Doolittle shared a link.

    (FB 1546739069 Timestamp) FROM DAN HOLLIDAY ON QUORA Why does the center not need the coasts?

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546655700 Timestamp) HOW TO MAKE A SHRUNKEN HEAD. (humor) Optional: the candidate can be alive or dead – choose per taste. 1 – Cut a large ‘bib’ into the flesh of chest to make a large flap to later close the bottom of the neck. 2 – Cut around the back of the neck and a one or two inches of the shoulders and back, completing the ‘bib’. 3 – Slit from the back to the base of the neck to the crest at the rear of the skull. 4 – Pull forward, peeling the skin off the skull. (Note: if candidate is living, assistants will be needed to hold the candidate in place.) 5 – Cook the head at a simmer for 90 minutes – any longer it will lose its hair. It should be 1/3 to 1/4 its original size. 6 – Turn the head, inside out, and scrape off any remaining flesh that may later spoil. 7 – Turn the head right side out, and sew up lips, eyes, back of skull. 8 – Fill with hot rocks to shrink the head further. 9 – Once rocks won’t fit, fill the head with hot sand to shrink it further. (Note: Some professionals only use repeated fillings of sand.) 10 – Fill with lightweight such as sawdust or dry grass, then sew the flap (bib) across the base of the skull. That’s it. Have fun!!

  • Curt Doolittle updated his status.

    (FB 1546872832 Timestamp) —“Meta question: what’s the best way to ask off-topic questions to you or other experts?”— Matt Evans Just like this, by (a) posting the question in the feed, or (b) posting the question in any comment with ‘off topic’ in the heading. Or via PM. Up to you. —“Actual question: What do you expect the status of Christians to be in a propertarian society? That is, specifically, Christians who are firmly convinced of the supernatural aspects of Christianity; the literal resurrection, the actual divinity of Christ. Not cultural Christians or be nice to people Christians, but folks who believe in a literal Noah’s Ark [for example].”— Christianity is compatible with natural law. (I consider myself a christian and a heathen, and an aryan.) Christian dogma argued in abrahamic verse violates that law if we claim it is true rather than allegorical). My practical solution and opinion opinion is that we are seeing the last generations of dogmatists, and that the vast body of ethically and culturally christian peoples would prefer a reformed church and a restoration of the separation of powers between the church (family and community: norms) and the state ( commerce, dispute, and warfare: laws ). That said, because christianity is compatible with most of western civ, and because christianity is compatible with natural law in practice, then this is not a matter for the law for the simple reason that we cannot change it except by prohibition and by prohibition cause war within our peoples. —“E.g. “they all see how foolish they are and repent of supernaturalism”, or “they are slaughtered to make way for higher IQ people”, or “they are allowed to live peacefully among us so long as they abide by non-parasitism”.—- I think I see it as simply speaking in archaic semitic language vs modern european language. And that the underlying behavior is better brought about by self authoring than superstition. But the underlying behavior is fine. —-“Assuming something like the latter [survival and some degree of tolerated inclusion], raises interesting policy points like “they may not serve as judges” or “they may not testify in courts”, or perhaps more nuanced, “they may testify about things which are falsifiable, but any proclamation of supernatural acts in public our in courts would be disallowed”— Well, this is already in the law. Yes. —“I did a quick search on the website and didn’t really find this covered ; I apologize for missing it if it’s been covered already.”— Religion is the hard part of social science and I have spent about four years on it, with this last year and a half quite a bit of focus and this winter even more. I think I have solved it. That said, faith provides mindfulness, if at high social and political cost, where self authoring provides mindfulness at high personal and economic cost. And we cannot morally deprive people of mindfulness without providing the alternative, and it is extremely difficult to train late life people in self authoring compared to faith. —“Related question: America tolerates and even advantages, for instance, Amish communities today: they are exempted from certain taxes and military services. It is probably correct to argue that Amish communities are parasitic, in the sense that they benefit from the military security of the nation that encompasses them, without contributing able bodied men and certain types of tax revenues.”— There is nothing parasitic about amish communities, they preserve our ancient tradition of voluntary corporation and their persistence is of extremely high value for that purpose. So think of it the other way, that they are providing us with a service – demonstrated not claimed – of what made the west high trust during our early and middle ages. —“What’s the outcome of Amish or Quaker communities under a propertarian paradigm?”— They are a living monument to our past, and we would be fools to interfere with it.