Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • The Dependence on Land and The Variation in Group Strategies

    –“I was working the rather large winter garden this afternoon I have planted with my father. Thinking about the respective Peloponnesian and Delian strategies. It got me thinking about two things. Agricultural productivity / output and the concurrent effervescence of commercial activity, economic growth, and thus civilisational expansion (consider this also in a Rome vs Carthage context too). The second angle was the context of one’s own personal independence and self-sovereignty, in this sense as a landowner, either large or small scale. Be it in terms of food supply, land as a hold of value, and also as an individual / family / community area with which to defend one’s own assets. Whilst Australia and America have different cultures and expressions of “homesteading” there are some similarities too, you might call it a “dying frontier of the self-owned man”. Do you have any pointers or suggestions from a Propertarian standpoint?”— A Friend

    [Y]es, you have the correct insight, that I would translate as “If a man is dependent upon the land, he intuits others are also dependent upon the land, and that he cannot defend his land nor can others without collective defense of land, and collective defense by almost everyone. This is the opposite of migratory pastoralists and disaporic traders (Carthage), or diasporic usurers (Jews), or diasporic thieves(gypsies), or diasporic raiders(muslims), diasporic rent seekers(russians, mongols), but not the same as settled(germans, spartans) or diasporic producers (europeans, chinese – and what should have been hindus). That is because we specialize in different strategies and our value of territory, built capital, institutional, and cultural commons, differs by where our revenue comes from and the composition of our ‘armies’ and the strategy that these men use for control of predation (raiding), parasitism (extractive rule, usury, theft), or domestication (productive rule, settlement, common capital production.)

  • The Cognitive Origins of Conspiracy and Oppression Theories

    [A] conspiracy theory requires that one attribute incentives that fail the test of occam’s razor, almost always because the individual is a social outlier, and has limited sensitivity to, experience with, or knowledge and understanding of how people operate in large groups. Conspiracy theory is the equivalent of dunning kruger failure of personal assessment, projected upon interpersonal and social assessment. In both cases the individual attributes greater ability, agency, and logic to the self and others than they have, because of mistrust, because they do not trust either their own cognition, others, or both. This is why conspiracy theory (systemization) tends to be a male category of cognitive failure, and oppression (personalization) tends to be a female category of cognitive failure. However, we note that in both the Male conspiracy theory and the female oppression cognitive failures, that the parties do not seek to understand the incentives of the individuals they are judging, or to falsify their conspiracy or oppression narratives. There is a reason for it. The human mind operates by building a world model ‘fit for it’s physical, emotional, psychological, and mental budget’. A physiological, emotional, and cognitive economy. This is why people who are ill, depressed, tired, at different points of the day, rested, healthy, excited, or joyous all perceive the same world slighlty differently In both conspiracy and oppression cognitive failures, the individual has defended his or her desperate attempt to suppress the feeling of being out of control of his or her life (due to his or her cognitive limitations), by false self-promise of comprehension. Status is our human accounting system. There are healthy and unhealthy means of suppression emotional panic from cognitive failure to find a means of obtaining success (status) in the social, economic, and political marketplace. Agency (success), Truth / Knowledge / Understanding (acceptance), Philosophy (settlement), Theology-Religion (detachment), Self Discipline (buddhism,stoicism), Ritual/Sport-exercise/hypersocializatin(exposure), Conspiracy and Oppression (withdrawal) narratives are the most common means of providing mindfulness. It’s not hard to see how the consequences of deviation from Knowledge escalate. So, both oppression and conspiracy behaviors are expressions of proto-depression, or prolonged depression from the continuous failure of one’s ideas about one’s self and others and what is in other’s abilities and interests. And That’s because evolution insured that we would remain optimistic to survive in the face of incredible stresses when continued existence is no longer rational. Exhaust all possible explanation for rational choice prior to default to malincentives (conspiracy of intent). In most cases it’s conspiracy of organizational incentives, conspiracy of common interests, conspiracy of genetic bias (such as the ashkenazi adoption of the female strategy), ignorance, error, or stupidity. If you exhaust all of the possible rational incentives then only malincentives remain. But rare. Never attribute to intention what is the product of either incentives, ignorance, or stupidity. Humans by and large justify what they do post hoc with a story. Humans by ad large pursue self interests that they can justify with a story afterward. Because that’s what our brains do. And frankly the more responsibility you have, for the more people, for more risk, the more you have to compromise between different sets of unacceptable externalities that are the cost of getting whatever it s you’re doing done with the resources available, time available, people you have to work with, and incentives you can provide. Most organizational failure that we interpret as conspiracy is the result of people in organizations that are producing malincentives by accident rather than by design. Most groups that engage in evil are doing so because they consider what they’re doing a good. As I’m fond of saying, serial killers justify what they do, and the mothers of serial killers justify what they’ve done, and the fathers of serial killers are happy to throw away the key if not pull the lever. So if it is other than a conspiracy of intention, our problem is not to wish for better humans, but to rule with the humans we have, using the law and incentives to prevent malincentives.

  • The Cognitive Origins of Conspiracy and Oppression Theories

    [A] conspiracy theory requires that one attribute incentives that fail the test of occam’s razor, almost always because the individual is a social outlier, and has limited sensitivity to, experience with, or knowledge and understanding of how people operate in large groups. Conspiracy theory is the equivalent of dunning kruger failure of personal assessment, projected upon interpersonal and social assessment. In both cases the individual attributes greater ability, agency, and logic to the self and others than they have, because of mistrust, because they do not trust either their own cognition, others, or both. This is why conspiracy theory (systemization) tends to be a male category of cognitive failure, and oppression (personalization) tends to be a female category of cognitive failure. However, we note that in both the Male conspiracy theory and the female oppression cognitive failures, that the parties do not seek to understand the incentives of the individuals they are judging, or to falsify their conspiracy or oppression narratives. There is a reason for it. The human mind operates by building a world model ‘fit for it’s physical, emotional, psychological, and mental budget’. A physiological, emotional, and cognitive economy. This is why people who are ill, depressed, tired, at different points of the day, rested, healthy, excited, or joyous all perceive the same world slighlty differently In both conspiracy and oppression cognitive failures, the individual has defended his or her desperate attempt to suppress the feeling of being out of control of his or her life (due to his or her cognitive limitations), by false self-promise of comprehension. Status is our human accounting system. There are healthy and unhealthy means of suppression emotional panic from cognitive failure to find a means of obtaining success (status) in the social, economic, and political marketplace. Agency (success), Truth / Knowledge / Understanding (acceptance), Philosophy (settlement), Theology-Religion (detachment), Self Discipline (buddhism,stoicism), Ritual/Sport-exercise/hypersocializatin(exposure), Conspiracy and Oppression (withdrawal) narratives are the most common means of providing mindfulness. It’s not hard to see how the consequences of deviation from Knowledge escalate. So, both oppression and conspiracy behaviors are expressions of proto-depression, or prolonged depression from the continuous failure of one’s ideas about one’s self and others and what is in other’s abilities and interests. And That’s because evolution insured that we would remain optimistic to survive in the face of incredible stresses when continued existence is no longer rational. Exhaust all possible explanation for rational choice prior to default to malincentives (conspiracy of intent). In most cases it’s conspiracy of organizational incentives, conspiracy of common interests, conspiracy of genetic bias (such as the ashkenazi adoption of the female strategy), ignorance, error, or stupidity. If you exhaust all of the possible rational incentives then only malincentives remain. But rare. Never attribute to intention what is the product of either incentives, ignorance, or stupidity. Humans by and large justify what they do post hoc with a story. Humans by ad large pursue self interests that they can justify with a story afterward. Because that’s what our brains do. And frankly the more responsibility you have, for the more people, for more risk, the more you have to compromise between different sets of unacceptable externalities that are the cost of getting whatever it s you’re doing done with the resources available, time available, people you have to work with, and incentives you can provide. Most organizational failure that we interpret as conspiracy is the result of people in organizations that are producing malincentives by accident rather than by design. Most groups that engage in evil are doing so because they consider what they’re doing a good. As I’m fond of saying, serial killers justify what they do, and the mothers of serial killers justify what they’ve done, and the fathers of serial killers are happy to throw away the key if not pull the lever. So if it is other than a conspiracy of intention, our problem is not to wish for better humans, but to rule with the humans we have, using the law and incentives to prevent malincentives.

  • When you go to law school you do not learn what we teach here: strictly construc

    When you go to law school you do not learn what we teach here: strictly constructed natural law jurisprudence. Most of what you learn is procedure, statute (legislation), and case law (examples). Or “How to work the process”. That’s why P makes sense to you. Because its internally consistent.

    Now, once you learn ENOUGH case law, you realize that the court does a pretty good job most of the time. The problem is the lack of jurisprudence (rules of law) in the constitution, and the ‘legislation’ that violates the natural law on top of it.

    Most of the ‘bad stuff’ is procedural manipulation somewhere between the police, the prosecution, the court staff.

    There are very good lawyers and not so good lawyers. And you can tell when reading the arguments put before the court which one you’re dealing with.

    Mostly there are waaaaaaayyyyy too many lawyers. And that’s why I prefer the british two stage system. So that a lawyer(customer service representative) and a barrister(presents to the court) are separated. This allows you to get customer service from a lawyer, but a barrister may refuse your case. This savse the judge and jury from legal clown world. That’s the ONLY thing I really prefer about the british system other than the wigs. I really like the wigs. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-24 17:40:00 UTC

  • THE COGNITIVE ORIGINS OF CONSPIRACY AND OPPRESSION THEORIES A conspiracy theory

    THE COGNITIVE ORIGINS OF CONSPIRACY AND OPPRESSION THEORIES

    A conspiracy theory requires that one attribute incentives that fail the test of occam’s razor, almost always because the individual is a social outlier, and has limited sensitivity to, experience with, or knowledge and understanding of how people operate in large groups.

    Conspiracy theory is the equivalent of dunning kruger failure of personal assessment, projected upon interpersonal and social assessment. In both cases the individual attributes greater ability, agency, and logic to the self and others than they have, because of mistrust, because they do not trust either their own cognition, others, or both.

    This is why conspiracy theory (systemization) tends to be a male category of cognitive failure, and oppression (personalization) tends to be a female category of cognitive failure.

    However, we note that in both the Male conspiracy theory and the female oppression cognitive failures, that the parties do not seek to understand the incentives of the individuals they are judging, or to falsify their conspiracy or oppression narratives.

    There is a reason for it. The human mind operates by building a world model ‘fit for it’s physical, emotional, psychological, and mental budget’. A physiological, emotional, and cognitive economy. This is why people who are ill, depressed, tired, at different points of the day, rested, healthy, excited, or joyous all perceive the same world slighlty differently

    In both conspiracy and oppression cognitive failures, the individual has defended his or her desperate attempt to suppress the feeling of being out of control of his or her life (due to his or her cognitive limitations), by false self-promise of comprehension.

    Status is our human accounting system. There are healthy and unhealthy means of suppression emotional panic from cognitive failure to find a means of obtaining success (status) in the social, economic, and political marketplace.

    Agency (success), Truth / Knowledge / Understanding (acceptance), Philosophy (settlement), Theology-Religion (detachment), Self Discipline (buddhism,stoicism), Ritual/Sport-exercise/hypersocializatin(exposure), Conspiracy and Oppression (withdrawal) narratives are the most common means of providing mindfulness.

    It’s not hard to see how the consequences of deviation from Knowledge escalate.

    So, both oppression and conspiracy behaviors are expressions of proto-depression, or prolonged depression from the continuous failure of one’s ideas about one’s self and others and what is in other’s abilities and interests. And That’s because evolution insured that we would remain optimistic to survive in the face of incredible stresses when continued existence is no longer rational.

    Exhaust all possible explanation for rational choice prior to default to malincentives (conspiracy of intent). In most cases it’s conspiracy of organizational incentives, conspiracy of common interests, conspiracy of genetic bias (such as the ashkenazi adoption of the female strategy), ignorance, error, or stupidity.

    If you exhaust all of the possible rational incentives then only malincentives remain. But rare.

    Never attribute to intention what is the product of either incentives, ignorance, or stupidity. Humans by and large justify what they do post hoc with a story. Humans by ad large pursue self interests that they can justify with a story afterward. Because that’s what our brains do.

    And frankly the more responsibility you have, for the more people, for more risk, the more you have to compromise between different sets of unacceptable externalities that are the cost of getting whatever it s you’re doing done with the resources available, time available, people you have to work with, and incentives you can provide.

    Most organizational failure that we interpret as conspiracy is the result of people in organizations that are producing malincentives by accident rather than by design.

    Most groups that engage in evil are doing so because they consider what they’re doing a good. As I’m fond of saying, serial killers justify what they do, and the mothers of serial killers justify what they’ve done, and the fathers of serial killers are happy to throw away the key if not pull the lever.

    So if it is other than a conspiracy of intention, our problem is not to wish for better humans, but to rule with the humans we have, using the law and incentives to prevent malincentives.

    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-24 12:50:00 UTC

  • THE DEPENDENCE ON LAND AND THE VARIATION IN GROUP STRATEGIES –“I was working th

    THE DEPENDENCE ON LAND AND THE VARIATION IN GROUP STRATEGIES

    –“I was working the rather large winter garden this afternoon I have planted with my father.

    Thinking about the respective Peloponnesian and Delian strategies. It got me thinking about two things. Agricultural productivity / output and the concurrent effervescence of commercial activity, economic growth, and thus civilisational expansion (consider this also in a Rome vs Carthage context too).

    The second angle was the context of one’s own personal independence and self-sovereignty, in this sense as a landowner, either large or small scale. Be it in terms of food supply, land as a hold of value, and also as an individual / family / community area with which to defend one’s own assets.

    Whilst Australia and America have different cultures and expressions of “homesteading” there are some similarities too, you might call it a “dying frontier of the self-owned man”.

    Do you have any pointers or suggestions from a Propertarian standpoint?”— A Friend

    Yes, you have the correct insight, that I would translate as “If a man is dependent upon the land, he intuits others are also dependent upon the land, and that he cannot defend his land nor can others without collective defense of land, and collective defense by almost everyone.

    This is the opposite of migratory pastoralists and disaporic traders (Carthage), or diasporic usurers (Jews), or diasporic thieves(gypsies), or diasporic raiders(muslims), diasporic rent seekers(russians, mongols), but not the same as settled(germans, spartans) or diasporic producers (europeans, chinese – and what should have been hindus).

    That is because we specialize in different strategies and our value of territory, built capital, institutional, and cultural commons, differs by where our revenue comes from and the composition of our ‘armies’ and the strategy that these men use for control of predation (raiding), parasitism (extractive rule, usury, theft), or domestication (productive rule, settlement, common capital production.)

    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-24 12:15:00 UTC

  • Harsh Words on Conspiracy

      Let me tell you how the world works. People who need organizations are not those with power. People who need ‘societies’ are not those with power. People who heed religions are not those with power. People who need ideologies or philosophies are not those with power. People with power have LOTS OF PEOPLE around them giving them power and asking them for power. And everyone giving, getting and distributing power, is working in his or her self interest. And the business, financial, government sector is just trying to make make money by keeping people consuming, while academic sector is sucking their dicks, and the military is seeking opportunity to scare people into giving them money. Here is what people in power do: They maintain the power economy that keeps them in power. When they meet outside their power economy, they talk on three levels at once. – Trivial niceties to signal fitness for cooperation – Sharing information about opportunities and risks using subtleties, in order to obtain information that they can use or gain favor on future opportunities by giving what can be used by another. – identifying opportunities for minor – cost neutral – changes by each that together would increase the gains of each. Average people can’t imagine how simple the world is nor how tediously, boringly, EMPIRICAL the people who run the world are, nor how much the grownups DUMB SH-T DOWN so the morons keep working and buying. You live in a world of trivial posturing because you and everyone around you has no power or meaning. People with power have the opposite condition. They are soaking in power meaning and opportunity and can only afford the mental time to invest in the best opportunities for their limited attention. The don’t have to signal or posture like people who have no power or meaning. Do you know why? because resources to maintain power economies are always scarce. Because power economies are always in competition keeping the price of power high. The world is full of grownups with power They have power becuase people gave it to them. They maintain power becuase people keep giving it to them. People in power are funnels for concentrating power in places where int can have impact – just like the military concentrates forces to win a battle, or just lke a hundred people pass the bucket to concentrate their efforts in a division of labor. And those grownups are tediously boring. Because by and large they’re engaged in accounting. And using accounting as a nervous system. And occasionally investing in opportunities that take a long time to bring to fruition. And you can tell yourselves all sorts of paranoid lies to convince yourself that you understand the world. But that is all you’re doing. Conversely,there are people in activism, media, academy, politics, religion, and the state, and those that seek privileges from the state to VIOLATE reciprocity for one excuse or another. That is the left. The left has no power so it conspires to obtain power. That’s what LEFTIST MEANS: conspire to obtain power by non meritocratic irreciprocal means. What’s wrong with the world: 1. The only thing wrong with the world at any given time is the organization of incentives in relation to human capital – knowledge, norms, culture, and demographics. 2. Money is how we incentivize people. 3. Law is how we engineer the organization of incentives. 4. War (violence) is how we engineer the opportunity to use law to organize incentives. Everything else is some sort of kindergarten game. And you conspiracy kiddies don’t get anywhere near the ridicule you deserve. (((They))) are following instincts and programming, which we know because women use exactly the same technique via the state as (((They))) use in usury. Instincts are not conspiracies. That doesn’t mean there aren’t conspirators. It means that our idiocy at spreading capitalism democracy and rule of law is just as idiotic as their spreading globalism and socialism, pseudoscience, boating into hazard, and parasitic financialism. The animal follows its instincts until trained otherwise by his betters. In general, every person with any power in this world is following obvious rational incentives. All the bad “conspiracy stuff” happens at the bottom and middle where people don’t have power but want to use some stupid cheat in order to get it. Most of us feel the need to join organizations of all kinds, whether in our minds, in social, in charity, in business, or in political, in order to obtain some sense of agency control and therefore meaning in our lives – but that is all it is. The search for meaning because POWER DISTANCE IS TOO GREAT FOR US TO HAVE REAL MEANING. And that is what I”m out to change. Power distance restores meaning and eliminates the opportunity for evil. Reducing Power distance it puts the civil society back to work in its self defense. Scale is always bad.

  • Math Versus Natural Law — the Same?

    [M]ath is a logic of positional naming, and Natural law a logic of Property Naming. The grammar of both Math and Law consists of operations on names. So in math we use operations to maintain balance (equilibrium) on both sides of an equal’s sign, and in natural law we use operations to maintain balance between individuals. See? Here: Human Logical Facility (constant relations) > …. Human Language Facility (sequence of sounds) > …. …. Human Grammar Facility (rules of continuous recursive disambiguation) > …. …. …. Grammars (deflationary <- ordinary -> inflationary) > …. …. …. …. Math (positional names) > …. …. …. …. …. Programming (procedural names) > …. …. …. …. …. …. Natural Law (human actions) > …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Ordinary Language (utility) > …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Opining (Loading, Framing) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Fictions (adding what’s not there) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Fictionalisms (sophistry pseudoscience, supernaturalism) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Deceit (lying) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Denial …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Silence (Notice: Note how I left out verbal logic, rationalism, and philosophy because they’re included in sophistry.)

  • Math Versus Natural Law — the Same?

    [M]ath is a logic of positional naming, and Natural law a logic of Property Naming. The grammar of both Math and Law consists of operations on names. So in math we use operations to maintain balance (equilibrium) on both sides of an equal’s sign, and in natural law we use operations to maintain balance between individuals. See? Here: Human Logical Facility (constant relations) > …. Human Language Facility (sequence of sounds) > …. …. Human Grammar Facility (rules of continuous recursive disambiguation) > …. …. …. Grammars (deflationary <- ordinary -> inflationary) > …. …. …. …. Math (positional names) > …. …. …. …. …. Programming (procedural names) > …. …. …. …. …. …. Natural Law (human actions) > …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Ordinary Language (utility) > …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Opining (Loading, Framing) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Fictions (adding what’s not there) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Fictionalisms (sophistry pseudoscience, supernaturalism) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Deceit (lying) …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Denial …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Silence (Notice: Note how I left out verbal logic, rationalism, and philosophy because they’re included in sophistry.)

  • Man’s Competitive Advantage

    (another sermon) [W]hat is man’s competitive advantage? Our body form gave us opportunity to out-maneuver all other creatures on this earth. Our bipedal body form gave us opportunity to evolve bipedal motion so that could outrun every other creature on this earth. By outrunning every other creature on this earth our hands were free to develop independently for the single purpose of manipulation. By developing the ability to manipulate objects, we could make and then carry tools, and tools improved our ability to capture resources as predators, and to increasingly specialize in predation in addition to gathering and scavenging. For reasons that appear to be an accidental adaptation to disease our brains obtain the opportunity to vastly increase in size, making it possible for increasingly sophisticated thought. For reasons we are not sure we understand at present other than the obvious utility of it, we developed speech – serialized communication – which gave us the opportunity think and speak in continuously recursive sequential fashion. For reasons that are obvious, thinking in continuously recursive sequential fashion gave us or improved our ability to proactively plan – permute sequences of future predictions – rather than just respond to impulses and opportunities – just as numbers improve our ability to compare what is beyond our senses. For reasons that are obvious, this ability to categorize organize plan using language evolve into reason. For reasons that are obvious, we developed tyranny (upper caste force monopoly for maximum rate of adaptation), the middle class majority: bureaucracy and serfdom for regularity, along with oligarchy and markets for continuous adaptation, and theocracy (lower caste resistance monopoly for resistance to adaptation). Because these are the dominant male, ascendent male, and female competitive strategies – and the only means of organizing mankind. And maximizing our ability to adapt and evolve by using aggressive transformation, persistence of state, continuous adaptation, and resistance to change (or at least demand for satisfaction and compromise in exchange for adapting) continues our strategy of maximizing our ability to outmaneuver nature, plant, beast and other groups of humans.