Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Tossing a ball to a dog so he can grasp it. Tossing a ball to a dog so he will f

    Tossing a ball to a dog so he can grasp it.

    Tossing a ball to a dog so he will fetch (return) it for more play (human behavior), rather than chase him to obtain it (dog behavior) as play.

    Bouncing a ball off a wall so the dog can catch it on the bounce, and then return it.

    Tossing a ball on a slanted roof so the dog can catch it as it rolls off, and then return it.

    Tossing a ball over the house so the dog must run around the house to find, and fetch it – especially if he can’t hear it bounce – and then return it.

    It’s been surprisingly difficult to train a dog to do the last one. Although I suspect that’s because our house was quite complicated – requiring the dog leave the front yard, enter the courtyard, turn left, cross the courtyard, exit the courtyard, turn right, run down the side of the house, enter the back yard from a corner, and then find it.

    I had to do it in steps. Further back every time.

    The Golden much smarter than the Pointer – who would just sit there confused.

    Retaining state, and recursive processing is extremely difficult. Man cannot imagine not doing it. Dog needs training to do it. A crow can do it given the opportunity. An octopus can do it.

    But it’s pretty hard.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-29 10:32:00 UTC

  • Do You Consider Yourself an Austrian?  Well, Austrian Econ Is the Closest to Natural Law

    I have evolved (by accident) into a specialist in natural law (reciprocity) and rule of law (non-discretion), resulting in markets(voluntary cooperation) in all walks of life. Part of this specialization is an extraordinarily precise criteria for truthful speech, the result of which is completing the scientific method. So since Austrian econ is the closest possible model to rule of law, I tend to consider myself somewhere between austrian and chicago, with a bias to austrian in law, and a bias toward chicago in the production of commons. Austrian econ is an appropriated term. Because there are two branches : Mengerian, which is fully integrated into mainstream thought, and Misesian, which is not. I’ve written exhaustively about the failures of Mises and Rothbard even if Mises came very close to one of the most important discoveries in economic history. He calls this positivist (justificationary) discipline ‘praxeology’, but this is a pseudoscientific claim. If however, we combine mises with popper (falsificationism), and mathematical intuitionism and the operationalist movement in physics, you realize that mises tried to make a positive axiomatic logic out of economics, rather than realize he had discovered falsificationism in economics. And then rothbard came along and ruined Mises reputation so badly that we can’t rescue it. To say you are an Austrian today probably means nothing other than that you seek to improve institutions of cooperation, and are rather firm in the belief that the business cycle must be allowed to self correct regularly or it will only increase and expand corrections until a ‘collapse’. To be a ‘praxeologist’ in the positivist stense requires you’re a bit of an idiot – because in fact, economic phenomenon at any scale must eventually be discovered empirically. On the other hand, as a falsificationist, to say ‘If I can’t construct that observed phenomenon from rational human choices then it can’t be true” means you’ve learned the lesson that Mises inarticulately tried to teach us. And if you study both austrian econ and the law you understand that mises and rothbard (and hoppe) were confused, in that mainstream econ violates natural law (reciprocity), spends down accumulated capital of the most precious categories to increase population that overloads the earth, and is objectively immoral by ever standard. As far as I know Austrian Econ today favors the study of behavior, entrepreneurship(individual choice), political economy(institutional impact on economies), and preservation of rule of law over rule by discretion. So the state is the provider of cooperative institutions. As far as I know Chicago tends to maintain these but emphasize monetary policy moreso – with the state as insurer of last resort. As far as I know Saltwater (Mainstream) tends to seek to maximize consumption at the expense of rule of law – replacing it with rule by discretion, with the state as the direct manipulator of the economy. These are actually moral predispositions which is why people self select into these specializations.
    May 27, 2018 2:49pm

  • Do You Consider Yourself an Austrian?  Well, Austrian Econ Is the Closest to Natural Law

    I have evolved (by accident) into a specialist in natural law (reciprocity) and rule of law (non-discretion), resulting in markets(voluntary cooperation) in all walks of life. Part of this specialization is an extraordinarily precise criteria for truthful speech, the result of which is completing the scientific method. So since Austrian econ is the closest possible model to rule of law, I tend to consider myself somewhere between austrian and chicago, with a bias to austrian in law, and a bias toward chicago in the production of commons. Austrian econ is an appropriated term. Because there are two branches : Mengerian, which is fully integrated into mainstream thought, and Misesian, which is not. I’ve written exhaustively about the failures of Mises and Rothbard even if Mises came very close to one of the most important discoveries in economic history. He calls this positivist (justificationary) discipline ‘praxeology’, but this is a pseudoscientific claim. If however, we combine mises with popper (falsificationism), and mathematical intuitionism and the operationalist movement in physics, you realize that mises tried to make a positive axiomatic logic out of economics, rather than realize he had discovered falsificationism in economics. And then rothbard came along and ruined Mises reputation so badly that we can’t rescue it. To say you are an Austrian today probably means nothing other than that you seek to improve institutions of cooperation, and are rather firm in the belief that the business cycle must be allowed to self correct regularly or it will only increase and expand corrections until a ‘collapse’. To be a ‘praxeologist’ in the positivist stense requires you’re a bit of an idiot – because in fact, economic phenomenon at any scale must eventually be discovered empirically. On the other hand, as a falsificationist, to say ‘If I can’t construct that observed phenomenon from rational human choices then it can’t be true” means you’ve learned the lesson that Mises inarticulately tried to teach us. And if you study both austrian econ and the law you understand that mises and rothbard (and hoppe) were confused, in that mainstream econ violates natural law (reciprocity), spends down accumulated capital of the most precious categories to increase population that overloads the earth, and is objectively immoral by ever standard. As far as I know Austrian Econ today favors the study of behavior, entrepreneurship(individual choice), political economy(institutional impact on economies), and preservation of rule of law over rule by discretion. So the state is the provider of cooperative institutions. As far as I know Chicago tends to maintain these but emphasize monetary policy moreso – with the state as insurer of last resort. As far as I know Saltwater (Mainstream) tends to seek to maximize consumption at the expense of rule of law – replacing it with rule by discretion, with the state as the direct manipulator of the economy. These are actually moral predispositions which is why people self select into these specializations.
    May 27, 2018 2:49pm

  • Natural Conflict Between the Classes of Conservatives

    “I don’t daydream, I do.” “I don’t seek experiences but results.” “I don’t seek like minds, but like doers.” “I don’t seek shared values, but shared incentives and goals.” “I don’t seek pleasure in what I do, I seek profitability which in turn allows me to choose among possible pleasures.” “I don’t seek to follow a plan to a goal, but seek and exploit opportunities discovered in pursuit of goals.” “I don’t seek motivation, I have motivation for the simple reasons of search for novelty and search for competition. If you need motivation you are not suited for leadership.” “I don’t seek to lead, only to perform functions that need performing, when no one better is at hand.” Just as between women and men, women are more dependent upon intuition and men more on reason, some men are likewise dependent upon intuition and some on reason, and some on experience and some on results, and some on fantasy and some on reality. The people who attain, function in, and remain in power positions work harder, work longer, create more relationships, process more information, and calculate more empirically, with fewer anchors to intuition. than their competitors. There is a sort of mental and masculine weakness in the Right that is evident in all right wing thought back to Burke, and before him, throughout the philosophers and theologians, all the way back to plato. The best example of these in modernity are Nietzsche( heroic nonsense) , Kirk (romantic nonsense), Evola (occult nonsense), Where the can be contrasted by Machiavelli, Smith, Hayek, and most recently Pat Buchanan. Now, just as we see the female solipsistic to male autistic spectrum. We see the Fantatisizer <—– observer —– participant —-> Doer spectrum. And careful analysis will show that it’s an introvert (fantasizer) <—-> Extrovert(Doer) spectrum. Some people go from books to searching for problems. Some people from real problems to books. Likewise some people learn for entertainment, and some people learn in furtherance of action. Likewise some people think and act to avoid cooperation with groups, and some people think and act to create organization of groups. Likewise some people seek to act on their terms, while other people act to take advantage of other’s terms. I view the ‘esoteric, occult, literary’ wing of conservatism, man-child aesthetics. Some of us do, others of us follow doers, and others watch doers and followers, and others dream of doing, following, and watching. So that is the class of conservatives: doers searching for tools with which to act, to dreamers searching for fantasies they never can or must act on. There is a class of conservatives who favor the occult, which is an escape from conformity (learning others). There is a class of conservatives who favor the theological (which is to some degree social but conformity is enforced by the theology). There is a class of conservatives who favor literature, which is a proxy for learning from others – usually a substitute for limited personal contacts. There is a class of conservatives who act politically and argumentatively on ‘getting things done’ and ‘enacting change’ by ‘possible means’. All this spectrum describes is social immaturity and undesirability to social maturity and desirability. So when someone says his preferred method of understanding conservatism he is telling you a great deal about his desirability as a cooperative actor.
    May 28, 2018 4:49pm

  • Natural Conflict Between the Classes of Conservatives

    “I don’t daydream, I do.” “I don’t seek experiences but results.” “I don’t seek like minds, but like doers.” “I don’t seek shared values, but shared incentives and goals.” “I don’t seek pleasure in what I do, I seek profitability which in turn allows me to choose among possible pleasures.” “I don’t seek to follow a plan to a goal, but seek and exploit opportunities discovered in pursuit of goals.” “I don’t seek motivation, I have motivation for the simple reasons of search for novelty and search for competition. If you need motivation you are not suited for leadership.” “I don’t seek to lead, only to perform functions that need performing, when no one better is at hand.” Just as between women and men, women are more dependent upon intuition and men more on reason, some men are likewise dependent upon intuition and some on reason, and some on experience and some on results, and some on fantasy and some on reality. The people who attain, function in, and remain in power positions work harder, work longer, create more relationships, process more information, and calculate more empirically, with fewer anchors to intuition. than their competitors. There is a sort of mental and masculine weakness in the Right that is evident in all right wing thought back to Burke, and before him, throughout the philosophers and theologians, all the way back to plato. The best example of these in modernity are Nietzsche( heroic nonsense) , Kirk (romantic nonsense), Evola (occult nonsense), Where the can be contrasted by Machiavelli, Smith, Hayek, and most recently Pat Buchanan. Now, just as we see the female solipsistic to male autistic spectrum. We see the Fantatisizer <—– observer —– participant —-> Doer spectrum. And careful analysis will show that it’s an introvert (fantasizer) <—-> Extrovert(Doer) spectrum. Some people go from books to searching for problems. Some people from real problems to books. Likewise some people learn for entertainment, and some people learn in furtherance of action. Likewise some people think and act to avoid cooperation with groups, and some people think and act to create organization of groups. Likewise some people seek to act on their terms, while other people act to take advantage of other’s terms. I view the ‘esoteric, occult, literary’ wing of conservatism, man-child aesthetics. Some of us do, others of us follow doers, and others watch doers and followers, and others dream of doing, following, and watching. So that is the class of conservatives: doers searching for tools with which to act, to dreamers searching for fantasies they never can or must act on. There is a class of conservatives who favor the occult, which is an escape from conformity (learning others). There is a class of conservatives who favor the theological (which is to some degree social but conformity is enforced by the theology). There is a class of conservatives who favor literature, which is a proxy for learning from others – usually a substitute for limited personal contacts. There is a class of conservatives who act politically and argumentatively on ‘getting things done’ and ‘enacting change’ by ‘possible means’. All this spectrum describes is social immaturity and undesirability to social maturity and desirability. So when someone says his preferred method of understanding conservatism he is telling you a great deal about his desirability as a cooperative actor.
    May 28, 2018 4:49pm

  • NATURAL CONFLICT BETWEEN THE CLASSES OF CONSERVATIVES “I don’t daydream, I do.”

    NATURAL CONFLICT BETWEEN THE CLASSES OF CONSERVATIVES

    “I don’t daydream, I do.”

    “I don’t seek experiences but results.”

    “I don’t seek like minds, but like doers.”

    “I don’t seek shared values, but shared incentives and goals.”

    “I don’t seek pleasure in what I do, I seek profitability which in turn allows me to choose among possible pleasures.”

    “I don’t seek to follow a plan to a goal, but seek and exploit opportunities discovered in pursuit of goals.”

    “I don’t seek motivation, I have motivation for the simple reasons of search for novelty and search for competition. If you need motivation you are not suited for leadership.”

    “I don’t seek to lead, only to perform functions that need performing, when no one better is at hand.”

    Just as between women and men, women are more dependent upon intuition and men more on reason, some men are likewise dependent upon intuition and some on reason, and some on experience and some on results, and some on fantasy and some on reality.

    The people who attain, function in, and remain in power positions work harder, work longer, create more relationships, process more information, and calculate more empirically, with fewer anchors to intuition. than their competitors.

    There is a sort of mental and masculine weakness in the Right that is evident in all right wing thought back to Burke, and before him, throughout the philosophers and theologians, all the way back to plato.

    The best example of these in modernity are Nietzsche( heroic nonsense) , Kirk (romantic nonsense), Evola (occult nonsense), Where the can be contrasted by Machiavelli, Smith, Hayek, and most recently Pat Buchanan.

    Now, just as we see the female solipsistic to male autistic spectrum. We see the Fantatisizer <—– observer —– participant —-> Doer spectrum. And careful analysis will show that it’s an introvert (fantasizer) <—-> Extrovert(Doer) spectrum.

    Some people go from books to searching for problems. Some people from real problems to books. Likewise some people learn for entertainment, and some people learn in furtherance of action. Likewise some people think and act to avoid cooperation with groups, and some people think and act to create organization of groups. Likewise some people seek to act on their terms, while other people act to take advantage of other’s terms.

    I view the ‘esoteric, occult, literary’ wing of conservatism, man-child aesthetics. Some of us do, others of us follow doers, and others watch doers and followers, and others dream of doing, following, and watching.

    So that is the class of conservatives: doers searching for tools with which to act, to dreamers searching for fantasies they never can or must act on.

    There is a class of conservatives who favor the occult, which is an escape from conformity (learning others).

    There is a class of conservatives who favor the theological (which is to some degree social but conformity is enforced by the theology).

    There is a class of conservatives who favor literature, which is a proxy for learning from others – usually a substitute for limited personal contacts.

    There is a class of conservatives who act politically and argumentatively on ‘getting things done’ and ‘enacting change’ by ‘possible means’.

    All this spectrum describes is social immaturity and undesirability to social maturity and desirability.

    So when someone says his preferred method of understanding conservatism he is telling you a great deal about his desirability as a cooperative actor.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-28 16:49:00 UTC

  • By Lee Tucker Some of my thinking was ‘catalyzed’ by Matt Levine at Bloomberg di

    By Lee Tucker

    Some of my thinking was ‘catalyzed’ by Matt Levine at Bloomberg discursively talking about gold.

    Sure, the modern Cathedral can dismiss gold as a negative carry, non-interest bearing flight of fancy valued by fools (disclosure: I do own gold but not in size).

    Mr Levine basically said (paraphrased) well, hang on, gold historically has been a social-proofing status enhancer.

    Why? To woo a Prince or Princess with a Golden Crown embedded a statement that one is in control of mining technologies, distribution networks, protected storage, rendering skills into consumer goods, and marketing technology.

    Is crypto mining really that different?

    Instead of digging dirt we are digging digital constructs.

    The successful arbitrage is ruthlessly exploiting tax, energy, labor and chip technology to maximize coin intake. And not inconsiderable skill to choose which coin to mine.

    For all of my friends who challenge me crypto is utter chaff, please deliver me 5　bitcoins 3 ethers and 2 moneros within four weeks that you did not purchase on an exchange or off-market swap.

    Coins that you mined. Is it free?

    Is it money for nothing? Do academic credentials mint pure profit?

    It is utter chaff, right? No serious men could be competing.

    A Milton Friedman license to print. A James Bond license to kill. A PT Barnum Bailey Bros license to thrill.

    Live Free & Mine LT

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-28 10:33:00 UTC

  • WILL ALIENS USE THE SAME GRAMMAR? (and thus be comprehensible?) Um. I don’t thin

    WILL ALIENS USE THE SAME GRAMMAR?

    (and thus be comprehensible?)

    Um. I don’t think they’ll be different, for reasons I hope to publish this year. Although there is a substantial difference…

    Chomsky can take 40 minutes to communicate an idea, and if you look at his sentence structure and vocabulary it’s extraordinary. I cannot match Chomsky’s context-retention during his discourses. This is how I know he’s smarter than I am. His ability to ‘maintain state’ while communicating complex relations and stories is exceptional.

    Despite working at it terribly hard, I find ‘simplification’ extremely difficult, and I find I use a variation on latin grammar, more 19th century sentence structure, and overwhelm the audience very easily with content.

    If you listen to young adults they often have trouble forming complete sentences, paragraphs, and narratives with any degree of precision (they require shared context).

    Some people (me when I was younger) and many people in the tech field for example, speak very very fast with very high word counts. Some people cannot manage that at all.

    Some people use large vocabularies to concentrate more content in fewer words while preserving or increasing precision.

    Some groups use terms (english, german) and some tones (chinese). Where terms are more precise because they are less demanding of deduction.

    Some groups use (awful) high context grammar, and some low context grammar.

    It appears that once you develop the ability to communicate in language all that matters is the increasing content and precision of that communication method. So we evolved from simple vocal sounds serialized. Others might evolved from parallel tones. Maybe others from some other form of display.

    Language must at least originate with analogy to experience, so its possible that creatures with different senses or processing (octopods) might use analogies that took us time to decode.

    So if you look across just that set of dimensions you can imagine that some very smart species would speak very quickly, in very precise very dense grammar, with a very large vocabulary, with long sentences (transactions), and long narratives, in serial (informationally limited) or more parallel (informationally dense) means.

    And thisso their context retention ability and processing ability would be higher than ours.

    That said, for reasons that chomsky defends his universal grammar (and for the same reasons that while base number would change and the vocabulary will change, all mathematical systems would be the same)

    Once you grasp that the term ‘grammar’ means ‘continuous disambiguation’, but that actions in the real world cause languages to eventually converge on the descriptive through nothing other than competition, then

    This continuous disambiguation is important because it corresponds to falsification (eliminative), just as continuous construction correspondes to justificationism (cumulative). And as such it turns out that since falsehood has a higher truth content than truth claims, the via negativa of continuous disambiguation is the counter intuitive but descriptive and necessary means of communication of truth content.

    (Apologies if this is too dense an argument.)

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-28 10:31:00 UTC

  • DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AN AUSTRIAN? WELL, AUSTRIAN ECON IS THE CLOSEST TO NATU

    DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AN AUSTRIAN?

    WELL, AUSTRIAN ECON IS THE CLOSEST TO NATURAL LAW

    I have evolved (by accident) into a specialist in natural law (reciprocity) and rule of law (non-discretion), resulting in markets(voluntary cooperation) in all walks of life. Part of this specialization is an extraordinarily precise criteria for truthful speech, the result of which is completing the scientific method.

    So since Austrian econ is the closest possible model to rule of law, I tend to consider myself somewhere between austrian and chicago, with a bias to austrian in law, and a bias toward chicago in the production of commons.

    Austrian econ is an appropriated term. Because there are two branches : Mengerian, which is fully integrated into mainstream thought, and Misesian, which is not.

    I’ve written exhaustively about the failures of Mises and Rothbard even if Mises came very close to one of the most important discoveries in economic history. He calls this positivist (justificationary) discipline ‘praxeology’, but this is a pseudoscientific claim.

    If however, we combine mises with popper (falsificationism), and mathematical intuitionism and the operationalist movement in physics, you realize that mises tried to make a positive axiomatic logic out of economics, rather than realize he had discovered falsificationism in economics. And then rothbard came along and ruined Mises reputation so badly that we can’t rescue it.

    To say you are an Austrian today probably means nothing other than that you seek to improve institutions of cooperation, and are rather firm in the belief that the business cycle must be allowed to self correct regularly or it will only increase and expand corrections until a ‘collapse’.

    To be a ‘praxeologist’ in the positivist stense requires you’re a bit of an idiot – because in fact, economic phenomenon at any scale must eventually be discovered empirically. On the other hand, as a falsificationist, to say ‘If I can’t construct that observed phenomenon from rational human choices then it can’t be true” means you’ve learned the lesson that Mises inarticulately tried to teach us.

    And if you study both austrian econ and the law you understand that mises and rothbard (and hoppe) were confused, in that mainstream econ violates natural law (reciprocity), spends down accumulated capital of the most precious categories to increase population that overloads the earth, and is objectively immoral by ever standard.

    As far as I know Austrian Econ today favors the study of behavior, entrepreneurship(individual choice), political economy(institutional impact on economies), and preservation of rule of law over rule by discretion. So the state is the provider of cooperative institutions.

    As far as I know Chicago tends to maintain these but emphasize monetary policy moreso – with the state as insurer of last resort.

    As far as I know Saltwater (Mainstream) tends to seek to maximize consumption at the expense of rule of law – replacing it with rule by discretion, with the state as the direct manipulator of the economy.

    These are actually moral predispositions which is why people self select into these specializations.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-27 14:49:00 UTC

  • THE TEST OF DEMARCATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PSEUDOSCIENCE IN PSYCHOLOGY All, Alm

    THE TEST OF DEMARCATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PSEUDOSCIENCE IN PSYCHOLOGY

    All,

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology fail the test of repeatability.

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology depend on self reporting.

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology include susceptibility to suggestion.

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology make use of small populations of students or patients.

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology include value judgements.

    Almost all papers in psychology and sociology assume a normative ideal. (this is what I object to)

    If instead our findings are repeatable;

    If instead we are measuring by context-free measurements;

    If instead our tests eliminate all chances of suggestion.

    If instead our population consists of more than 1000, and preferably 10k people;

    if Instead our categories of measurement contain no assertions of value to a trait (other than evolutionary or physical necessity – such as ‘neural economy’);

    if instead our categories of measurement contain *evolutionary specializations rather than uniform ideal*(authoritarianism);

    Then there is a fair chance we are conducting science, rather than projection.

    So if your paper passes these tests it’s got a chance of not being false.

    || Sample size > Reporting > Motivations / Value judgements > Specialization > Repeatability.

    Psychoanalysis and that argumentative technique making use of the categories of psychoanalysis (a uniform standard or ideal) that we call psychologism are pseudoscience.

    The problem for psychology is that the categories and terminology are pseudoscientific. That does not mean they are not meaningful. It means they are fictions.

    *As a general rule, the specification of an organism is determined by its limits not it’s median.*

    Source date (UTC): 2018-05-26 06:25:00 UTC