Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • Defending Murray : Even Scott Sumner is the Victim of Selective Temporal ‘Mathiness’.

    RE: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/06/charles_murray_5.html [S]cott, Murray, like most conservatives, is studying, and conveying observations about our change in NORMATIVE capital, not income or consumption. Deviation from northern european traditional norms is a luxury good ( the absolute nuclear family, delayed marriage, delayed reproduction, high investment parenting, the manorial/protestant work ethic, hight trust from homogeneity, truth-telling/testimony ). RELATING YOUR POST TO ROMER’S ‘MATHINESS’ (a)While you haven’t read the book, the fact that you, who are one of our very best (IMHO), immediately assume the mainstream bias that income (an easily visible measure) is somehow meaningful rather than merely a justification of priors – and it provides a more valuable insight into the ‘mathiness’ of mainstream economics, than murray’s book does about the destruction of the family as the central unit of inter-temporal reproduction and temporal production that was in no small part, caused by that mainstream bias and ‘mathiness’. (b) No economic hypothesis can be ‘true’ in the sense that it is descriptively complete, and therefore free of error, bias, and deception, if we fail to account for the full spectrum of costs in the full spectrum of time frames. That is after all, the only measure of costs: opportunity costs. So solving for income or consumption demonstrates a selection bias, under the assumption that all negative externalities are less ‘bad’ than the ‘good’ produced by observable increases in income and consumption. In other words, if we stack all possible forms of capital by the length of the production cycle and it’s corresponding consumption or decay, then what is the net change? The conservative mind is biased to the long term, to saving, to risk, and to disgust. It is a reproductive strategy – a very masculine one perhaps – and the absolute nuclear family is central to it. And it was a very expensive reproductive strategy to develop – which is why was unique. He does not make the leap (not being an economist) to the extremely damaging suggestion that we move people to capital (a heavy industrial era bias) and it’s destruction of the family and its impact upon norms, instead of moving capital to people (a post-heaving-industrial economy) in order to preserve and expand normative capital. America’s dirty secret is that pervasive consumption is an insufficient reward for loneliness and isolation. Americans are heavily drug dependent for the sole reason that they are the most lonely and isolated peoples on earth, for whom the media is a poor substitute for friends and family. The absolute nuclear family is necessary, perhaps, but it can only persist within a civic society. The civic society is a product of the absolute nuclear family. It cannot exist otherwise. So what is the cost of the destruction of the family in pursuit of income and consumption? What will be the cost of 40% of american women on anti-depressants? Mathiness is most visible in the selection bias demonstrated by measuring temporally differential income rather than inter-temporarily differential consumption. But that is not the most important effect of quantitative pseudoscience: it is the destruction of long term capital in favor of short term consumption and the placement of faith in technology to rescue us from the consequences of it. So, it is not so trivial a question as you suppose. It’s an illustration of everything that is wrong with modern macro’s mathniess. It’s not the use of math. It’s measuring in favor of bias. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-12 05:04:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.racked.com/2015/5/11/8573015/tramp-stamp-lower-back-tattoo-stigma

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-12 03:48:00 UTC

  • THE WAR ON THE TRUTH: LARRY SOMMERS EFFECT HITS NOBEL WINNER —“He went on to s

    THE WAR ON THE TRUTH: LARRY SOMMERS EFFECT HITS NOBEL WINNER

    —“He went on to say he stood by some of the comments. “I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he said. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field. “I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. “I’m really, really sorry I caused any offence, that’s awful. I certainly didn’t mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually.””—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-11 10:15:00 UTC

  • Block starts with the rhetorical position that property is a natural right rathe

    http://www.aei.org/publication/charles-murray-asks-why-should-blackmail-be-a-crime-walter-block-makes-the-case-for-legalizing-blackmail/Walter Block starts with the rhetorical position that property is a natural right rather than the result of a necessary contractual exchange of rights, agreed to in order to construct property rights that are adjudicable, in order to prevent retaliation for impositions of costs upon one another, by providing a means of restitution and punishment by the community rather than retaliation by the individual.

    His position is illogical.

    The first question of ethics is not one in which we assume the value of cooperation, but one in which we assume the value of predation. So cooperation must be preferable to predation. And it is only preferable if it is productive.

    Cooperation must be rational or it is irrational (obviously). For cooperation to be rational, it must be:

    – Mutually Productive,

    – Fully informed,

    – Warrantied to be fully informed,

    – Consisting of Voluntary Exchange or Transfer,

    – Free of negative externality (of the same criteria).

    If these are all true then there is no need for retaliation.

    Walter Block, like his mentor Rothbard, is attempting to restate Maimonides’ dualist ethics as if they are a universal good. Instead of a utilitarian tactic for a minority living at the behest of a tyrant attempting to minimize his costs of policing.

    But, the first logically necessary question of ethics is ‘why don’t I kill you and take your stuff?’

    Block’s position on blackmail is one in which it is preferable to kill the blackmailer and take his stuff rather than to cooperate with him.

    So, it’s not complicated. Dualist (and poly-logical) ethics cannot by logical necessity be advocated as a universal ethic. Natural rights are a nonsensical justification for various spurious ends. We do not presume rights, nor are they ‘existent’ prior to contract. They are merely the necessary terms for rational political contract.

    Cosmopolitan ethics attempt to preserve ingroup parasitism on outgroup members, while at the same time prohibiting the formation of family organizations that suppress parasitism.

    Rothbardian anarchism (libertinism), is an expression of group evolutionary strategy that ‘games’ (circumvents) the defenses of western aristocratic, truth telling civilization.

    So, instead, the first rule of ethics is that one should not engage in parasitism.

    Blackmail is unproductive and parasitic, and therefore a violation of the agreement for non-imposition of costs that serves as the only rational incentive to cooperate.

    (Although this level of argument is probably a bit deep for even the interested and informed.)

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-10 10:16:00 UTC

  • CONSERVATISM -> REACTION -> PROPERTARIANISM (TESTIMONIALISM) Free Northerner; If

    CONSERVATISM -> REACTION -> PROPERTARIANISM (TESTIMONIALISM)

    Free Northerner;

    If you will forgive me a second comment on the same post; regarding:

    —“Reaction is foremost about embracing reality. An objective reality exists apart whatever stories men may tell themselves. This reality is harsh and bitter as we live in a fallen world. Reality can be denied temporarily, but will always win in the end.”—

    I thought it was a good opportunity to talk about the relationship between Reaction and Science.

    (a) Reaction a criticism not a solution, and what solutions Curtis provided are afterthoughts – which is why we never talk about them seriously.

    (b) Reaction provides a language – a terminology of criticism. Which is good. Not just for signaling one another, but because the terminology provides a consistent argumentative structure for ongoing development of ideas – and leaves behind a cannon of ideas easier to learn and whose meaning is easier to maintain over time. Terms frame arguments. And members of reaction have succeeded in framing the argument. To defeat an idea, we must be able to name it and discuss it. That effort was successful.

    (c) But Reaction is stated in Continental (moral) and rational philosophical language. Just as the opposition relies upon Continental (moral) and rational philosophical language. It is NOT stated in scientific language free of moral loading and framing, nor is it stated in the Anglo Analytic (scientific) language. It is an argumentatively moral and rational criticism, not a legal, analytic, and scientific alternative. Criticisms are necessary because they motivate us as all good ideology should, but solutions are necessary also, because they can be stated operationally, and put into place operationally, and the rule of law can institutionalize them over long periods of, because they are ‘calculable’ statements rather than ‘interpretable’ statements.

    (d) The opposition uses pseudoscience. And reaction uses science to counter their pseudoscience – thanks to the revolution started by Pinker. And that corresponds to our history: The Aristocratic Egalitarianism of our European and indo-european ancestors, manorialism as an economic and political system, conservatism as a political philosophy, are each objectively scientific processes (observation, trial, error, and reaction), using the scientific method of cooperation (rule of law, common law, property rights, independent judiciary),

    (e) Conservatism as an intellectual movement failed, in no small part, because our scientific civilization was still reliant upon the rational moral language of our religious ancestors. Reaction is the first meaningful improvement in conservative (aristocratic) argument in decades.

    But, ’embracing reality’ is done in the language of correspondence with reality: science and the philosophy of science: analytic philosophy. Science has evolved to become the universal language of truthfulness. In no small part because it is laundered of moral loading, framing, and justification. Morality and Rationalism are allegorical and sentimental technologies. Science and Analytic philosophy are procedural, operational, existential, and unloaded technologies. Morality may be inspiring but science is actionable. I can make a legal contract – a constitution – that is hard to break. But I cannot make a moral analogy that survives the same attacks.

    (f) The next evolution of reaction must be not one of improving our loading and framing – although that is necessary for moral antagonism that encourages people to take up arms – but one of articulating the revocation of the errors of the enlightenment in actionable, scientific, analytic, and legal terms.

    These scientific, analytic, LEGAL and therefore AMORAL terms, are not as inspiring as the pervasive moral indignation we can load in continental rationalism. They are not as easy to understand, either. And we will require even more new terms. But they are much more precise tools for the construction of a set of demands for a set of institutions that will restore our ancient scientific civilization to its original direction as the guiding language of mankind.

    Finish the transformation of the scientific civilization to the language of science.

    Liberty in our lifetimes.

    Curt Doolittle,

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-10 02:34:00 UTC

  • Well, I feel a little like Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the View. I really enjoy it.

    Well, I feel a little like Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the View. I really enjoy it. 😉 Anytime. https://twitter.com/fatredanus/status/606782861044162561

  • Thanks paul. 😉 Sorry ’bout that

    Thanks paul. 😉 Sorry ’bout that.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-09 17:14:04 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/608321172686684161

    Reply addressees: @paulromer

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/606390921320648704

    IN REPLY TO:

    @paulromer

    @curtdoolittle sorry but u got the wrong Paul Romer

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/606390921320648704

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-08 09:13:00 UTC

  • People Who Lie. Example: Asian deceit In Testing

    http://www.unz.com/isteve/white-people-so-racist-they-dont-notice-chinese-scamming-them-on-sat/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=white-people-so-racist-they-dont-notice-chinese-scamming-them-on-satThe People Who Lie. Example: Asian deceit In Testing

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-08 07:47:00 UTC