Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • I don’t confuse anything. Or rather, I may occasionally experience confusion, bu

    I don’t confuse anything. Or rather, I may occasionally experience confusion, but in this case I can demonstrate my lack of confusion by means of explanatory power: Simple facts: Trust = Economic Velocity = Available Consumption. Trust is not sentimental value. It is a measure of the complexity of economic and social relations that can be constructed given the transaction costs that impede them. 50% of the Russian economy is dependent upon oil, and NOT dependent upon Russian norms (“character”). If the economy were dependent upon Russian “character” then the standard of living would return to pre-war levels, and Russians would live as do the Muslims and Mongols whose norms they inherited..

    And this is why I’m criticizing your moral equivalency: because you are trying equate things that are not equal. Russia is just another Mongolian, Tatar or Muslim nation with the trappings of Christendom, the trappings of an economy, and the trappings of culture.

    Russians are a negative influence on the world and are responsible for more death, suffering, and impoverishment than any government other than Mao’s. Eastern Europe must be free of Mongols, muscovites, Turks, Tatars, and other steppe tribes who would bring their low trust, low economic velocity, to the people of the west. Eastern Europe is European. Muscovites are Mongols and Tatars. Think like and act like Muslims, Mongols and Tatars: steppe and desert people.

    Ukraine needs to restore its heritage as a European, not Mongolian/Tatar/muscovite slave pit for despotic rule.

    The world is a better place without Russians in it. “Go home.”

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-23 01:58:00 UTC

  • So here is the process I use to research (attack) opposing positions. THE SUSTAI

    So here is the process I use to research (attack) opposing positions.

    THE SUSTAINED ATTACK

    Your opponent will never agree with you. Your objective is to educated him through repetition, and to eliminate his means of obtaining confirmation, signals, and status from his conceptual peers.

    Construct a criticism, and a solution. (libertarianism or Russian involvement in Ukraine)

    Look for comment streams with elaborate but rhetorically weak arguments. (rothbarianism or russian moral equivalency).

    Watch for a few weeks so that you understand the general arguments that they make. (haunt blogs and fb pages)

    Create an aggressive, full frontal attack, in order to draw attention and fire. use loaded language, framed language, every thing possible to inflame the audience.

    Use their attacks on you as opportunities to repeat the central argument.

    Never show anger. Treat them as ‘cute’. Stick to the facts. Repeat the central argument.

    They will try to rally. Try to shame. Try to ridicule. Try ad hominems. Try straw men. And every other fallacy.

    Answer every single person who responds by showing their fallacy, then close by repeating the central argument. The purpose of responding is to repeat the central argument and show that they are dishonest in debate.

    At this point, after two to five days, you have already succeeded in controlling the discourse, and eliminating the sense of comfort, familiarity and safety that they have on the forum, but now, you want to defeat your enemy completely.

    So keep up the attack, and make fresh ones, until they bring in their ‘best’, who will undoubtedly have confidence that he can defeat you. This individual will seek status by showing his dominance. If you defeat this individual you defeat the ‘team’.

    At this point, the others will largely drop out except for cheers from the peanut gallery. You now have control of the discourse.

    Now that you have someone who can actually conduct a debate rather than rally, shame, ridicule, and throw fallacies, agree with his true and empirically stated points, and repeat the central argument.

    Keep this up until you exhaust him.

    At this point you have killed the venue as a means of self-reinforcing justification, and yo have probably repeated your central argument a hundred times. And it is now part of their conceptual vernacular.

    They will eventually try to ban you. At which point if you have conducted yourself with humor, rather than personal attacks, you can argue that they can’t defend their ideas, repeat the central position.

    YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK AT IT PATIENTLY.

    It’s a yeoman’s labor. But it works. You can accomplish by repetition what you can not accomplish by persuasion.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-23 01:07:00 UTC

  • If you wanna learn something, start a fight. Or at least, start an argument. 🙂

    If you wanna learn something, start a fight. Or at least, start an argument. 🙂 I’ve been doing it forever. It’s not very victorian. It’s not even nice. But it works. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-22 08:46:00 UTC

  • A Hierarchy of Truths

    (worth repeating) [A] hierarchy of Truths:

    1. True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship
    2. True enough for me to feel good about myself.
    3. True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.
    4. True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.
    5. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.
    6. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.
    7. True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.
    8. Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

  • A Hierarchy of Truths

    (worth repeating) [A] hierarchy of Truths:

    1. True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship
    2. True enough for me to feel good about myself.
    3. True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.
    4. True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.
    5. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.
    6. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.
    7. True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.
    8. Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

  • A HIERARCHY OF TRUTHS (worth repeating) A hierarchy of truth tests: True enough

    A HIERARCHY OF TRUTHS

    (worth repeating)

    A hierarchy of truth tests:

    True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship

    True enough for me to feel good about myself.

    True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.

    True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.

    True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.

    True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.

    True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.

    Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-20 13:33:00 UTC

  • Truth: Why is Propertarianism Different?

    [B]ecause while a number of other philosophers have come to the conclusion that all we must do is tell the truth, no other philosopher has told you how you can tell the truth: by speaking truthfully: by providing the warranty that you have performed due diligence on any speech that you place into the informational and normative commons. And by describing precisely how you can perform that due diligence.

  • Truth: Why is Propertarianism Different?

    [B]ecause while a number of other philosophers have come to the conclusion that all we must do is tell the truth, no other philosopher has told you how you can tell the truth: by speaking truthfully: by providing the warranty that you have performed due diligence on any speech that you place into the informational and normative commons. And by describing precisely how you can perform that due diligence.

  • TRUTHFULNESS AND TRUTH (h/t Francesco Principi) Honesty does depend on the indiv

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/05/29/definitions-truth/HONESTY, TRUTHFULNESS AND TRUTH

    (h/t Francesco Principi)

    Honesty does depend on the individual’s abilties, yes.

    – Truthfulness is a skill because man evolved to lie and negotiate, not to tell the truth – truth telling is expensive.

    – The ‘truth’ refers to a description that is ultimately parsimonious without being tautological (a name). And we can never know we speak the truth.

    We can know we speak truthfully, and we can know we speak honestly. But others cannot know you speak honestly (without questioning:falsifying), only that you speak truthfully: that your testimony is constructed to be free of error, imagination, bias and deceit. None of us can know we speak the truth, even if we speak it, because there is always more information available in the future.

    We use the word “True” very frequently, just like the word “is” but almost none of us can state in operational terms (existentially possible terms) what those two words mean. We use them as uncomprehended norms, not as truthful (warrantied) terms.

    So as much as everyone would like to confuse honesty with truth, and due diligence as truth, honesty, diligent testimony, and the truth are three very different things.

    Just as deduction, induction and abduction are very different things.

    —

    FROM http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/05/29/definitions-truth/

    —

    [D]EFINITIONS OF TRUTH.

    [T]RUTH: That testimony (description) you would give, if your knowledge (information) was complete, your language was sufficient, stated without error, cleansed of bias, and absent deceit, within the scope of precision limited to the context of the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, would provide the same testimony.

    [T]RUTHFULNESS: that testimony (description) you give if your knowledge (information) is incomplete, your language is insufficient, you have performed due diligence in the elimination of error and bias, and warranty free of deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and which you warranty to be so; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, would provide the same testimony.

    [H]ONESTY: that testimony (description) you give with full knowledge that knowledge is incomplete, your language is insufficient, but you have not performed due diligence in the elimination of error and bias, but which you warranty is free of deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, would provide the same testimony.

    [I]ntuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, uncriticized, response to information that expresses a measure of existing biases (priors).

    [P]reference (rational expression) : a justification of one’s biases (wants).

    [O]pinion: (justificationism) – a justified uncritical statement given the limits of one’s knowledge about external questions.

    [P]osition: (criticism) – a theoretical statement that survives one’s available criticisms about external questions.

    [D]emonstrated Preference: – Evidence of intuition, preference, opinion, and position as demonstrated by your actions, independent of your statements.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-20 07:16:00 UTC

  • STATISTICS DON”T LIE? QUITE THE OPPOSITE And quite the contrary: statistics are

    STATISTICS DON”T LIE? QUITE THE OPPOSITE

    And quite the contrary: statistics are not operational statements, but mere correlations in which the operations must be assumed or deduced by the application of the observer’s cognitive bias. In other words, statistics are easily used as pseudoscientific pseudo-moral statements with which to activate the observer’s cognitive biases.

    So, it would be more accurate to say that non-operationally stated, all statistics are lies.

    That is the empirical evidence anyway. Statistics are largely used to lie.

    All of Keynesian economics is statistical. Because if it was stated operationally none of us would tolerate the policy that is produced by it.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-20 07:03:00 UTC