Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Why I Am Not Good at Arithmetic, Multiplication, Division, and Chess.

    [I] have a lot of friends who are good at chess, and I do think chess is a pretty good determinant of intelligence, and perhaps a better determinant of academic and career success. I was in a chess club through seventh or eighth grade, and really never got that good until the first machines came out because they played perfectly – too perfectly. But as an illustration, There are three reasons I am not very good at it: (a) Puzzles vs Problems ethic: I have a problem with puzzles as wasted effort, when I should be working on problems. Just as I have a problem going from books to problems, rather than from problems to books. So in effect I see playing games that require more than casual attention (cards), as an immoral waste of my time. (Which a certain girlfriend in college beat into me through insults as well.) So I cant make myself spend times on such things without feeling like I’m letting the time run out on my lifespan. (b) Working (short term) memory – one of the reasons I became interested in IQ is the understanding of both the myopia of my autistic thinking and what I began to understand was a problem for me in arithmetic calculation despite my abilities in mathematical reasoning. I work on certain categories of problems partly because I seemed to have a fairly weak working memory compared to other students. I have trouble adding and multiplying, or working with a lot of states: like origami requires. I have no problem reasoning. I can detect truth content pre-cognitively, and I can define spectra – lines of causality. I cannot however juggle many independent and as I see it – unrelated – states of things. (c) Limited lateral thinking. (which I suppose I could overcome with practice) but not only do I have trouble with humor – which depends upon it, with cunning in a game of chess (i tend to play aggressively with every move and am too concerned with optimum moves and can be baited by them), but I tend not to find ‘shortcuts’ so much as ‘truths’. Basically ‘if its in motion in time’ I intuit it. If it exists in states I don’t. Everything consists of flights of arrows. This tells me a lot really, because again, I see the world as a division of cognitive labor, with all these variations in smart people producing different ‘sensors’ that detect different ‘bits’ of reality, and our voluntary cooperation and trade as the information system by which we different sensors share that information. Man is a gloriously fascinating creature. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Why I Am Not Good at Arithmetic, Multiplication, Division, and Chess.

    [I] have a lot of friends who are good at chess, and I do think chess is a pretty good determinant of intelligence, and perhaps a better determinant of academic and career success. I was in a chess club through seventh or eighth grade, and really never got that good until the first machines came out because they played perfectly – too perfectly. But as an illustration, There are three reasons I am not very good at it: (a) Puzzles vs Problems ethic: I have a problem with puzzles as wasted effort, when I should be working on problems. Just as I have a problem going from books to problems, rather than from problems to books. So in effect I see playing games that require more than casual attention (cards), as an immoral waste of my time. (Which a certain girlfriend in college beat into me through insults as well.) So I cant make myself spend times on such things without feeling like I’m letting the time run out on my lifespan. (b) Working (short term) memory – one of the reasons I became interested in IQ is the understanding of both the myopia of my autistic thinking and what I began to understand was a problem for me in arithmetic calculation despite my abilities in mathematical reasoning. I work on certain categories of problems partly because I seemed to have a fairly weak working memory compared to other students. I have trouble adding and multiplying, or working with a lot of states: like origami requires. I have no problem reasoning. I can detect truth content pre-cognitively, and I can define spectra – lines of causality. I cannot however juggle many independent and as I see it – unrelated – states of things. (c) Limited lateral thinking. (which I suppose I could overcome with practice) but not only do I have trouble with humor – which depends upon it, with cunning in a game of chess (i tend to play aggressively with every move and am too concerned with optimum moves and can be baited by them), but I tend not to find ‘shortcuts’ so much as ‘truths’. Basically ‘if its in motion in time’ I intuit it. If it exists in states I don’t. Everything consists of flights of arrows. This tells me a lot really, because again, I see the world as a division of cognitive labor, with all these variations in smart people producing different ‘sensors’ that detect different ‘bits’ of reality, and our voluntary cooperation and trade as the information system by which we different sensors share that information. Man is a gloriously fascinating creature. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE 21st CENTURY – Part I

    [F]OOD FOR THOUGHT: I usually position this question within intellectual history as the sequence: (a) anthropomorphism / narrative oral tradition / hunter gathering / Shamans vs Warriors / Tribalism (b) theism / writing / agrarianism / Temple and Church Bureaucracy vs Warriors / Tribal Unificationism (c) moralism (rationalism) and modernism / printing / capitalism / State/Temple-Merchant-State shared power / State Formation. (d) postmodern propaganda, pseudoscience and innumeracy / mass media, democratic secular socialist humanism / industrialism / State-Academy-Media against Warrior and Merchant Class and absent Temple class / (new world order formation???) (e) scientific / digital zero-distribution-cost / (worldwide search yet unfound???) / information era / (power structure still emerging but swinging toward authoritarian capitalism) / (new order formation – looks like return to higher tribalism? Nationalism?) I agree that ‘religion’ is with us to stay, but religion requires shared belief in a falsehood, for purposes of cooperating and organizing – usually as a resistance movement against human discretion and hubris. We know that religious experience (spirituality) is caused by the pack-response (submission to the pack). We know that religions and cults must be costly for members, to survive their initial members. We know that religions are advantageous for members in establishing limits of rule, moral norms, and metaphysical value judgements. For example, the TED movement is considered by many to be a postmodern church, and each lecture no different from a Sermon from the Pulpit, where technology and will provide the promise of salvation. We know that postmodernism is a religious revolt against the meritocratic unpleasantness of science. We know that evangelical christianity is a revolt against the secular state. (and it works). But where does this lead us? I have been working on this problem for a while now and I am struggling with it. Cheers Curt

  • ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE 21st CENTURY – Part I

    [F]OOD FOR THOUGHT: I usually position this question within intellectual history as the sequence: (a) anthropomorphism / narrative oral tradition / hunter gathering / Shamans vs Warriors / Tribalism (b) theism / writing / agrarianism / Temple and Church Bureaucracy vs Warriors / Tribal Unificationism (c) moralism (rationalism) and modernism / printing / capitalism / State/Temple-Merchant-State shared power / State Formation. (d) postmodern propaganda, pseudoscience and innumeracy / mass media, democratic secular socialist humanism / industrialism / State-Academy-Media against Warrior and Merchant Class and absent Temple class / (new world order formation???) (e) scientific / digital zero-distribution-cost / (worldwide search yet unfound???) / information era / (power structure still emerging but swinging toward authoritarian capitalism) / (new order formation – looks like return to higher tribalism? Nationalism?) I agree that ‘religion’ is with us to stay, but religion requires shared belief in a falsehood, for purposes of cooperating and organizing – usually as a resistance movement against human discretion and hubris. We know that religious experience (spirituality) is caused by the pack-response (submission to the pack). We know that religions and cults must be costly for members, to survive their initial members. We know that religions are advantageous for members in establishing limits of rule, moral norms, and metaphysical value judgements. For example, the TED movement is considered by many to be a postmodern church, and each lecture no different from a Sermon from the Pulpit, where technology and will provide the promise of salvation. We know that postmodernism is a religious revolt against the meritocratic unpleasantness of science. We know that evangelical christianity is a revolt against the secular state. (and it works). But where does this lead us? I have been working on this problem for a while now and I am struggling with it. Cheers Curt

  • Religion of Peace? Can Someone Explain That To Me?

    [E]ven if I am skilled in the arts, it is an intellectual skill. Even if I enjoy the arts, it is an intellectual appreciation – a sense of wonder not empathy. I am very well aware that I have a ‘scientistic’ mind both by nature, by upbringing, and by choice, and that experiential methods of argument are exasperating for me. I went to religous schools but I understood the bible as history – and nothing more. The bible’s contents always were nonsense compared to the encyclopedias. Especially its authoritarianism since due to genetic disposition universal in my family, I recoil against authority of any and every kind.. As a child I kept the world map, the constitution, bill of rights, and the declaration on my wall, a set of encyclopedias in my bookcase, and science fiction functioned as my mythos. And that combination of history, law, and myth has stuck with me as my subconscious model both by affinity and choice. I say this because I am aware of my priors both genetic, familial, cultural and experiential. I get nothing from the life of Siddhartha Budda, the Christ, Muhammed, at all. And while I find it tedious, at least I can understand Confucius. I have no dream-world to invoke through association – only an historical one. I see only argument in favor and against actions for the purpose of producing consequences, and only a green and treed earth to revel in, not a life to be endured or suffered. I do not see man as oppressing me, but man in need of suppression of his barbarism. I see man struggling with his incompetence to organize, not skillful oppressors. And perhaps most importantly, I see all language as pretense for power. And in the Koran I see nothing more than a set of prescriptions, promises, and threats designed for the purpose of obtaining power. And in the history of islam I see nothing more than the use of that book to expand by conquest and to institute regressiveness upon civilization. So when someone says “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I see no evidence of it. I see islamic civilization as the greatest failure of any extant group, the greatest threat to mankind, and an interesting problem since for christian africa, christian europe, hindu india, buddhist asia alike – everywhere islam goes it is an enemy that it seems rational for all the great powers to eradicate the same way that the west eradicated the religion of marxist communism. I don’t know what other people see, hear and feel in that book, any more than in the bible or the study of buddha, or the study of judaic law. The content and purpose of these books is military: obtaining power over men and women by force of lying, deceit, shaming, rallying, and violence. The purpose of Aristotle is to give us power over nature so that we may transform it into a garden preferable to man. Not to gain power over others but over ourselves. Not to impose stasis, but invention. Not positive command to specific actions or goals, but prohibition of that which inhibits actions and goals. Not to command man, but to prohibit man from command. In my work I have come to see all man’s words as defense of, justification of, negotiation on behalf of, and assertion of, his reproductive strategy. This is a less ‘christian’ version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Instead it is a will to acquire, of which power is merely one asset to inventory. I do not see in books what is said. I see what strategy is being defended, justified, negotiated, and asserted. I do not allow myself to be programmed by suggestion, and even if I did, I may be incapable of it. In fact, if suggestion is the method of communication I am largely immune. But you see, that is the purpose of narratives: to program by suggestion. A recipe is very different from a story. A natural law under rule of law very different from both. But a narrative programs by suggestion, from the invocation of experience, and not from recipe (positive) and law (negative). So if someone can please explain to me the criteria by which one could judge islam as a religion of peace, I would love to know. But as far as I can tell it is just another scourge of the earth and it has been since its invention. And every people conquered by it suffer for it. It may be effective for the devil to convince us he does not exist. It is even better if he convinces us that he is god. It is possible the Jehova is the devil. It is certain that Allah is. Not by verbal analysis but by demonstrated outcome. Not by claims, not words, not ‘meaning’ (suggestion), but by evidence of the consequences of the long term use of those words. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Religion of Peace? Can Someone Explain That To Me?

    [E]ven if I am skilled in the arts, it is an intellectual skill. Even if I enjoy the arts, it is an intellectual appreciation – a sense of wonder not empathy. I am very well aware that I have a ‘scientistic’ mind both by nature, by upbringing, and by choice, and that experiential methods of argument are exasperating for me. I went to religous schools but I understood the bible as history – and nothing more. The bible’s contents always were nonsense compared to the encyclopedias. Especially its authoritarianism since due to genetic disposition universal in my family, I recoil against authority of any and every kind.. As a child I kept the world map, the constitution, bill of rights, and the declaration on my wall, a set of encyclopedias in my bookcase, and science fiction functioned as my mythos. And that combination of history, law, and myth has stuck with me as my subconscious model both by affinity and choice. I say this because I am aware of my priors both genetic, familial, cultural and experiential. I get nothing from the life of Siddhartha Budda, the Christ, Muhammed, at all. And while I find it tedious, at least I can understand Confucius. I have no dream-world to invoke through association – only an historical one. I see only argument in favor and against actions for the purpose of producing consequences, and only a green and treed earth to revel in, not a life to be endured or suffered. I do not see man as oppressing me, but man in need of suppression of his barbarism. I see man struggling with his incompetence to organize, not skillful oppressors. And perhaps most importantly, I see all language as pretense for power. And in the Koran I see nothing more than a set of prescriptions, promises, and threats designed for the purpose of obtaining power. And in the history of islam I see nothing more than the use of that book to expand by conquest and to institute regressiveness upon civilization. So when someone says “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I see no evidence of it. I see islamic civilization as the greatest failure of any extant group, the greatest threat to mankind, and an interesting problem since for christian africa, christian europe, hindu india, buddhist asia alike – everywhere islam goes it is an enemy that it seems rational for all the great powers to eradicate the same way that the west eradicated the religion of marxist communism. I don’t know what other people see, hear and feel in that book, any more than in the bible or the study of buddha, or the study of judaic law. The content and purpose of these books is military: obtaining power over men and women by force of lying, deceit, shaming, rallying, and violence. The purpose of Aristotle is to give us power over nature so that we may transform it into a garden preferable to man. Not to gain power over others but over ourselves. Not to impose stasis, but invention. Not positive command to specific actions or goals, but prohibition of that which inhibits actions and goals. Not to command man, but to prohibit man from command. In my work I have come to see all man’s words as defense of, justification of, negotiation on behalf of, and assertion of, his reproductive strategy. This is a less ‘christian’ version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Instead it is a will to acquire, of which power is merely one asset to inventory. I do not see in books what is said. I see what strategy is being defended, justified, negotiated, and asserted. I do not allow myself to be programmed by suggestion, and even if I did, I may be incapable of it. In fact, if suggestion is the method of communication I am largely immune. But you see, that is the purpose of narratives: to program by suggestion. A recipe is very different from a story. A natural law under rule of law very different from both. But a narrative programs by suggestion, from the invocation of experience, and not from recipe (positive) and law (negative). So if someone can please explain to me the criteria by which one could judge islam as a religion of peace, I would love to know. But as far as I can tell it is just another scourge of the earth and it has been since its invention. And every people conquered by it suffer for it. It may be effective for the devil to convince us he does not exist. It is even better if he convinces us that he is god. It is possible the Jehova is the devil. It is certain that Allah is. Not by verbal analysis but by demonstrated outcome. Not by claims, not words, not ‘meaning’ (suggestion), but by evidence of the consequences of the long term use of those words. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • IF YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT I SAY – THINK ABOUT THIS I work on the discipline (techno

    IF YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT I SAY – THINK ABOUT THIS

    I work on the discipline (technology) of speaking truthfully. Not honestly, but truthfully – as in “as scientifically as possible”.

    Now like any human being I absolutely do engage in various forms of sarcasm, humor, honorarium, and illustration. But in general, I try to write ‘proofs’: including tests of internal consistency, external correspondence, informational availability, existential possibility, limits, parsimony, and full accounting. That’s the innovation that Propertarianism and Testimonialism provide us with: an amoral (unloaded) language for the articulation and comparison of various political, ethical and moral statements.

    Now, I don’t (like everyone else in the world, and in intellectual history) want to know the truth so that I can justify the use of my particular moral bias over your particular moral bias. Instead, I want to know the truth so that you and I can conduct an exchange – a compromise – rather than a conquest. A trade rather than a monopoly act of oppression. A ‘truth’ rather than a falsehood.

    And that is how Propertarianism differs from the fallacies of authoritarian monotheism, utilitarian rationalism, and democratic majority rule: that the only ‘truth’ we can know is when your bias and my bias results in a compromise that is mutually beneficial.

    Now that does not mean that we need to agree – another fallacy of democracy – but it means we cannot materially dissent. In other words, we can trade in a compromise, or we can prevent each other from imposing costs upon one another’s property-en-toto (what you’ve acted to obtain), but we cannot by any method impose costs on one another’s property-en-toto.

    So if you don’t like something that’s true, or you want to speak an untruth, then you’re just a bad dishonest person unworthy of cooperation. If you want to preserve monopoly democracy, then you’re just a bad and dishonest thief unworthy of cooperation and worthy of punishment, ostracization and death. If you want to just get away with stealing from others without engaging in trade then you’re again, a bad, dishonest, thief worthy of punishment, ostracization and death.

    But if you want to do something that does not impose a cost upon me or mine, I will not and cannot interfere with you. And if you want to impose a cost upon me, or gain my cooperation then I will enter in an exchange with you.

    But what I will not do, and what no future generations will willingly do, is allow you to perpetuate the pseudoscience, propaganda, deception, and outright lying that has been the basis of the socialist, progressive, feminist, libertine, and neo-conservative movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

    If that is the case then I am morally justified, ethically justified, and biologically mandated to exterminate you.

    So if you disagree with this I must end you, and all like you. Not for me, but for all of mankind.

    This is the most and best moral position any man can take.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-12 06:31:00 UTC

  • RELIGION OF PEACE? Even if I am skilled in the arts, it is an intellectual skill

    RELIGION OF PEACE?

    Even if I am skilled in the arts, it is an intellectual skill. Even if I enjoy the arts, it is an intellectual appreciation – a sense of wonder not empathy. I am very well aware that I have a ‘scientistic’ mind both by nature, by upbringing, and by choice, and that experiential methods of argument are exasperating for me. I went to religous schools but I understood the bible as history – and nothing more. The bible’s contents always were nonsense compared to the encyclopedias. Especially its authoritarianism since due to genetic disposition universal in my family, I recoil against authority of any and every kind.. As a child I kept the world map, the constitution, bill of rights, and the declaration on my wall, a set of encyclopedias in my bookcase, and science fiction functioned as my mythos. And that combination of history, law, and myth has stuck with me as my subconscious model both by affinity and choice. I say this because I am aware of my priors both genetic, familial, cultural and experiential.

    I get nothing from the life of Siddhartha Budda, the Christ, Muhammed, at all. And while I find it tedious, at least I can understand Confucius. I have no dream-world to invoke through association – only an historical one. I see only argument in favor and against actions for the purpose of producing consequences, and only a green and treed earth to revel in, not a life to be endured or suffered. I do not see man as oppressing me, but man in need of suppression of his barbarism. I see man struggling with his incompetence to organize, not skillful oppressors. And perhaps most importantly, I see all language as pretense for power. And in the Koran I see nothing more than a set of prescriptions, promises, and threats designed for the purpose of obtaining power. And in the history of islam I see nothing more than the use of that book to expand by conquest and to institute regressiveness upon civilization.

    So when someone says “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I see no evidence of it. I see islamic civilization as the greatest failure of any extant group, the greatest threat to mankind, and an interesting problem since for christian africa, christian europe, hindu india, buddhist asia alike – everywhere islam goes it is an enemy that it seems rational for all the great powers to eradicate the same way that the west eradicated the religion of marxist communism.

    I don’t know what other people see, hear and feel in that book, any more than in the bible or the study of buddha, or the study of judaic law. The content and purpose of these books is military: obtaining power over men and women by force of lying, deceit, shaming, rallying, and violence.

    The purpose of Aristotle is to give us power over nature so that we may transform it into a garden preferable to man. Not to gain power over others but over ourselves. Not to impose stasis, but invention. Not positive command to specific actions or goals, but prohibition of that which inhibits actions and goals. Not to command man, but to prohibit man from command.

    In my work I have come to see all man’s words as defense of, justification of, negotiation on behalf of, and assertion of, his reproductive strategy. This is a less ‘christian’ version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Instead it is a will to acquire, of which power is merely one asset to inventory.

    I do not see in books what is said. I see what strategy is being defended, justified, negotiated, and asserted. I do not allow myself to be programmed by suggestion, and even if I did, I may be incapable of it. In fact, if suggestion is the method of communication I am largely immune.

    But you see, that is the purpose of narratives: to program by suggestion. A recipe is very different from a story. A natural law under rule of law very different from both. But a narrative programs by suggestion, from the invocation of experience, and not from recipe (positive) and law (negative).

    So if someone can please explain to me the criteria by which one could judge islam as a religion of peace, I would love to know. But as far as I can tell it is just another scourge of the earth and it has been since its invention. And every people conquered by it suffer for it.

    It may be effective for the devil to convince us he does not exist. It is even better if he convinces us that he is god. It is possible the Jehova is the devil. It is certain that Allah is. Not by verbal analysis but by demonstrated outcome. Not by claims, not words, not ‘meaning’ (suggestion), but by evidence of the consequences of the long term use of those words.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-12 04:23:00 UTC

  • BRITAIN Extreme wealth ruins a culture. Spain, France, Britain, America, in that

    BRITAIN

    Extreme wealth ruins a culture. Spain, France, Britain, America, in that order all suffer from creating elites during time of plenty that attempt to perpetuate and expand the institutions that they occupy even after the period of prosperity has ended. Worse, formerly hard working people are lifted up out of the peasant, working and middle classes, and protect their status as well – collapsing the culture of industry that made them able to afford the luxury and imprisoning them in perpetual maximization of rents. Leaving behind a vapid pretense of false signals. The average Brit spends his life trying to find a way to feel morally superior to someone else. The average american tries to find a way to feel economically and meritocratic-ally superior. Pretense reigns in the nation in decline.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-10 08:01:00 UTC

  • 21st CENTURY RELIGION – PART II – ANTI MONOPOLISM The other point I try to make

    21st CENTURY RELIGION – PART II – ANTI MONOPOLISM

    The other point I try to make is that while the world practices political monotheisms (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity), that this is a POLITICAL statement not a factual one.

    In china they practice Maoism in the leadership, Confucianism in the upper classes, Lao Tzu in the lower, and Buddhism as a moral binding principle across all.

    In the west we demonstrably practice (a) Aristotelianism, Natural Law and Legalism, (b) Christianity – political and moral religion (c) Paganism – myths and traditions, as well as nature worship)

    I know I am ‘inspired’ by trees just as our ancient ancestors were, and I understand completely why the churches were intentionally built upon our sacred groves. My politics and law may be aristotelian, my morality and commons may be christian, but my mind, heart and soul are pagan through and through. Whether it’s genetic or not we don’t know yet.

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-10 07:09:00 UTC