Curt Doolittle

Form: Critique

  • OPEN LETTER: CONTRA THE VIGOR OF PUBESCENCE (I am not constructing a philosophy

    OPEN LETTER: CONTRA THE VIGOR OF PUBESCENCE

    (I am not constructing a philosophy for losers. Sorry.)

    You attack me for not agreeing with the sentimental religion of disaffected pubescent males longing for the romanticism of a bygone era?

    And it would be nice to have more followers. But if that means followers are infantilized males shouting as coverage for lack of feminine attention, then that is an acceptable loss.

    History provides us with the truth of man. Philosophy constitutes his attempts at construction of value systems with which to accommodate his place in history, and these philosophies are universally constructed in eras of class rotation. And class rotation is the product of economic and military success and failure – aesthetics productions are the result not cause of these transformations.

    Works are the product of one’s age. Using the institutional technologies available. All great works whether military, artistic, technological, and intellectual arise from the middle class in times of change in celebration of the transfer of power.

    I posted Durant’s criticism of Nietzsche yesterday and it’s rock solid. My own criticism is that aesthetics, arguments and religions justify reproductive strategies, and reproductives strategies reflect one’s gender and class. If one chooses the reproductive strategy of the masturbatory male lacking sufficient virility with which to attract women, then his choice of philosophy is codification of his reproductive strategy, class, and desirability.

    That generation you venerate has passed. That era has passed. Philosophies are strategies for times of transition, given circumstances of transition. That time is past. We can no longer unite en masse under nationalist anti-modernity as did the nazi era (as aesthetically brilliant as it was.)

    There is nothing incompatible between the overman and my work other than that the means of achieving our ultimate potential are a novel religion with which we must win a majority by conversion under your fantasy, and the systematic application of science and law by a minority willing to raise the cost of the status quo by violence in mine.

    It may be true that you can resurrect a hokey 19th century religion. It may be true that traditionalists can resurrect medieval christianity. It may be true that classicists can resurrect pagan hero and nature worship. But it is more LIKELY true that we can continue to apply truthfulness in all walks of life, and create a competitor to jewish and islamic law, using natural law and truth telling, through which those more viscous philosophies gain their vigor.

    The mistake you made was vanity, pride, and religious conviction in a fallacy. You called me out in public by attacking me when I asked you not to force me into that debate – knowing the result.

    And by doing so you have both demonstrated the failure of the religion you devoutly worship as a means of obtaining self validity, and made it impossible for yourself to recant in front of your peers.

    The mature man admits failure and passion, and the more mature man responds with understanding and forgiveness.

    I am not sure you can admit failure, blame passion and youth – not because you are not intellectually capable of grasping the folly of your over-investment in a comic-book religion for sophomores (something all of us most do in order to transition from prior metaphysics to new ones), but because you would loose the esteem of your peers if you did.

    This is wisdom. And your folly and pride will deprive you of it. Because my analysis of incentives means that the value you place on having friends who sympathize with your justification of your reproductive strategy, even if you and they err, and even if that strategy fails to advance your reproduction, is more important than achieving any existential result in this world.

    On the other hand, I care only whether I give men of our age a means of achieving our ends using the tools and technologies of our time, by providing incentives to people of our time. To force the transofrmation of the most important institution in western history: property, judge, rule of law, jury, and senate. And to construct arguments in science rather than religion.

    Good luck. I did the best I could afford to do with you. Not all investments pay returns.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-15 03:57:00 UTC

  • EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENDER So now I have offended six groups: 1) the local Criti

    EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENDER

    So now I have offended six groups:

    1) the local Critical Rationalists on four counts: that the method is not unique to science, that critical preference is theoretical not empirical, and that testimony is the only existentially possible truth, that popper’s arguments are cosmopolitan, not unique to science, and incomplete.

    2) I’ve offended the offended the Libertines intentionally on the fallacies of argumentation, NAP/IVP, and Mises’ failure by confusing operationalism as a test of existential possibility with empirical investigation, plus a host of other issues.

    3) I’ve offended the entire continental movement as an attempt at deceit by conflation, and having adopted the technique of the christians and gave the technique to the cosmopolitans: marxists, libertines, and neoconservatives, as well as the anglos: neo-puritans – who have devastated our culture with it.

    4) And I’ve offended a Nietzschean because he could not grasp the difference between negative philosophy (law and epistemology) and positive philosophy (aesthetics), and because I had to criticize Nietzsche for having failed, like all other conservatives (aristocratics) have failed, to employ rationalism or narrative, when only science has succeeded in transcending the pseudoscience of the postmoderns and their predecessors in the enlightenment.

    5) Strangely enough the traditional christians do get offended, but since I basically argue that (a) the church did some good, and (b) christianity’s love is pretty useful I tend to get by.

    6) My (formerly many) jewish friends who object to my rather extensive attacks on the jewish enlightenment – as if my attacks on the german, french and anglo aren’t just as damning.

    Just how it is.

    We soldier onward.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-14 10:06:00 UTC

  • APPARENTLY THEY DON’T TEACH ANY KIND OF LOGIC TO PHYSICS PROFESSORS ANY LONGER?

    APPARENTLY THEY DON’T TEACH ANY KIND OF LOGIC TO PHYSICS PROFESSORS ANY LONGER?

    —“Yes. I hope a member of a SWAT team will not assume that a weekend spent learning physics or astronomy would let them walk in front of my students and teach them astronomy or physics; I’ll do them the same credit of assuming that a weekend spent learning how to handle a gun would make me nearly as good as a SWAT team member. (Or even ‘capable of making the situation safer’.) — Becca Stareyes

    Any military officer will assure you that gun safety and use is teachable even to imbeciles in just a few lessons.

    Else we would not be able to field armies.

    Mastery of any abstract reasoning presents a high barrier to entry. Competence with a firearm can be achieved with an IQ of 80. And for what it’s worth the target iq of police officers is 107 – barley sufficient for junior college work.

    As a philosopher I will flip the argument around and suggest that it is difficult to imagine one can both fully grasp the standard model on the one hand and field such a sophomoric fallacy on the other.

    Curt.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-13 14:06:00 UTC

  • ON THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN NIETZSCHE AND DOOLITTLE (ongoing attempt to reconcile

    ON THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN NIETZSCHE AND DOOLITTLE

    (ongoing attempt to reconcile Nietzsche and propertarianism for those who misunderstand my work)

    —“As he views things from the perspective of life, Nietzsche further denies that there is a universal morality applicable indiscriminately to all human beings, and instead designates a series of moralities in an order of rank that ascends from the plebeian to the noble: some moralities are more suitable for subordinate roles; some are more appropriate for dominating and leading social roles. What counts as a preferable and legitimate action depends upon the kind of person one is. The deciding factor is whether one is weaker, sicker and on the decline, or whether one is healthier, more powerful and overflowing with life.”—

    This position is completely compatible with Propertarianism. Nietzsche, as a proper german, as a proper ‘spiritualist’, and a proper lutheran, knows little to nothing of economics, or biology, or law. He is a romantic and inspirational literary figure, not a scientist, and writes as a romantic and inspirational literary figure. He correctly warns us of the false moral future: neo-puritainism and the socialism of the masses. But he gives us no solution – because the only solution is in constructing institutions.

    So for Nietzsche, Morality is ‘right action’. And right action differs based upon one’s class. For propertarianism, morality is the prohibition on actions that inhibit cooperation, and personally beneficial action differs based upon one’s reproductive strategy (class).

    Those who are at the bottom need incentive to maintain the voluntary organization of production and so we must pay them off and require one child only, in exchange for their cooperation. And they must not privatize the commons that we create in order to compete and demonstrate our superiority.

    There is no conflict between his arguments and mine, other than as a continental he engages in conflation (deceit) and because he a victim of his time (prior to his loss of sanity), he knows little to nothing of science and economics.

    As always, I make scientific arguments. I use operations rather than analogy. So I do not make literary arguments. They are weak arguments by the intellectually unskilled and scientifically ignorant. And when those are the only technologies available, they are excusable technologies. But we have knowledge and technology available to state our arguments truthfully (in the testimonial sense) and we have the knowledge to state causal relations.

    Religions seek to inspire. Law seeks to constrain. Religion is a cheap dishonest substitute for law used to deceive ignorant people into adherence to rules of cooperation. Law (in the common + natural law sense) is an expensive institution that must be imposed upon people.

    One can create an objectively moral religion (stoicism), or one can create an objectively immoral religion (the three monotheisms). One can create objectively moral law (natural and common law), or one can create objectively immoral law (chinese, soviet, and most others). One teaches religion positively (through indoctrination and education), and one imposes law negatively (through dispute resolution).

    Both are impositions. The question is whether we impose objectively moral constraints upon man (non-parasitism and truthfulness) using truthful means or we impose objectively immoral constraints upon man (untruthful and parasitic) using untruthful means.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-13 04:52:00 UTC

  • Dear Obama. How’s that white liberation theology doing for ya? Bit ‘cha didn’t i

    Dear Obama. How’s that white liberation theology doing for ya? Bit ‘cha didn’t it? Can you see your reputation in history as Nero? Can you? I can. Difference is Nero was merely incompetent. You burned rome on purpose.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-29 11:21:00 UTC

  • DEFENSIVENESS OF AN ECONOMIC RESEARCHER —“I’m not trying to insult you, it jus

    DEFENSIVENESS OF AN ECONOMIC RESEARCHER

    —“I’m not trying to insult you, it just seems like you’re trying to make blanket statements about the research methodologies of a discipline you’ve never worked in. I’d be interested in reading what you’ve published. I tried looking you up on EconLit, but it didn’t have any publications listed. I also searched for you on JSTOR and a couple of other databases with philosophy of science journals to no avail.”—

    I don’t think you’re trying to insult me, I think you’re acting defensively to a categorization of economic inquiry into political or cognitive biases rather than intentions to produce a neutral point of view.

    We all fight different battles. That’s the work of intellectuals.

    Your argument amounts to this: that study of the literature produced in order to determine bias within it, is somehow the same as practicing the investigation itself. And that practicing the art of philosophy (truth telling) is equivalent to the practice of identifying correlations in attempts to explain causes in a particular field.

    This is the same as saying that the study of economic data provides no insight into disparate industries and regions.

    The second error you’re falling into is to assume that the same methods cannot be employed in the service of reproductive, cognitive, political, or group evolutionary strategies from nothing more than selection bias.

    The third error is that economics is one of the fields in which niche knowledge is not generalizable. In other words, the reason for the differences in surveys of economists on any given issue is that only the niche specialists in that issue have sufficient knowledge to respond. Why? because the reason we require economic analysis is that it’s counter-intuitive. So broad surveys of economists are generally less accurate that random polls of the population.

    So it does not matter what methods are employed. It matters that individuals employing those methods possess biases that are expressed in their work, and that their opinions derived from their niche work are not generalizable outside of that niche.

    I have for example, criticized mathematicians on the externalities produced by the false implications of their methods. But a mathematician does not consider externalities born of a verbal contrivance to be his responsibility. I can ask whether you think that is a question of economics or not.

    But a very sophisticated mathematician will tell you the reality: that truth is not a matter for mathematicians – proof is. Truth is a matter for philosophers. Even that man will be uncomfortable with the notion that there exists no ‘mathematical reality’ any more than there exists a heaven, hell, or Camelot. Or that his use of ‘infinities of different sizes’ is nonsense analogy that has had external consequences.

    I am not alone in my categorization of the ongoing battle between the leftists (Krugman/Delong), and the conservatives (Mankiw), and my posting is intended to provide a counter position to Krugman’s ‘dishonesty’ which Mankiw and others tend to point out regularly, and which cost Krugman his job.

    The current debate over “Mathiness” in economics is in fact, caused by the properties I mention above: what are they solving for? This is not a question of innumeracy or error but one of seeking different ends.

    But, academic economics fails to grasp that each field solves for something different by similar means. So it is not that Chicago errs, but that they attempt to define rules. It is not that Saltwaters err but they seek to define discretion that the public and industry find objectionable uses of power, which result in immoral ends. It is not that the politicians do not understand economics. It is that the public will not tolerate immorality. And it is not that the public is wrong to be intolerant of redistribution that produces measurable short and mid term gains at the expense of kith and kin.

    So, either criticize the central argument or state that you cant. That’s the practice of science. 😉

    That argument is that regardless of intentions and methods, the pattern of the research is yet another expression of reproductive strategy of the actor, rather than of a neutral point of view.

    Cheers. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-27 17:57:00 UTC

  • Mises Gets Credit – for both his insights and his failings.

    —“Curt Doolittle and Chris Cathcart — I am not sure I get your point that [Mises] will never get credit … he already does!”—Peter Boettke

    [W]ell, we all agree that he gets credit for stating that socialism was impossible. The question is whether he did so using justification from axiom, or by analysis of available information, available operations, and rational incentives. I don’t think anyone argues that his insight was correct. What I argue is that he, like Freud, Boaz, Cantor, Marx, (Mises), the Frankfurt School and Rothbard, demonstrated the pervasive Cosmopolitan error of creating an authoritarian pseudoscience in justification of his priors, rather than engaging in science for the specific purpose of eliminating error, bias and priors, wishful thinking and deceit from one’s theories. All knowledge is theoretical because outside of trivialities and tautologies, no premises are certain. Einstein demonstrated that if we cannot count on a concept such as length or time, that no premise is informationally complete enough to deduce necessary consequences. An axiom is a declarative construction – an analogy to reality, and is informationally complete. But no non trivial statement about reality is informationally complete. It cannot be. (hence critical rationalism and critical preference). Science is not justificationary, it is critical: we do not prove something is true, we see if it survives criticism. And the only test of existentially of any hypothesis is operational construction. As such praxeological analysis tests whether a statement CAN be true. So we cannot deduce all of economics from first premises (particularly the incomplete sentence “man acts”). We can observe (empirically) the unobservable, and then construct the observation out of rational actions to test if it is a truth candidate. But we cannot deduce all candidate operations from first principles – demonstrably so. As such correctly positioning Mises in intellectual history as the another failure of the 20th century thinkers to complete the evolution of the scientific method from moral and justificationary to objective and critical. This demonstrates that mises was, like Brouwer and Bridgman and Popper, attempting to eliminate the evolution of 19th and 20th century pseudoscience that Hayek warned us was the advent of a new form of mysticism. Unfortunately, Bridgman and Brouwer did not understand Popper, Hayek could’t put the fields together because he started with psychology rather than ‘calculability’ and ‘computability’. Mises correctly understood calculation but not computability, nor the relation between computably and subjective human incentives. Mises missed the boat by trying to create an pseudoscience or authoritarian logic to suppress pseudoscientific innumeracy in economics. What none of them realized – Popper included – is that the scientific method is a MORAL WARRANTY of due diligence in the elimination of error, bias, wishful thinking and deceit. And that what each of them had done was attempt to prevent the emergent pseudoscience of the Cosmopolitans and Postmodernists that for all intents and purposes functions as the second ‘christianization’ of Europe, this time, by pseudoscientific rather than mystical means. And that mises had incorrectly conflated logical necessity with adherence to the necessary morality of voluntary cooperation. This is a very profound insight into intellectual history. If I wanted to reform Mises I could. But that isn’t necessary. The world has moved on. Instead, the problem we face in our generation is not socialism, but postmodernism and lingering Cosmopolitan pseudoscience and innumeracy in the social sciences. We face pervasive mysticism, pseudoscience, innumeracy, propagandizing, and outright lying in politics and daily life after more than a century of diluting our education in grammar, rhetoric, logic, history and morality. Undermining Rothbardian fallacies is just as important as undermining socialist, postmodern, democratic secular humanist, and neo-conservatism. And unfortunately to undermine Rothbardian fallacies requires we undermine the fallacies that Rothbard depends upon in his arguments. And to some degree that means doing greater criticism of Mises than we might like. A philosopher’s followers can ruin his legacy. His did. There is Precious little Austrian in Mises to start with. He is from Lviv Ukraine, and a Cosmopolitan author in genetics, culture, and method of argument. He is not a scientist. He is attempting to write scriptural law. And he makes consistent errors of conflating law, hermeneutic interpretation in the construction of his insight: it’s not moral or true if it’s not constructible out of rational human actions, and it’s not calculable, moral, and true for human beings to attempt rational planning in the face of state-manufactured deceit. There is very little difference between postmodern propagandism and monetary manipulation. They are both disinformation campaigns designed to alter public behavior to state rather than individual, family, group and tribal ends. So it is not that state interference in the economy cannot be studied in the discipline of economics. It is that doing so studies disinformation, whereas the study of fully informed voluntary cooperation free of error, bias, wishful thinking and deception is the study of moral economics. In retrospect it’s not complicated. So while I partly agree with you, the damage done by his fallacies to the progress of liberty, and their amplification by rothbard/HHH/MI, have been far more harmful than good. LR at MI tried to use Alinsky’s model of creating propaganda and community. But this battle was above the heads of these people. Whether well intentioned or not. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Mises Gets Credit – for both his insights and his failings.

    —“Curt Doolittle and Chris Cathcart — I am not sure I get your point that [Mises] will never get credit … he already does!”—Peter Boettke

    [W]ell, we all agree that he gets credit for stating that socialism was impossible. The question is whether he did so using justification from axiom, or by analysis of available information, available operations, and rational incentives. I don’t think anyone argues that his insight was correct. What I argue is that he, like Freud, Boaz, Cantor, Marx, (Mises), the Frankfurt School and Rothbard, demonstrated the pervasive Cosmopolitan error of creating an authoritarian pseudoscience in justification of his priors, rather than engaging in science for the specific purpose of eliminating error, bias and priors, wishful thinking and deceit from one’s theories. All knowledge is theoretical because outside of trivialities and tautologies, no premises are certain. Einstein demonstrated that if we cannot count on a concept such as length or time, that no premise is informationally complete enough to deduce necessary consequences. An axiom is a declarative construction – an analogy to reality, and is informationally complete. But no non trivial statement about reality is informationally complete. It cannot be. (hence critical rationalism and critical preference). Science is not justificationary, it is critical: we do not prove something is true, we see if it survives criticism. And the only test of existentially of any hypothesis is operational construction. As such praxeological analysis tests whether a statement CAN be true. So we cannot deduce all of economics from first premises (particularly the incomplete sentence “man acts”). We can observe (empirically) the unobservable, and then construct the observation out of rational actions to test if it is a truth candidate. But we cannot deduce all candidate operations from first principles – demonstrably so. As such correctly positioning Mises in intellectual history as the another failure of the 20th century thinkers to complete the evolution of the scientific method from moral and justificationary to objective and critical. This demonstrates that mises was, like Brouwer and Bridgman and Popper, attempting to eliminate the evolution of 19th and 20th century pseudoscience that Hayek warned us was the advent of a new form of mysticism. Unfortunately, Bridgman and Brouwer did not understand Popper, Hayek could’t put the fields together because he started with psychology rather than ‘calculability’ and ‘computability’. Mises correctly understood calculation but not computability, nor the relation between computably and subjective human incentives. Mises missed the boat by trying to create an pseudoscience or authoritarian logic to suppress pseudoscientific innumeracy in economics. What none of them realized – Popper included – is that the scientific method is a MORAL WARRANTY of due diligence in the elimination of error, bias, wishful thinking and deceit. And that what each of them had done was attempt to prevent the emergent pseudoscience of the Cosmopolitans and Postmodernists that for all intents and purposes functions as the second ‘christianization’ of Europe, this time, by pseudoscientific rather than mystical means. And that mises had incorrectly conflated logical necessity with adherence to the necessary morality of voluntary cooperation. This is a very profound insight into intellectual history. If I wanted to reform Mises I could. But that isn’t necessary. The world has moved on. Instead, the problem we face in our generation is not socialism, but postmodernism and lingering Cosmopolitan pseudoscience and innumeracy in the social sciences. We face pervasive mysticism, pseudoscience, innumeracy, propagandizing, and outright lying in politics and daily life after more than a century of diluting our education in grammar, rhetoric, logic, history and morality. Undermining Rothbardian fallacies is just as important as undermining socialist, postmodern, democratic secular humanist, and neo-conservatism. And unfortunately to undermine Rothbardian fallacies requires we undermine the fallacies that Rothbard depends upon in his arguments. And to some degree that means doing greater criticism of Mises than we might like. A philosopher’s followers can ruin his legacy. His did. There is Precious little Austrian in Mises to start with. He is from Lviv Ukraine, and a Cosmopolitan author in genetics, culture, and method of argument. He is not a scientist. He is attempting to write scriptural law. And he makes consistent errors of conflating law, hermeneutic interpretation in the construction of his insight: it’s not moral or true if it’s not constructible out of rational human actions, and it’s not calculable, moral, and true for human beings to attempt rational planning in the face of state-manufactured deceit. There is very little difference between postmodern propagandism and monetary manipulation. They are both disinformation campaigns designed to alter public behavior to state rather than individual, family, group and tribal ends. So it is not that state interference in the economy cannot be studied in the discipline of economics. It is that doing so studies disinformation, whereas the study of fully informed voluntary cooperation free of error, bias, wishful thinking and deception is the study of moral economics. In retrospect it’s not complicated. So while I partly agree with you, the damage done by his fallacies to the progress of liberty, and their amplification by rothbard/HHH/MI, have been far more harmful than good. LR at MI tried to use Alinsky’s model of creating propaganda and community. But this battle was above the heads of these people. Whether well intentioned or not. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • No, Mises is Not a Hero. (Not that he wasn’t pretty good)

    [I] love him but he was wrong. He conflates definitions with demonstrated behavior and this is an example of why he was ostracized for his dogmatic verbalisms. His method of investigation, which he calls Austrian but is arguably Ukrainian instead, is reducible to the study of the means of improving the institutions that facilitate the voluntary organization of production by eliminating all possible frictions to economic velocity. Whereas the mainstream is reducible to the maximum consumption that can be generated by interfering with the voluntary organization of production without producing the disincentives that would increase frictions sufficiently to produce results counter to the ambition. When the differences between misesian and mainstream are one of morality and externality, not definition. Mises engaged in fallacies throughout his work. He makes consistent mistakes in the application of aprioristic logic of axiomatic systems to the proximal logic of theoretical systems. He discovered operationalism in economics just as Brouwer discovered it in math, and Bridgman in physics, and popper in philosophy. But none of them managed to put their efforts together into an innovation in the scientific method and the formal uniting of philosophy and science into a single discipline; and finally retiring moral discourse just as moral discourse retired religious discourse. This is perhaps one of the greatest failures of the twentieth century. Mises was a little right. But his dogmatism ended both his career and his potential to solve the problem not just if economics but if the social sciences.

  • No, Mises is Not a Hero. (Not that he wasn’t pretty good)

    [I] love him but he was wrong. He conflates definitions with demonstrated behavior and this is an example of why he was ostracized for his dogmatic verbalisms. His method of investigation, which he calls Austrian but is arguably Ukrainian instead, is reducible to the study of the means of improving the institutions that facilitate the voluntary organization of production by eliminating all possible frictions to economic velocity. Whereas the mainstream is reducible to the maximum consumption that can be generated by interfering with the voluntary organization of production without producing the disincentives that would increase frictions sufficiently to produce results counter to the ambition. When the differences between misesian and mainstream are one of morality and externality, not definition. Mises engaged in fallacies throughout his work. He makes consistent mistakes in the application of aprioristic logic of axiomatic systems to the proximal logic of theoretical systems. He discovered operationalism in economics just as Brouwer discovered it in math, and Bridgman in physics, and popper in philosophy. But none of them managed to put their efforts together into an innovation in the scientific method and the formal uniting of philosophy and science into a single discipline; and finally retiring moral discourse just as moral discourse retired religious discourse. This is perhaps one of the greatest failures of the twentieth century. Mises was a little right. But his dogmatism ended both his career and his potential to solve the problem not just if economics but if the social sciences.