Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Scientific and Libertarian vs Mythical and Authoritarian: The Burden of Thought.

    (religious trigger warning) [K]ant understood the central value of the west was truth speaking.  But Kant was still a Christian – arguing in unscientific language of morality. He was not able to make the leap from truth to jury, law, science and economics. We face the same problem with Today’s Christians. Traditionalists often hold proper sensibilities and express them in the language of belief, rather than the language of institutions, incentives, law, and economics – the art of cooperation rather than totalitarianism that requires submission in all the monotheistic religions, and which demands we abandon truth in favor of useful analogy. What traditionalism requires is submission – and in exchange one gains freedom from the burden of perpetual calculation of events. The value of religion – still measurable today – is that it is increasingly valuable as intelligence decreases. And decreasingly valuable as intelligence increases. Religious authority obviates need for reason.  Truth, science and reason obviate the need for authority. So we really have two choices: we can have two systems of thought: scientific and mythical, while insisting that the mythical contain moral content only, with full knowledge that the scientific method is aristocratic and libertarian in construction and the mythical narrative is proletarian and authoritarian in construction. Or, we can suppress the reproduction of the lower classes and merely pay them off until there are so few left that their cost is below noise level. (Spoken as a Catholic myself.) Source: Curt Doolittle

  • The End of History: It’s The Truthful Civilization, Not Democracy. (Sorry Francis)

    (profundity of the day)(read it)(propertarianism provides the wilsonian synthesis)

    [I]f I am correct, and that the reason for western rapidity of innovation, economic velocity, and intellectual progress, is the prevalence of truth telling in all walks of life; and that truth telling begets truth-thinking; and that truth-thinking leads to multitudinous goods – faster than all other institutional solutions; then why are not truth-speaking and truth-thinking as radical an innovation as literacy and reading?

    (I am pretty sure it is.)

    Oath-giving was expensive. Juries were expensive. A senate is expensive. Rule of law was very expensive. Literacy was terribly expensive. Science was expensive. High trust was very expensive. Yet these investments in our commons are the very reasons that westerners produce every good faster than all competing civilizations in both the greco-roman and re-enlightened eras.

    We succeeded in incremental suppression of all free riding, and incremental increase in normative taxation – bearing costs for the production of norms.

    If we require the payment of truth telling, no other innovation in institutions can compete with it.

    Once we have implemented truth telling as common property with universal standing, then we can eliminate the centralization of parasitism in the state: monopoly bureaucracy. We will have successfully suppressed local parasitism and eliminated transaction costs by centralizing parasitism as a means of paying for the transition. Then eliminated the central bureaucracy as a means of parasitism. We can then – and only then – finally live in a nomocracy: under rule of law.

    This simple act will result in the ‘scientific civilization’. It will complete the enlightenment attempt to restore our western civilization to its hellenic and indo european origins – rescuing it from babylonian mysticism forever. Not because people ‘believe’ one thing or another. But because we have eliminate all opportunity to, and utility in, doing otherwise.

    (And if that isn’t the most profound argument you’ve run into this year I’ll be surprised.)

    Source: Curt Doolittle – THE END OF HISTORY: THE SCIENTIFIC (TRUTHFUL)…

  • The End of History: It’s The Truthful Civilization, Not Democracy. (Sorry Francis)

    (profundity of the day)(read it)(propertarianism provides the wilsonian synthesis)

    [I]f I am correct, and that the reason for western rapidity of innovation, economic velocity, and intellectual progress, is the prevalence of truth telling in all walks of life; and that truth telling begets truth-thinking; and that truth-thinking leads to multitudinous goods – faster than all other institutional solutions; then why are not truth-speaking and truth-thinking as radical an innovation as literacy and reading?

    (I am pretty sure it is.)

    Oath-giving was expensive. Juries were expensive. A senate is expensive. Rule of law was very expensive. Literacy was terribly expensive. Science was expensive. High trust was very expensive. Yet these investments in our commons are the very reasons that westerners produce every good faster than all competing civilizations in both the greco-roman and re-enlightened eras.

    We succeeded in incremental suppression of all free riding, and incremental increase in normative taxation – bearing costs for the production of norms.

    If we require the payment of truth telling, no other innovation in institutions can compete with it.

    Once we have implemented truth telling as common property with universal standing, then we can eliminate the centralization of parasitism in the state: monopoly bureaucracy. We will have successfully suppressed local parasitism and eliminated transaction costs by centralizing parasitism as a means of paying for the transition. Then eliminated the central bureaucracy as a means of parasitism. We can then – and only then – finally live in a nomocracy: under rule of law.

    This simple act will result in the ‘scientific civilization’. It will complete the enlightenment attempt to restore our western civilization to its hellenic and indo european origins – rescuing it from babylonian mysticism forever. Not because people ‘believe’ one thing or another. But because we have eliminate all opportunity to, and utility in, doing otherwise.

    (And if that isn’t the most profound argument you’ve run into this year I’ll be surprised.)

    Source: Curt Doolittle – THE END OF HISTORY: THE SCIENTIFIC (TRUTHFUL)…

  • THREE CLASSES AND THREE CHOICES: SCIENTIFIC NOBILITY, UTILITARIAN (DECEITFUL) PU

    THREE CLASSES AND THREE CHOICES: SCIENTIFIC NOBILITY, UTILITARIAN (DECEITFUL) PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL, MYSTICAL PRIESTHOOD.

    (religious trigger warning)

    Kant was still a Christian`, arguing in unscientific language of morality. He was not able to make the leap from truth to jury, law, science and economics.

    We face the same problem with Today’s Christians. Traditionalists often hold proper sensibilities and express them in the language of belief, rather than the language of institutions, incentives, law, and economics – the art of cooperation rather than totalitarianism that requires submission in all the monotheistic religions, and which demands we abandon truth in favor of useful analogy.

    What traditionalism requires is submission – and in exchange one gains freedom from the burden of perpetual calculation of events.

    The value of religion – still measurable today – is that it is increasingly valuable as intelligence decreases. And decreasingly valuable as intelligence increases.

    So we really have two choices: we can have two systems of thought: scientific and mythical, while insisting that the mythical contain moral content only, with full knowledge that the scientific method is aristocratic and libertarian in construction and the mythical narrative is proletarian and authoritarian in construction.

    Or, we can suppress the reproduction of the lower classes and merely pay them off until there are so few left that their cost is below noise level.

    (Spoken as a Catholic myself.)

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-05 07:43:00 UTC

  • THE END OF HISTORY: THE SCIENTIFIC (TRUTHFUL) CIVILIZATION: THE WEST. (profundit

    THE END OF HISTORY: THE SCIENTIFIC (TRUTHFUL) CIVILIZATION: THE WEST.

    (profundity of the day)(read it)(propertarianism provides the wilsonian synthesis)

    If I am correct, and that the reason for western rapidity of innovation, economic velocity, and intellectual progress, is the prevalence of truth telling in all walks of life; and that truth telling begets truth-thinking; and that truth-thinking leads to multitudinous goods – faster than all other institutional solutions; then why are not truth-speaking and truth-thinking as radical an innovation as literacy and reading?

    (I am pretty sure it is.)

    Oath-giving was expensive. Juries were expensive. A senate is expensive. Rule of law was very expensive. Literacy was terribly expensive. Science was expensive. High trust was very expensive. Yet these investments in our commons are the very reasons that westerners produce every good faster than all competing civilizations in both the greco-roman and re-enlightened eras.

    We succeeded in incremental suppression of all free riding, and incremental increase in normative taxation – bearing costs for the production of norms.

    If we require the payment of truth telling, no other innovation in institutions can compete with it.

    Once we have implemented truth telling as common property with universal standing, then we can eliminate the centralization of parasitism in the state: monopoly bureaucracy. We will have successfully suppressed local parasitism and eliminated transaction costs by centralizing parasitism as a means of paying for the transition. Then eliminated the central bureaucracy as a means of parasitism. We can then – and only then – finally live in a nomocracy: under rule of law.

    This simple act will result in the ‘scientific civilization’. It will complete the enlightenment attempt to restore our western civilization to its hellenic and indo european origins – rescuing it from babylonian mysticism forever. Not because people ‘believe’ one thing or another. But because we have eliminate all opportunity to, and utility in, doing otherwise.

    (And if that isn’t the most profound argument you’ve run into this year I’ll be surprised.)

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-05 07:34:00 UTC

  • The Cost of Eliminating Pseudoscience in Economics

    (Please tolerate the long post. Some ideas are not reducible to pithy wit.) (1000 words) (important piece)

    RE: https://growthecon.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/more-on-mathiness/

    [I]f a statement in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then it cannot be true – it is not existentially possible. If a statement in economics can be reduce to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then whether it is true or not is still open to question. The philosophical problem (epistemic truth) of correcting pseudoscience (of which mathiness is a subset) in the field of economics is not something that is going to easily be solved by economists, who tend to be good at neither advanced mathematics, nor the ethics of science, nor at the principle problem of truth. And this is a serious problem. Because, of all the disciplines save psychology, economics is the **most subject** to pseudoscience: the failure to eliminate imagination, bias, error and deceit. And we have the greatest incentive to insert imagination, error, bias, and deceit. And among all the scientific disciplines, the social sciences have been the most subject to pseudoscience other than perhaps philosophy itself (which in truth is objectively a social science). We have not yet developed the warranty that the hard sciences have developed, or that psychologists have developed. And this is in no small part because in economics, the warranty that we must give is much broader, and places a much higher burden on authors, because the scope of our statements is much broader in influence than that of our peers in other fields. [D]ue Diligence Necessary For the Warranty of Truthfulness: 1) Have we achieved identity? Is it categorically consistent? 2) Is it internally consistent? Is it logical? Can we construct a proof(test) of internal consistency? 3) Is it externally correspondent, and sufficiently parsimonious? Can we construct a proof (test) of external correspondence. 4) Is it existentially possible? Is it operationally articulated? Can we construct a proof (test) of existential possibility? 5) Is it fully accounted? Do we account for all costs to all capital in all temporal and inter-temporal dimensions? (Have we avoided selection bias?) Can we construct a proof (test) of full accounting? 6) Is it morally constrained? Does it violate the incentive to cooperate? (Meaning, are all operations productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers, free of negative externality of the same criterion?) If you cannot answer these questions or do not understand them you cannot know if you speak the truth, or if you are polluting the commons with fantasy, bias, error, or deception. Why is it that the informational commons, and by consequence the political and normative commons, are not – in an age of information – as subject to warranty and liability as pollution (“Abusus”) to physical commons, life, body, and private property? Truthfulness – testimony that has been subject to due diligence – is a non trivial cost. And economists are too happy (as it appears all social scientists have been) to produce defective products for personal gains, without the warranty that all other products have been subject to. Why is it that free speech is not limited to free truthful speech? After all, the cost of producing truthful scientific testimony under due diligence and warranty is much higher than the cost of producing untruthful pseudoscientific testimony without due diligence or warranty. Doesn’t mere free speech without warranty of due diligence of truthfulness construct an impossibility under which the production of high cost truth and the production of low cost fantasy, bias, error and deceit must eventually win? There is a great difference between the terms “empirical” (observable and measurable) and “scientific” of which empirical criticism is but a minor subset of the criterion necessary for the production of warranty of due diligence against fantasy,bias, error, and deceit. We have had a century of economists running with intellectual scissors, causing inter-temporal externalities of profound consequence. And the Cosmopolitan (freshwater) rationalist’s justification of priors is only more visible than the mainstream Anglo empirical (Saltwater), justification of priors under the pseudoscience of Rawlsian justificationism – itself a fascinating example of the logically impossible, yet pervasively persuasive. So just as all enlightenment adaptations were plagued with errors – anglo, french, german and jewish – both freshwater and saltwater economics are plagued with pseudoscience. The freshwater try to justify objective morality, by argumentative construction (pseudoscience), and the saltwater try to justify immorality by intentionally failing to account for profound normative, institutional, civilizational, and genetic consequences (pseudoscience). So it’s one thing for all of us to point the finger of the accusation of pseudoscience one place or another. But it is quite another to realize that the minute you draw the lens of truth upon either freshwater or saltwater economics, you will discover that both are pseudosciences that merely confirm ideological priors. This is probably the most important remaining problem in the philosophy of science. I set out to debunk the pseudoscience of libertarianism (cosmopolitan libertarianism, not anglo libertarianism) and to refute the postmoderns as masters of pseudoscience. And I did. But I did not set out to reform economics. And in truth, I have less interest in reforming economics and social science than I do in reforming law and politics – the sciences will merely follow incentives. But Paul Romer lit the kindling, and perhaps this is the time to solve the remaining problem of science. If we do it will be the most important reformation of thought since the enlightenment. Because our errors – our priors – are all errors of the enlightenment. And that is because the enlightenment was incomplete. We can complete it. But only if the utility of truth is more valuable than the utility of pseudoscience. And I am suspicious of that assumption. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine. @paulromer #mathiness

  • The Cost of Eliminating Pseudoscience in Economics

    (Please tolerate the long post. Some ideas are not reducible to pithy wit.) (1000 words) (important piece)

    RE: https://growthecon.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/more-on-mathiness/

    [I]f a statement in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then it cannot be true – it is not existentially possible. If a statement in economics can be reduce to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then whether it is true or not is still open to question. The philosophical problem (epistemic truth) of correcting pseudoscience (of which mathiness is a subset) in the field of economics is not something that is going to easily be solved by economists, who tend to be good at neither advanced mathematics, nor the ethics of science, nor at the principle problem of truth. And this is a serious problem. Because, of all the disciplines save psychology, economics is the **most subject** to pseudoscience: the failure to eliminate imagination, bias, error and deceit. And we have the greatest incentive to insert imagination, error, bias, and deceit. And among all the scientific disciplines, the social sciences have been the most subject to pseudoscience other than perhaps philosophy itself (which in truth is objectively a social science). We have not yet developed the warranty that the hard sciences have developed, or that psychologists have developed. And this is in no small part because in economics, the warranty that we must give is much broader, and places a much higher burden on authors, because the scope of our statements is much broader in influence than that of our peers in other fields. [D]ue Diligence Necessary For the Warranty of Truthfulness: 1) Have we achieved identity? Is it categorically consistent? 2) Is it internally consistent? Is it logical? Can we construct a proof(test) of internal consistency? 3) Is it externally correspondent, and sufficiently parsimonious? Can we construct a proof (test) of external correspondence. 4) Is it existentially possible? Is it operationally articulated? Can we construct a proof (test) of existential possibility? 5) Is it fully accounted? Do we account for all costs to all capital in all temporal and inter-temporal dimensions? (Have we avoided selection bias?) Can we construct a proof (test) of full accounting? 6) Is it morally constrained? Does it violate the incentive to cooperate? (Meaning, are all operations productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers, free of negative externality of the same criterion?) If you cannot answer these questions or do not understand them you cannot know if you speak the truth, or if you are polluting the commons with fantasy, bias, error, or deception. Why is it that the informational commons, and by consequence the political and normative commons, are not – in an age of information – as subject to warranty and liability as pollution (“Abusus”) to physical commons, life, body, and private property? Truthfulness – testimony that has been subject to due diligence – is a non trivial cost. And economists are too happy (as it appears all social scientists have been) to produce defective products for personal gains, without the warranty that all other products have been subject to. Why is it that free speech is not limited to free truthful speech? After all, the cost of producing truthful scientific testimony under due diligence and warranty is much higher than the cost of producing untruthful pseudoscientific testimony without due diligence or warranty. Doesn’t mere free speech without warranty of due diligence of truthfulness construct an impossibility under which the production of high cost truth and the production of low cost fantasy, bias, error and deceit must eventually win? There is a great difference between the terms “empirical” (observable and measurable) and “scientific” of which empirical criticism is but a minor subset of the criterion necessary for the production of warranty of due diligence against fantasy,bias, error, and deceit. We have had a century of economists running with intellectual scissors, causing inter-temporal externalities of profound consequence. And the Cosmopolitan (freshwater) rationalist’s justification of priors is only more visible than the mainstream Anglo empirical (Saltwater), justification of priors under the pseudoscience of Rawlsian justificationism – itself a fascinating example of the logically impossible, yet pervasively persuasive. So just as all enlightenment adaptations were plagued with errors – anglo, french, german and jewish – both freshwater and saltwater economics are plagued with pseudoscience. The freshwater try to justify objective morality, by argumentative construction (pseudoscience), and the saltwater try to justify immorality by intentionally failing to account for profound normative, institutional, civilizational, and genetic consequences (pseudoscience). So it’s one thing for all of us to point the finger of the accusation of pseudoscience one place or another. But it is quite another to realize that the minute you draw the lens of truth upon either freshwater or saltwater economics, you will discover that both are pseudosciences that merely confirm ideological priors. This is probably the most important remaining problem in the philosophy of science. I set out to debunk the pseudoscience of libertarianism (cosmopolitan libertarianism, not anglo libertarianism) and to refute the postmoderns as masters of pseudoscience. And I did. But I did not set out to reform economics. And in truth, I have less interest in reforming economics and social science than I do in reforming law and politics – the sciences will merely follow incentives. But Paul Romer lit the kindling, and perhaps this is the time to solve the remaining problem of science. If we do it will be the most important reformation of thought since the enlightenment. Because our errors – our priors – are all errors of the enlightenment. And that is because the enlightenment was incomplete. We can complete it. But only if the utility of truth is more valuable than the utility of pseudoscience. And I am suspicious of that assumption. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine. @paulromer #mathiness

  • COST OF ELIMINATING PSEUDOSCIENCE IN ECONOMICS (profound)(read this) (Please tol

    https://growthecon.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/more-on-mathiness/THE COST OF ELIMINATING PSEUDOSCIENCE IN ECONOMICS

    (profound)(read this)

    https://growthecon.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/more-on-mathiness/

    (Please tolerate the long post. Some ideas are not reducible to pithy wit.)

    [I]f a statement in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then it cannot be true – it is not existentially possible. If a statement in economics can be reduce to a sequence of subjectively testable rational operations, then whether it is true or not is still open to question.

    The philosophical problem (epistemic truth) of correcting pseudoscience (of which mathiness is a subset) in the field of economics is not something that is going to easily be solved by economists, who tend to be good at neither advanced mathematics, nor the ethics of science, nor at the principle problem of truth.

    And this is a serious problem. Because, of all the disciplines save psychology, economics is the **most subject** to pseudoscience: the failure to eliminate imagination, bias, error and deceit. And we have the greatest incentive to insert imagination, error, bias, and deceit.

    And among all the scientific disciplines, the social sciences have been the most subject to pseudoscience other than perhaps philosophy itself (which in truth is objectively a social science).

    We have not yet developed the warranty that the hard sciences have developed, or that psychologists have developed. And this is in no small part because in economics, the warranty that we must give is much broader, and places a much higher burden on authors, because the scope of our statements is much broader in influence than that of our peers in other fields.

    [D]ue Diligence Necessary For the Warranty of Truthfulness:

    1) Have we achieved identity? Is it categorically consistent?

    2) Is it internally consistent? Is it logical? Can we construct a proof(test) of internal consistency?

    3) Is it externally correspondent, and sufficiently parsimonious? Can we construct a proof (test) of external correspondence.

    4) Is it existentially possible? Is it operationally articulated? Can we construct a proof (test) of existential possibility?

    5) Is it fully accounted? Do we account for all costs to all capital in all temporal and inter-temporal dimensions? (Have we avoided selection bias?) Can we construct a proof (test) of full accounting?

    6) Is it morally constrained? Does it violate the incentive to cooperate? (Meaning, are all operations productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers, free of negative externality of the same criterion?)

    If you cannot answer these questions or do not understand them you cannot know if you speak the truth, or if you are polluting the commons with fantasy, bias, error, or deception.

    Why is it that the informational commons, and by consequence the political and normative commons, are not – in an age of information – as subject to warranty and liability as pollution (“Abusus”) to physical commons, life, body, and private property?

    Truthfulness – testimony that has been subject to due diligence – is a non trivial cost. And economists are too happy (as it appears all social scientists have been) to produce defective products for personal gains, without the warranty that all other products have been subject to.

    <strong><em>Why is it that free speech is not limited to free truthful speech? After all, the cost of producing truthful scientific testimony under due diligence and warranty is much higher than the cost of producing untruthful pseudoscientific testimony without due diligence or warranty. Doesn’t mere free speech without warranty of due diligence of truthfulness construct an impossibility under which the production of high cost truth and the production of low cost fantasy, bias, error and deceit must eventually win?</em></strong>

    There is a great difference between the terms “empirical” (observable and measurable) and “scientific” of which empirical criticism is but a minor subset of the criterion necessary for the production of warranty of due diligence against fantasy,bias, error, and deceit.

    We have had a century of economists running with intellectual scissors, causing inter-temporal externalities of profound consequence. And the Cosmopolitan (freshwater) rationalist’s justification of priors is only more visible than the mainstream Anglo empirical (Saltwater), justification of priors under the pseudoscience of Rawlsian justificationism – itself a fascinating example of the logically impossible, yet pervasively persuasive.

    So just as all enlightenment adaptations were plagued with errors – anglo, french, german and jewish – both freshwater and saltwater economics are plagued with pseudoscience. The freshwater try to justify objective morality, by argumentative construction (pseudoscience), and the saltwater try to justify immorality by intentionally failing to account for profound normative, institutional, civilizational, and genetic consequences (pseudoscience).

    So it’s one thing for all of us to point the finger of the accusation of pseudoscience one place or another. But it is quite another to realize that the minute you draw the lens of truth upon either freshwater or saltwater economics, you will discover that both are pseudosciences that merely confirm ideological priors.

    This is probably the most important remaining problem in the philosophy of science.

    I set out to debunk the pseudoscience of libertarianism (cosmopolitan libertarianism, not anglo libertarianism) and to refute the postmoderns as masters of pseudoscience. And I did. But I did not set out to reform economics. And in truth, I have less interest in reforming economics and social science than I do in reforming law and politics – the sciences will merely follow incentives.

    But Paul Romer lit the kindling, and perhaps this is the time to solve the remaining problem of science. If we do it will be the most important reformation of thought since the enlightenment. Because our errors – our priors – are all errors of the enlightenment. And that is because the enlightenment was incomplete.

    We can complete it.

    But only if the utility of truth is more valuable than the utility of pseudoscience. And I am suspicious of that assumption.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    @paulromer #mathiness

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-04 06:11:00 UTC

  • DEALING WITH THE ALPHA MALE h/t Don Finnegan I liked this quite a bit and though

    DEALING WITH THE ALPHA MALE

    h/t Don Finnegan

    I liked this quite a bit and thought I’d save it. What’s missing is the fact that a woman helps an alpha avoid consideration of emotional biases so that he can ‘calculate’. And visa-versa. The best an assistant can do is to insulate you from emotional content, and let you do your job. She then adjusts the facts and communicates the facts. Whether people like things or not is irrelevant to him. That’s her job. That’s her specailzation just as ‘calculating’ is his job.

    Protect him from emotional content that interferes with his thinking. Emotional constant is only important when it betrays a confidence, betrays loyalty, or violates an agreement.

    Dealing With The Alpha Male

    By Susan Dunn

    The term comes from monkeydom – the dominant male in the hierarchy who basically runs things and gets what he wants. In the monkey troop, there’s only one and one of his privileges is he’s often the only one who gets to mate.

    In a nutshell they’re domineering, intimidating, impatient with people and details, thrive on responsibility, driven, irascible, know (not “think”) they’re right, often left-brained, and difficult.

    Is there an “alpha female”? Studies have shown that females are not as innately** threatening as males. Also, across-the-board, males test lower in empathy and social responsibility – two traits that contribute to this personality style. So, not really

    **Tests for innateness mean it’s evident with newborns, and in every culture, therefore not something “learned”.

    How do you cope with one? Here are some suggestions.

    1. Take a stand.

    You won’t get to hold it, but if you don’t, you’ll become irrelevant.

    2. Learn their language.

    This is helpful with anyone, learning how they speak, and essential with the alpha male. Listen to the alpha and parrot back, using his terminology. For instance, if you get an email saying, “You were wrong ,” you can reply, “How do I do this right ?”

    3. Maintain your dignity and self-respect.

    It may well be under assault, and it’s up to you. The alpha male isn’t looking out for you, your feelings, or sentiments, or often even your opinion. If you show he’s “getting to you,” you’ll likely get more of it. (To them it’s a show of “weakness”.) Learn to manage your nonverbal communication – facial expressions, position of hands, posture, etc.

    4. Come in equipped with Emotional Intelligence.

    You’re going to need it. They are results-driven, and this means they run rough-shod over people, whom they see as merely a means to their end. (You will be judged on how “useful” you are.) You will have to learn to protect yourself. Deal with the facts and don’t take it personally. If you look around, it was just “your turn,” that’s all. Don’t give up your Personal Power and fall into “hopeless and helpless.”

    5. Right and wrong. (Shame and blame)

    There’s likely to be a lot of discussion about who was “right” and who was “wrong.” If you made a mistake, say so up front. (Often it’s good to put as much in writing as you can about what you did, when, in case it comes up later and is subject to his “selective memory.”) If you did something because of lack of knowledge say, “I didn’t know that at the time.” Don’t apologize.

    6. Eliminate the ordinary “fluff”.

    Be analytical, logical and direct. Since they are relatively insensitive, direct comments you might make to someone else, will bounce right off their tough hide. Their ends justify any “means,” including disregard for others. They don’t respond well to “I’m sorry,” or “How are you feeling today?” They just don’t like it, that’s why.

    7. If you’re sensitive, you may need to find somewhere else to be. Period.

    To the average alpha male, you’re “a breathing body” and that’s about it. He may not even bother to learn your name as he barks orders.

    8. Stay neutral and don’t admit to a weakness.

    While it works with most people to say, “I’m learning this job and have a ways to go,” to an alpha male, this is like waving a red flag to a bull. Stick with details, “Yes, I see. It won’t happen again.” (Or say “Yes I hear you” or whatever your listening to his vocabulary has taught you.)

    9. Avoid appearing (or being) submissive.

    If you do, you’ll lose his respect. Don’t be intimidated by his anger. The basic reason is probably because it makes him feel good, so there’s not a thing you can do about it. More than any other type, don’t try to change him. It won’t work. (If you do try, get something like a 360 – evidence from everyone else is all he’ll believe.)

    10. Don’t waste his time.

    Which is most of the normal niceties and social amenities.

    Susan Dunn, San Antonio, TX, USA

    sdunn@susandunn.cc

    http://www.susandunn.cc

    Susan Dunn, MA, Psychology, Emotional Intelligence Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc . Coaching, Internet courses and ebooks around emotional intelligence for career, relationships, transitions, resilience, personal and professional development. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for free ezine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-29 04:12:00 UTC

  • Running with Hayekian Scissors

    PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION

    —Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies to more than just economic issues. It also applies to social issues.—- 

    RE: http://ow.ly/Ln3uF
    [W]hile, as I’ve written before, I agree with the general argument that women sense some things and men others (and progressives, libertarians and conservatives different things as well) I have a     more complete theory of the inter-temporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge and labor (and one that eliminates equality, and monopoly decision making), there is a minor error in the logic of the first paragraph, and that is that it is irrelevant that we understand others – it is only relevant that we conduct exchanges with them.

    Because their reaction to their senses are not accurate or ‘true’ in any meaningful sense other than as a reflection of the individual’s reproductive strategy – any more than any of the rest of our senses are all that accurate – they themselves are fragments.

    This single insight is the principle cause of why democracy does not work, and the market does. The market allows us to cooperate on multitudinous means even if on disparate ends, with our successes and failures informing both us and others.

    Whereas a monopoly government prevents us from learning anything of value, and the institutionalization of foolish policy by unexpriable law, and the accretion of bureaucratic self interests, prevents adaptation outside of catastrophic chains of failure.

    In fact, monopoly government (monopoly production of commons by majority rule) promotes failure because it is precisely failed policy that permits the greatest rent seeking for all involved.

    It is not that we should prohibit government (as Hayek warns) but that we should prohibit monopoly government. It is not that we should prevent taxation, it is that we should allocate our dividends from the commons we live in to the production of commons we prefer, and not to commons we do not.

    As, furthermore, so called ‘privilege’ is precious information. It is information that informs you whose behavior you should imitate in order to gain discounts on opportunity costs. Privilege is as necessary to the human information system as is status, property rights, rule of law, money and interest.

    Privilege, if it exists, is an inter-temporal store of value that informs others as to the behaviors that they should imitate in order to obtain a discount on opportunities. Manners and language are advertisements for one’s worthiness to engage in increasingly complex inter-temporal risks and returns.

    Those who accumulate such behaviors obtain opportunity at the lowest discounts. Those that fail to adapt, and ask others to ’empathize’ with them, are seeking discounts without bearing the cost of adaptation.

    In other words, they’re free riders participating in an act of fraud.

    –“I don’t see how we can maximize our own exchanges in a given society if we don’t understand anyone in said society.”–



    Of course.

    I think you are caught up on a bit of language, and overlooking the epistemological argument I am making about the difference between seeking to impose a monopoly by law and justifying it, and seeking to develop many voluntary contracts while preventing theft.

    We only learn the truth of anyone’s opinions by what they are willing to exchange. In other words, demonstrated preferences are truthful but articulated preferences are merely negotiating positions.

    Understanding is a means of negotiating, not a means of establishing a monopoly definition of ‘good’ or ‘right’.     Source: Skye Stewart – “Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies…