Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Why Do U.s. Americans Give False Comments Of Appreciation?

    America is a high trust society. We allow people to perform below their capacity, or even fail, as long as (a) they try hard, (b) they are honest.

    When an american says something complimentary he is saying, ‘you can trust me to act in your interests even if you are imperfect or fail’, or ‘as long as you are honest and trying hard we will not criticize you, and will only offer advice if asked’.

    In other words, we cannot fix everthing, education of others is costly, education of others may be unwanted, and people getnerally will learn on their own. If you’re adding benefit to something, it is not our place to create more benefit. It is our place only to prevent harm. By preventing harm, most people will achieve success at their own rates, and learn to be independent.

    By this process we “Teach Men to Fish” at their own pace, at their own choice, and we ‘eliminate’ the people who (a) dont try hard (b) aren’t honest. If we instruct people then they learn only to obey commands.

    FWIW: Most of our charity work in the world has caused more harm than good. It is not clear that aside from teaching literacy, and providing health care, that we do any good at all. Although in retrospect, bringing christianity rather than islam has been one of the great achievements of western civilization. Christianity builds commerce and literacy, and islam creates illiteracy ignorance and poverty.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-U-S-Americans-give-false-comments-of-appreciation

  • I AM NOT SURE PHILOSOPHY (LITERATURE) IS MUCH HELP (from elsewhere) It’s one thi

    I AM NOT SURE PHILOSOPHY (LITERATURE) IS MUCH HELP

    (from elsewhere)

    It’s one thing to suspect, another thing to do.

    Reading is hard.

    Arithmetic is harder is harder than reading.

    Accounting is harder than arithmetic.

    Programming is harder than accounting

    Natural Law is harder than programming.

    If you look at the people who have been with us for a long time everyone has gotten better at argument. Some can use the basic arguments. Some people can use the various series. But how many of us can write natural law in operational grammar?

    The beauty of Propertarainism is that it contains each of those levels: the historical argument, the causality of Acquisitionism (incentives), The epistemology of Testimonialism, the Ethics (and definitions of unethical) of Propertarianinism, the politics of Market Government, the competition of group evolutionary strategies, the aesthetics of transcendence …. and the logic, grammar, and rhetoric of natural law.

    There is something for everyone no matter their level of ability. But just as some people can do arithmetic, some accounting, some mathematics, some programming … only some will be able to write natural law (for example, like James Augustus does intuitively or Joel Davis approaches). Myself I think it is more important for most people to recognize and READ it (just as reading can be taught to most people) than it is to WRITE it (which requires far less effort and ability).

    The vast majority of people will learn propertarianism (natural law) from Eli, not me, and can be introduced by William Butchman or others.

    Those who can construct grammatical arguments, I think, will be those who come by it intuitively, or who have financial, legal, and programming experience, or who simply work hard at it like any other of the ‘logics’.

    The problem for those who study philosophy (literature), is that it is in fact just ‘literature’, and not a STEM discipline (science). And to some degree it anchors you just as religion anchors the theological. Natural Law, like programming, logic, and math, is a STEM discipline.

    The difference between programming and natural law is merely that the comparison tests (incentives) of man, and the operations (actions) of man, are mere ‘calculations’, and as such broader, and less limited than the ‘computations’ of machines.

    And while the machine checks our cognitive biases due to it’s rigid grammar, we must check ourselves in our arguments by checking our own grammar.

    And that is the very hardest part.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-16 13:58:00 UTC

  • You’re not thinking correctly … Symbols provide an improvement upon memory. Wr

    You’re not thinking correctly …

    Symbols provide an improvement upon memory.

    Writing symbols evolved to create lists of inventory.

    A journal is an improvement upon lists.

    An accounting system is an improvement over a journal.

    A hierarchical database is just the automation of an accounting system.

    A relational database is just an advancement over an accounting system.

    A document store with a searchable full text index is an extension of a relational database.

    A non-referentially-integral document store with full text index that can calculate results from the properties of indices is an improvement upon the relational database.

    A semantic store of relations between meanings (networks of properties reducible to human experience) is an improvement over a document store.

    An inferential store of candidate relations (stored as non-euclidian geometric relations) between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over a semantic store.

    An automated explorer of stimuli(inputs) that attempts to use streams of inputs to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an inferential store.

    An an automated seeker of inferred streams of inputs necessary to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an automated explorer.

    An automated choice of the value of the results of automated seeking of inferred streams of inputs necessary to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an automated seeker.

    An automated judge of the consequences of the choice of values is an improvement over an automatic decision maker.

    An automated regulator (policeman) of the judgements of the consequences of …

    However, that hierarchy gracefully upgrades and degrades.

    We need symbols, lists, journals, accounting systems, hierarchical databases, relational databases, and so on…

    But if we work hard enough we come round full circle as the only difference in each of these conditions is the cost of retaining and locating memories.

    Where, in that series, we evolved to store the minimum amount of information, searchable at the minimum cost, to do precisely the same thing – but at much smaller scale than the machines that we ask to perform the same task at ever increasing scales.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-15 11:22:00 UTC

  • ECONOMIC SCHOOLS IN ONE LESSON (from elsewhere) Can I put the seed of an idea in

    ECONOMIC SCHOOLS IN ONE LESSON

    (from elsewhere)

    Can I put the seed of an idea in your head?

    AUSTRIAN

    Austrian School: the search for economics of social science (natural law), and the means of improving institutions of cooperation without interference in the information system of the economy. Assumes the civilizational, generational, business, vocational, pedagogical, and fashion cycles, if interfered with, will produce greater subsequent harm than good. (CONSERVATIVE/ACHIEVED MASCULINE evolutionary strategy – eugenic – long term time preference )

    CHICAGO

    Chicago School: the search for economics under rule of law limited to predictable, rule based, interference in the information system of the economy, as a means of insuring against unnecessary asymmetries of information. Assumes civilization, generational, business, vocational, pedagogical, and fashion cycles will benefit from removal of unnecessary resistance. (LIBERTARIAN/ASCENDANT MASCULINE evolutionary strategy – balanced – medium term time preference )

    SALTWATER

    Saltwater School: the search for economics of discretionary rule, the abandonment of rule of law, and the abandonment of institutional improvements to cooperation in search for the maximization of consumption. Assumes civilizational, generational, business, vocational, pedagogical, and fashion cycles are both less important than current consumption, and that the benefits of current consumption will (like borrowing against interest), outweigh the later consequences (similar to how the non neutrality of money is simply absorbed inconsequentially in niche effects. )(PROGRESSIVE/FEMININE evolutionary strategy – dysgenic – short term time preference.)

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-13 15:14:00 UTC

  • What Is The Foreign Policy Of The United States Of America In The Western Hemisphere?

    The postwar policy of the United States has been consistent and unwavering:

    1. We are the last survivor of the world wars, and the reconstruction was something we paid heavily for, and invested heavily in, and which became our purpose for existence.
    2. The world wars were exacerbated by world communism – the undeveloped civilizations counter-revolution against modernity.
    3. We must never have another world war because man may not survive it.
    4. To prevent world wars we will force nations to:
      (a) observe the peace of Westphalia that requires states to prevent non-state actors from engaging in conflicts between states,
      (b) maintain their borders and prohibit expansion of territory, preventing military conflict between states,
      (c) force states to grow only economically, not militarily, by extending human rights ( property rights), and investing in human capital, under the assumption that middle class consumer societies gain more from cooperation than from conflict and warfare.
    5. Presuming that:
      (a) Emphasis on institutions, rule of law, human rights, and consumer capitalism will produce middle class societies.
      (b) Middle class societies will create demand for democracy;
      (c) Democratic societies will produce commercial societies.
      (d) Commercial societies will avoid war.

    Unfortunately:

    1. Democracy is not good, but a short term luxury order resulting from economic windfalls that is unsustainable because it leads to politicization, endemic parasitism, and fragility. Instead the world has abandoned democracy, abandoned republicanism, and evolved to state corporatism: the management of the state as a business that serves consumers (citizens).
    2. When let loose under democracy, societies choose governments that reflect their level of social development (maturity), and this means socialistic in the christian world, and authoritarian in the Chinese world, despotic in the Muslim world, and of every flavor in the African World.
    3. That we have paid the high cost of transforming western civlization, Orthodox civilization, Sinic civilization, and Christian and pagan African civilization out of the medieval era – at very high costs to ourselves – and that we are failing at the transformation of the Muslim world, at a time when we no longer possess the disproportionate wealth that we did in prior eras against communism, socialism, and our own internal attempt at the soft communism of democratic socialist secular humanism.
    4. The unfortunate economic importance of oil – (similar to tin and copper in the Bronze Age) – which people rarely grasp is on par with the importance of sunlight in the Agrarian age, and its concentration in cheaply obtainable form between the Red and Kara Seas. And because of that concentration the possibility that the Totalitarian Orthodox, and Totalitarian Muslim would develop a bourse and instead of forcing oil into market prices, maximized rents against the rest of the world – a terror for developed civilization worse than another world war.

    And worst of all:

    1. Americans advocate the promissory side of their policy, but they do not make statements about the threat of punishment: “You may choose your own government in pursuit of joining the civilized consumer capitalist societies of the world. But if you choose poorly, and put into place a government that violates the these terms established by the ‘Postwar Law of the American Empire’, we will punish your government and as a consequence you, by acts of first economic, then financial, the communications, then military warfare until you no longer choose poorly.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-foreign-policy-of-the-United-States-of-America-in-the-Western-Hemisphere

  • What Is The Foreign Policy Of The United States Of America In The Western Hemisphere?

    The postwar policy of the United States has been consistent and unwavering:

    1. We are the last survivor of the world wars, and the reconstruction was something we paid heavily for, and invested heavily in, and which became our purpose for existence.
    2. The world wars were exacerbated by world communism – the undeveloped civilizations counter-revolution against modernity.
    3. We must never have another world war because man may not survive it.
    4. To prevent world wars we will force nations to:
      (a) observe the peace of Westphalia that requires states to prevent non-state actors from engaging in conflicts between states,
      (b) maintain their borders and prohibit expansion of territory, preventing military conflict between states,
      (c) force states to grow only economically, not militarily, by extending human rights ( property rights), and investing in human capital, under the assumption that middle class consumer societies gain more from cooperation than from conflict and warfare.
    5. Presuming that:
      (a) Emphasis on institutions, rule of law, human rights, and consumer capitalism will produce middle class societies.
      (b) Middle class societies will create demand for democracy;
      (c) Democratic societies will produce commercial societies.
      (d) Commercial societies will avoid war.

    Unfortunately:

    1. Democracy is not good, but a short term luxury order resulting from economic windfalls that is unsustainable because it leads to politicization, endemic parasitism, and fragility. Instead the world has abandoned democracy, abandoned republicanism, and evolved to state corporatism: the management of the state as a business that serves consumers (citizens).
    2. When let loose under democracy, societies choose governments that reflect their level of social development (maturity), and this means socialistic in the christian world, and authoritarian in the Chinese world, despotic in the Muslim world, and of every flavor in the African World.
    3. That we have paid the high cost of transforming western civlization, Orthodox civilization, Sinic civilization, and Christian and pagan African civilization out of the medieval era – at very high costs to ourselves – and that we are failing at the transformation of the Muslim world, at a time when we no longer possess the disproportionate wealth that we did in prior eras against communism, socialism, and our own internal attempt at the soft communism of democratic socialist secular humanism.
    4. The unfortunate economic importance of oil – (similar to tin and copper in the Bronze Age) – which people rarely grasp is on par with the importance of sunlight in the Agrarian age, and its concentration in cheaply obtainable form between the Red and Kara Seas. And because of that concentration the possibility that the Totalitarian Orthodox, and Totalitarian Muslim would develop a bourse and instead of forcing oil into market prices, maximized rents against the rest of the world – a terror for developed civilization worse than another world war.

    And worst of all:

    1. Americans advocate the promissory side of their policy, but they do not make statements about the threat of punishment: “You may choose your own government in pursuit of joining the civilized consumer capitalist societies of the world. But if you choose poorly, and put into place a government that violates the these terms established by the ‘Postwar Law of the American Empire’, we will punish your government and as a consequence you, by acts of first economic, then financial, the communications, then military warfare until you no longer choose poorly.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-foreign-policy-of-the-United-States-of-America-in-the-Western-Hemisphere

  • Is America Becoming More Tribalist/racist?

    ( PREFACE: My position is that all race questions on Quora should be banned. The reason being that false and comforting answers pass editors, and truthful but unpleasant answers do not. Therefore Quora contributes to harmful propaganda by permitting these questions. On the other hand as one of the experts on this subject, people ask me to answer, and I do.)

    Endemic racism hasn’t changed in the USA and never will, bcause it doesn’t cahnge anywhere except when there is absurd wealth that alleviates competition. But racisim is becoming more severe because of the political influence of immigration (invasion) by large numbers of hispanics who do not integrate, and the recent expansion of islam and its lack of self-policing, it’s hostility to modernity, hostility to science, and hostility to integration.

    As long as a minority consists of less than 5% of a population there seems to be little conflict. Above 5% and when minorities congregate in neighborhoods, cities, or regions we see (universally) their attempt to seek political power in order to obtain by political means that which they cannot obtain by market means. There are no conditions under which this is false.

    The USA is worse off than say the UK, France and Germany because we have no ‘culture’ other than commerce and rule of law. And due to activism in the 1960s, we have lost all our ‘norms’. So it is no longer possible to achieve what we could prior to 1963: indoctrination into the protestant work ethic, the absolute nuclear family, some variation of christianity, and a meritocratic social hierarchy.

    So we lack a culture, lack norms, lack normative institutions, and therefore all conflict is ‘free for all’ and forced into politics.

    At present the ‘war’ is between the six immigrant cities, and the rest of the country.

    What I suspect is that this conflict cannot be resolved through any solution other than either civil war, secession, or the devolution of normative law from the federal to the regional governments in line with the “11 Nations” of North America, and relegating the federal government to roles only of insurer of last resort (war, retirement, health, property conflict.)

    What I suspect will continue to occur in the six major immigrant cities is reversion to type: the evolution of a caste system like we see in india and south america. The reason being that the median genetic ability of individuals in each tribal and racial group will produce castes as we have seen elsewhere.

    All political action is a proxy for violence. There is no circumventing of that reality.

    When political action is no longer a sufficient proxy for violence – man universally returns to violence.

    And no civilization has ever been as fragile as ours.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-America-becoming-more-tribalist-racist

  • How Would You Restructure The United States?

    The current conflict is occurring because the regions have matured from settled territories into genetically, culturally, economically, separate nations, each of which resists the genetic, cultural, and economic differences of the others. In other words, the federal government is a domestic empire as well as a global empire.

    People don’t like empires. For good reason.

    The solution is:

    1. Universal right of secession and confederation on a county by county basis. Universal right of association and disassociation on an individual basis.
    2. County-by-county choice of political affiliation with bordering counties, to form new regions. The result will look something along the lines of the Nine or Eleven Nations of North America, with the six (large) immigrant cities as island plantations amidst the rest of the territories.
    3. Devolution of the powers of the federal government by limiting them only to Insurer of last Resort: Military, Common Treasury, Disaster Relief, Judge of Material Property conflict.
    4. Reservation of the powers not specifically granted to the insurer of last resort to the regions – specifically property and contract.
    5. Reservation of the powers of individual,interpersonal, family, labor to the county – specifically education, norms, holidays, traditions and information – to the county.

    This will accomplish:

    1. The division of the continental united states into a european -style polity with different cultures and norms, but who are protected by a large and powerful military.
    2. It will end the era of USA imperialism world wide.
    3. And it will create the greatest economic boom and the greatest level of experimentation since the enlightenment.
    4. And we can stop hating each other.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-restructure-the-United-States

  • Is America Becoming More Tribalist/racist?

    ( PREFACE: My position is that all race questions on Quora should be banned. The reason being that false and comforting answers pass editors, and truthful but unpleasant answers do not. Therefore Quora contributes to harmful propaganda by permitting these questions. On the other hand as one of the experts on this subject, people ask me to answer, and I do.)

    Endemic racism hasn’t changed in the USA and never will, bcause it doesn’t cahnge anywhere except when there is absurd wealth that alleviates competition. But racisim is becoming more severe because of the political influence of immigration (invasion) by large numbers of hispanics who do not integrate, and the recent expansion of islam and its lack of self-policing, it’s hostility to modernity, hostility to science, and hostility to integration.

    As long as a minority consists of less than 5% of a population there seems to be little conflict. Above 5% and when minorities congregate in neighborhoods, cities, or regions we see (universally) their attempt to seek political power in order to obtain by political means that which they cannot obtain by market means. There are no conditions under which this is false.

    The USA is worse off than say the UK, France and Germany because we have no ‘culture’ other than commerce and rule of law. And due to activism in the 1960s, we have lost all our ‘norms’. So it is no longer possible to achieve what we could prior to 1963: indoctrination into the protestant work ethic, the absolute nuclear family, some variation of christianity, and a meritocratic social hierarchy.

    So we lack a culture, lack norms, lack normative institutions, and therefore all conflict is ‘free for all’ and forced into politics.

    At present the ‘war’ is between the six immigrant cities, and the rest of the country.

    What I suspect is that this conflict cannot be resolved through any solution other than either civil war, secession, or the devolution of normative law from the federal to the regional governments in line with the “11 Nations” of North America, and relegating the federal government to roles only of insurer of last resort (war, retirement, health, property conflict.)

    What I suspect will continue to occur in the six major immigrant cities is reversion to type: the evolution of a caste system like we see in india and south america. The reason being that the median genetic ability of individuals in each tribal and racial group will produce castes as we have seen elsewhere.

    All political action is a proxy for violence. There is no circumventing of that reality.

    When political action is no longer a sufficient proxy for violence – man universally returns to violence.

    And no civilization has ever been as fragile as ours.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-America-becoming-more-tribalist-racist

  • What Is The Military Intelligence Unit Within The Pentagon That Specifically Works To Create Plans For Hypothetical Conflicts With All Other Nations?

    In order to be able to respond quickly to unforeseen or unlikely circumstances, all countries with substantial militaries possess a General Staff. A General Staff is not an intelligence unit. The purpose of a General Staff is to envision scenarios, create plans for handling them, and to file them in case they might be needed. The more ‘creative’ and unlikely the plan the better. It consumes inputs and makes requests of intelligence services. These plans are updated regularly and discarded if they no longer make any sense. For example, Norman Schwartzkopf had written a plan for Desert Storm, and they pulled it out. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and capture of Crimea was the result of previously made plans. Countries have absurd numbers of them.

    The government also conducts ‘war games’ (Or did back when I was involved) where they invite you and a few others to role play various scenarios. Sometimes they are testing these plans or considering new ones.

    Most of the “whacky” reporting you hear about some “plan” originates in one of these ‘unlikely’ plans. And while ‘odd’ it is exceptionally good training for top talent. Particularly for the USA because the USA has such a logistics problem – the USA is an island. Getting weapons, people, and supplies off the island and to a location is hard and expensive work.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Military-Intelligence-unit-within-the-Pentagon-that-specifically-works-to-create-plans-for-hypothetical-conflicts-with-all-other-nations