Curt Doolittle

Form: Argument

  • Is Sociology Leftist Propaganda Masquerading As Science?

    THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER

    Others have described the phenomenon imprecisely. I will have to try do better until someone does better than I:

    1) Sociology relies on surveys which are almost always false, because of natural properties  innate in human psychology and cognitive processes.   Sociology relies upon experiments, the conditions of which have greater affect on the answers provided than the natural environment in which teh behavior would be demonstrated. So in effect, ANY TEST that you issue will bias towards collectivist results, even if people will ACT upon individual incentives in the actual circumstance. This is pretty obvious really. 

    2) Economics instead, relies upon demonstrated actions independent of tests. This is why economics has become the primary social science: we measure demonstrated actions rather than what people state they would do.

    3) Behavioral psychology tries to reduce the problem of sociological testing by proving the indvalidity of social surveys and tests.  The only valuable survey information appears to be voting records, which if detailed enough, like economic data, demonstrate what people actually do rather than what they say they will do in any given circumstance.

    4) Sociology seems to attract people who are disproportionately subject to various collectivist biases, and the related cognitive biases. (Google ‘Common economic errors’, ‘Common Cognitive Biases’, “Common Social Cognitive Biases’.)   We must remember, that the farther down the IQ scale you are, the more you must rely on the opinions, thoughts, and interpretations of otherse for your information.  Every 15 points of IQ is about one standard deviation.  That means people cannot really talk to each other easily across 15 points of difference and cannot even grasp each other’s world views or contexts, or implied causal relations at 30 points. THe predominance of science is improving this by repeated exposure

    5)  The output of these surveys and experiments produces biased and therefore false information and conclusions, but the people who conduct them have both a subconscious bias, a preferential interest, and a career interest, and a political interest in believing and promoting the false outputs.  There is a market for this false information available in public intellectuals, politicians and organizers. This false information is used for political purposes, under the pretense of academic neutrality, and empirically supported truth – none of which are true either.

    The public cannot understand this, the teachers use it because teachers are from the bottom 15% of graduating classes in intelligence, self select for the nurture bias, which is the source of left wing moral specialization, and must try to form homogeneity of interests among pupils with diverse backgrounds, and require justification for their actions. This is conversely why they cannot teach history or art history any longer, because this would require value judgements that distributed status signals to different members of a group that they seek to treat as  homogenous family in order to control the room.

    Statistically speaking, in any university department sociologists will have the lowest IQ distribution of any of the major disciplines, economists, mathematicians and medical doctors the highest distribution.  (Michigan study).

    For these reasons, the discipline of sociology is in fact, an unscientific tool of propaganda created, maintained, and  used by the lowest IQ distribution in academia as a means of attepting to justify the failed communist, socialist, and now postmodernist ideology that seeks to compete against the natural sorting of people opportuntiy, income and political power behind those groups, families, and individuals with demonstrated meritocratic superiority in the market for goods, services, and military defense.


    Harsh words.
    True words.
    The conservatives are correct.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-sociology-leftist-propaganda-masquerading-as-science

  • 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

  • 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

  • Values And Principles: Should The Us Government Have The Power To Tax One Group In Order To Help Another?

    all commons are redistribution. The question is whether the comons that we contribute to create either hazards, perverse incentives, and free-riding. 

    There has been an organized effort for the beter part of a century, to support rather than avoid free riding, and penalize the middle class to fund reproduction by the lower classes.

    Redistribution is probably EARNED if you adhere to manners, ethics, morals and laws – albiet the argument is too complex for this post.    If you do not adhere of manners, ethics morals and laws, it is very hard to argue that you have earned any form of redistribution.

    https://www.quora.com/Values-and-Principles-Should-the-US-government-have-the-power-to-tax-one-group-in-order-to-help-another

  • How Might A Private Law Society Be A Reasonable Solution For Most Of The Social Ills Of Civilization?

    The question is somewhat misleading. A private law society requires a homogeneity of interests, and therefore is a small society.  An argument in favor of a private law society is an argument in favor of many small societies (private cities). Since society’s ills are largely the product of the opposing vales of credit at scale, but diversity of interests at scale, we generally need governments to resolve conflicts between groups with competing interests, all of whom dislike compromising, but all of whom benefit from the insurance value and credit value of a large government.

    What is important here is that Hoppe has solved the problem of large monopolistic bureaucratic government acting as an extortionary, self-interested monopoly insurer maximizing it’s profit for employees, with small cities and competing insurance companies. That this is advocating a return, en large, to the pre-empire german city states, is probably not lost on historians. It isn’t lost on  Hoppe.

    So it is a reasonable solution except that the value of credit to large populations is that they can finance the wars necessary to keep other large states at bay.  This is where the banking and fiat credit system as we understand it comes from: the finance of the wars of napoleon and britain.  Which is one of rothbard and hoppe’s reasons for trying to undermine the large monpoly state: is that it is used to finance warfare.  However, if the USA uses it to finance warfare, that means europe can use it for social programs, because europe doesn’t have to. The US then sells enough dollars as petrodollars to pay for its military, and then inflates the debt, effectively charging these countries – and the whole world, for the cost of its military.

    I hope this helps put such things in context.

    https://www.quora.com/How-might-a-Private-Law-Society-be-a-reasonable-solution-for-most-of-the-social-ills-of-civilization

  • I”M NOT SURE THE LOGIC FOLLOWS. INSTEAD I HAVE A BETTER ANSWER FOR UKRAINE. If i

    http://usembassykyiv.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/why-should-ukrainians-care-about-intellectual-property-rights/IP? I”M NOT SURE THE LOGIC FOLLOWS. INSTEAD I HAVE A BETTER ANSWER FOR UKRAINE.

    If intellectual property rights helped countries prosper, then China would demonstrate the worst performance. But it’s just the opposite.

    Ukraine’s problems are (a) a lack of property rights in courts (b) a lack of insured identity provided by the government, (c) a lack of credit because of (a) and (b). There is a lot of sound and fury here that the government is corrupt, but the truth is, all government’s are corrupt – the USA”s included, if not spectacularly so. Systemic corruption (involuntary transfer, free riding, rent seeking, privatization of public goods, and socializing private losses) is no different from interpersonal corruption (bribery, graft) and oligarchical rent seeking and privatization – and we can argue pretty effectively that interpersonal corruption( bribery, graft) is far less harmful than systemic corruption.

    The problem in Ukraine is that the judiciary would need to be replaced, or a parallel judiciary for consumer contracts created using lawmakers from western (common law) countries. If this judiciary were married with an insurance company that people paid to prove their identity so that they could have access to credit, because credit would then be insured, then this would RAPIDLY, within three to six years, revitalize the Ukrainian state.

    WHY? Because the problem for any country is generating consumption, and consumption of complex goods requires credit. Consumption must come BEFORE production. This is a common problem, in economic understanding pervasive in all nations except perhaps for China.

    In the United States, the state acts as insurer of last resort, and will adequately find and punish people for credit crimes. (Other than identity theft which for some reason the USA is legally incompetent to solve.) In the Ukraine, the courts are too corrupt to insure consumer credit, and no government organization capable of providing insurance is sufficiently free of corruption to act as an insurer. It is quite possible that european countries could provide these services, but they have no means of extracting violators or their assets from ukraine. Therefore the only possible solution is either reform of the court against the existing Ukrainian Constitution, or creation of a parallel court, and insurance provider, so that credit from the willing west can be used to fund consumption in Ukraine. And consequently, local production can arise to meet that consumption.

    My admittedly short analysis of the progress of Ukrainian law is that lawmakers are taking adequate measures, but that the endemic corruption in the post-soviet bureaucracy, and certain cultural norms, make it impossible to ensure that citizens have property rights, that their contract rights are upheld, and that credit can be created as a tolerable risk for anyone.

    Once this system was in place, and member judges had the incentives that come with such status, it could be used to defend against the arbitrary seizure of property, and the graft and bribery that is pervasive in the country.

    But back to the original topic – it is very hard to make a functionally moral argument in favor of any Intellectual Property Right other than trademarks. Patents and Copyrights are hunting licenses to extract higher prices from a population than could be achieve by the process of meritocratic competition alone. Trademarks are weights and measures that prevent fraud. If you want to make a country wealthy, intellectual property rights are just another burdensome tax on a challenged economy. And that is both the logical outcome of any analysis, and the empirical evidence that will result from any analysis.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 10:04:00 UTC

  • RIGHT TO A JOB? VS RIGHT TO WORK? Is having a job a right? Are jobs something th

    RIGHT TO A JOB? VS RIGHT TO WORK?

    Is having a job a right? Are jobs something that a society is obliged to provide to each individual?

    SOME OK ANSWERS BY OTHERS, BUT I WILL GIVE A BETTER ONE

    A right is something provided by a contract. We can in theory create a contract that states that every person has a right be as attractive as a victoria’s secret model. The problem is, that the provision isn’t enforceable because (a) we don’t know how to do that (b) it probably isn’t possible (c) the consequence of even trying would probably be really bad (somehow… although I can’t think of any at the moment.)

    NEGATIVE RIGHTS, are things do by avoiding doing something: killing, torturing, harming, stealing, fraud, are all things we can avoid doing. And since it means avoiding something, we can, every single one of us, avoid killing, torturing, harming, stealing, fraud and all such damage to life and property.

    Jobs are called POSITIVE RIGHTS. They require resources, and resources that no one has to provide.

    One can have a right to a job in the sense that no one can be prohibited from working, who is willing, by a government. That is a negative right. It is a right to engage in work. It says no one may restrain another from engaging in the voluntary trade of his effort in exchange for something that he wants (money.) But one cannot have the right to have a job provided, because (a) we don’t know how to do that (b) it probably isn’t possible (c) the consequences of even trying would be really bad.

    The international declaration of human rights contains a number of provisions (22-26) are positive rights, which were included in order to satisfy the then-powerful communist governments, the same way the north was required to allow for slavery in the constitution inorder to gain the compliance of the south.

    The question is whether positive rights are possible to provide. Or whether it is only possible to provide insurance against destitution (which appears possible). This important question isn’t yet answered because we haven’t been doing it long enough to be sure. It certainly appears that both Europe and the USA are having significant economic, cultural and demographic problems because of these policies – which can only be satisfied with the use of ponzi schemes.

    (And yes, I am happy to argue with anyone on this point including our favorite left wing Nobel Prize winner.)

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 05:49:00 UTC

  • Do Convicted Criminals Deserve Human Rights Since They Willingly Deprived Someone Else Of Theirs?

    When someone violates NATURAL RIGHTS (life, liberty, property, by fraud, theft or violence) we punish them by removing their NATURAL RIGHTS, by  imprisoning them.   Natural rights are NECESSARY RIGHTS to engage in cooperation via exchanges within society: life, liberty, and property.

    We pay for our natural rights by forgoing our opportunity for fraud, theft and violence. 

    We also pay for access to opportunities to interact with others by paying the cost of effort to deonstrate manners, and the cost of forgone opportunities for stealing from others by respecting ethics and morals. 

    For violations of normative laws, we are ostracized from opportunity (boycotted) rather than punished or incarcerated. But we retain our natural rights as long as we can find someone to voluntarily exchange with us who does not refuse to boycott us because of our manners, ethics and morals.

    However, we do not remove anyone’s HUMAN RIGHTS any longer for any reason.  This is in no small part, because we are wealthy enough that deprivation from society and consumption alone are enough to coerce people into respecting both natural laws, and for normative laws.

    The international declaration of human rights was created in no small part to control the abuse of individuals by communist countries. It is a DESIRED list of rights.  This DESIRED list of rights is a CONTRACT between GOVERNMENTS. This contract is a TREATY.  This treaty demands that member countries hold governments accountable for the treatment of individuals, and to sanction those countries if they do not. Even to the point of replacing a government for their abuses of their individuals.

    It is important that we understad that this charter is a treaty by governments that like a treaty for the promise of mutual defense, binds other countries such that they are required to use legal, financial and economic sanctions against countries that violate the rights that the charter agrees all people in all countries, regardless of government, possess.

    In effect, as a worldwide treaty, it is a worldwide constitution for that limits the powers of governemnts.  This is waht RULE OF LAW means: it means that governemtns, and the people in them,  are limited to the actions that are allowed in their constitutions.  Rule of law does not mean that there are laws. It means that the government itself is bound by law.

    The Charter of human rights is a very simple document. It is vaguely divided into sections. The first few are restatements of NATURAL LAW. After that there are a variety of prohibitions against the government, that require that all people in society must be treated equally before the law.  That they have the right to live ordinary lives, marry,  have a family, make friends, earn a living, 

    Articles 23, 24, 25, and 26, were necessary to gain the support of the socialist and communist countries, in the same way that the north was required to allow slavery in order to gain the signatures of the south during the american civil war.  This is the primary problem with the declaration of human rights: is that these are not possible, not testable, and not achievable except in rare circumstances and for short periods of time – and they create a moral hazard as well as perverse incentives.  These are POSITIVE rights. And positive rights can only exist as preferences, not rights. 

    Article 29 specifies how you PAY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, and that is by granting them to other people equally.  Rights require exchange. Without exchange the term ‘rights’ is meaningless.  One does not HAVE human rights as if they fall from heavens. One is granted them by others, and pays for them over one’s lifetime by granting the same rights to others.

    Otherwise the document is not terribly different from the American Bill of Rights.

    What I hope to get accross here is that these are not divine rights, nor necesary and therefore natural rights, they are human rights, and human rights are those that we choose to require, by threat of force and economic punishment, that all governments must hold to.

    https://www.quora.com/Do-convicted-criminals-deserve-human-rights-since-they-willingly-deprived-someone-else-of-theirs

  • If We Ever Cloned Hominids, Would They Have Human Rights?

    Rights are the product of an exchange where terms are specified in a contract. For rights to exist a contract must exist – stated or written, or assumed.

    If we cloned hominids, and cloned them sufficiently well that they could negotiate agreements with us, it is very likely that we would have to grant them NATURAL rights – because we cannot create contracts without natural rights. 

    The definntion of human right is fungible.  They are a preference.  Meaning, they are not necessary right, and as such not natural rights.  They are aspirational rights, or desired rights, that while not necessary we have asked all other people to respect.  If these clones were able to understand those rights, and consent to them, then we could grant them rights if they would grant them to us. This would be a contract for exchange, and therefore each side would have rights.  Even if these rights are not written or spoken, but just understood and adhered to.

    Animals cannot have rights because they cannot conduct an exchange with us. We treat animals as if they have rights, because we have an agreement with others to treat animals as if they have rights.  But they do not have rights.  We simply have obligations to other people to treat animals as if they have rights. Our obligation is to other humans, not to animals.

    Animals only have rights by analogy.  But human beings like to feel that rights come from somewhere supernatural, and others don’t understand the construct of rights, so they anthropomorphize animals.  This is a simple mistake, but the majority of people make it either out of ignorance or for ideological reasons.

    I hope this helps.

    https://www.quora.com/If-we-ever-cloned-hominids-would-they-have-human-rights

  • INEPTOCRACY can only exist as a Kleptocracy. ARISTOCRACY can only exist as Merit

    INEPTOCRACY can only exist as a Kleptocracy.

    ARISTOCRACY can only exist as Meritocracy.

    ECONOMICS requires these statements be true.

    In agrarian societies, entire families struggle to produce goods so that they can participate in the market. In post industrial societies, declining numbers of people participate in the market, and the majority of people actively seek to avoid the market at all costs: through salaried employment, unionization, government work, redistribution schemes, and work at charities. Very few people participate in the market today. And this is the preference for all of us. We are natural rent seekers and free riders. It is unnatural to want to participate in the competitive market.

    Liberty is the desire of the few willing to participate in the market.

    Freedom has been intentionally redefined by progressives as a freedom from nature rather than freedom from constraint by man.

    Democracy is rule by the worst.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-31 06:29:00 UTC