Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • THE EVOLUTION OF PUNCTUATION. (the economics of writing materials) Um. First, to

    THE EVOLUTION OF PUNCTUATION.

    (the economics of writing materials)

    Um. First, to get a bit of insult out of the way, he isn’t exactly writing about the intersections of complex topics, his PhD is in ‘interdisciplinary studies’. Meaning, it’s the equivalent of a high school diploma. Not much more than a means of fund-raising for weak departments.

    Second, quite the contrary, he DOES use punctuation: ample use of space to mark verbal pauses. In fact, spaces and new lines are all that are necessary for the comprehension of the written word. The comma, apostrophe,

    He should try to write with only spaces as punctuation, in E-prime (eliminating conflation between actor, observer, and experiencer; and eliminating ‘cheating’ conflation defining the existential properties of statements) and then I might take him more seriously.

    If we look at contemporary programming languages (Python) we see the abandonment of punctuation in favor of spaces and line breaks.

    The original reason for punctuation are fairly obvious:

    1) writing materials, people who could write, were originally terribly expensive.

    2) writing was originally limited to very simple and familiar topics, so comprehension was not difficult.

    3) most characters were originally pictographic.

    For these three reasons, writing was dense.

    But a problem arises as writing becomes more complicated, and not just a vehicle for business transactions, and the issuance of laws.

    It had to be able not to record transactions, but to record speech.

    —-”Punctuation is historically an aid to reading aloud.”—-

    —-”The Greeks were sporadically using punctuation marks consisting of vertically arranged dots—usually two (dicolon) or three (tricolon)—in around the 5th century b.c. as an aid in the oral delivery of texts.” —-

    hypostigmḗ – a low punctus on the baseline to mark off a komma (unit smaller than a clause);

    stigmḕ mésē – a punctus at midheight to mark off a clause (kōlon); and

    stigmḕ teleía – a high punctus to mark off a sentence (periodos).[6]

    —-”formal written modern English differs subtly from spoken English because not all emphasis and disambiguation is possible to convey in print, even with punctuation.”—-

    In phonetic languages, it is much easier to read volumes of text if there are spaces between the words. The same problem does not exist in pictorial characters which the entire meaning is embedded in the glyph.

    In modern writing, besides assisting in clarifying the text, punctuation makes it somewhat easier to scan rather than read (burdensome) text, so that if a concept is understood, one can easily move to the next. Most of us who read a great deal (for a living), skim the first sentence of paragraphs to search for something we might not already know, rather than burn time and energy on the author’s repetition of the obvious.

    So, the argument against this particular PhD student, (whose protest is noted) is that without punctuation we are trapped in his horridly pedantic narrative without the ability to search through it for valuable content. In that sense it is like having to listen to some idiot babble for twenty minutes before getting to the point. (In other words, like attending most conferences.)

    In high school I felt very frustrated with punctuation because my feeling was very similar to the author’s: a period is obvious, a comma is obvious, and a dash is obvious, and parenthesis are obvious. Paragraphs are not so obvious, and mastering semicolons is something I still wrestle with. But in the end, it’s just an increasing set of pauses to inform the reader how to read out loud.

    But there is nothing ‘colonial’ about punctuation: The greeks used it. And the same technique has remained with us. Because it’s necessary.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-13 09:14:00 UTC

  • IF THEIR BAD ARE MORE CAPABLE THAN YOUR GOOD, WHAT HAPPENS? Good atheists, bad a

    IF THEIR BAD ARE MORE CAPABLE THAN YOUR GOOD, WHAT HAPPENS?

    Good atheists, bad atheists. Good christians, bad christians. Good jews, bad jews.

    The problem is not that one group is good or bad; it is the aggression and capability of people within the group.

    If one set of people is more capable than another, then both the good and the bad are exaggerated. This is the way to look at the influence of all groups. This is the way to look at the good and bad of all groups. More aggressive and more capable people pursue their self interest more successfully than less aggressive and less capable people.

    We all pursue our self interests. I don’t criticize people for pursuing their self interests. That would be illogical. On the other hand I am happy to criticize people for not defending themselves against the bad, aggressive and capable.

    It usually means that they are consuming rather than investing in defenses.

    Which is the case, in this case.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-12 11:16:00 UTC

  • THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERM “GENTLEMAN” The most basic class distinctions in the M

    THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERM “GENTLEMAN”

    The most basic class distinctions in the Middle Ages were between the nobiles, i.e., the tenants in chivalry, such as earls, barons, knights, esquires, the free ignobiles such as the citizens and burgesses, and franklins, and the unfree peasantry including villeins and serfs.

    In its original meaning, “gentleman” denoted a man of the lowest rank of the English gentry, standing below an esquire and above a yeoman.

    This category included the younger sons of the younger sons of peers and the younger sons of baronets, knights, and esquires in perpetual succession, and thus the term captures the common denominator of gentility (and often armigerousness) shared by both constituents of the English aristocracy: the peerage and the gentry. In this sense, the word equates with the French gentilhomme (“nobleman”), which latter term has been, in Great Britain, long confined to the peerage;

    Even as late as 1400, the word gentleman still only had the descriptive sense of generosus and could not be used as denoting the title of a class. Yet after 1413, we find it increasingly so used, and the list of landowners in 1431, printed in Feudal Aids, contains, besides knights, esquires, yeomen and husbandmen (i.e. householders), a fair number who are classed as “gentilman”.

    The British Empire begins in the 1580’s.

    The clear distinction between the aristocratic and laboring classes was pervasive. After 1600 Gentlemen would not challenge men of lower status to a duel, and a challenge to (or excuse for) a duel was based on some perceived public insult to the challenger’s sense of his honour as a gentleman.

    The industrial revolution starts in 1790.

    In (1815), the encyclopedia britannica states: “a gentleman is one, who without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen.”

    The Reform Acts were implemented (1832): the British equivalent of Jerrymandering was revised and the allocation of seats in parliament to boroughs (the equivalent of US counties) were adjusted. The qualification as property holder adjusted for inflation, and the electorate expanded by as much 50% – although universal enfranchisement was not yet adopted.

    As prosperity expanded, and the middle class with it, the designation came to include a man with an income derived from property, a legacy or some other source, and was thus independently wealthy and did not need to work.

    Then in (1845) we see “in its extended sense, a gentleman is accorded to all above the rank of yeomen.”

    So the title expands to cover any well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus (its usual translation in English-Latin documents, although nobilis is found throughout pre-Reformation papal correspondence).

    And by (1856), “in its most extended sense, by courtesy this title is generally accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence.”

    The middle classes were successfully enfranchised; and the word gentleman came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners.

    The term no longer required good birth or the right to bear arms, but the capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society.

    Signaling. 🙂

    In Propertarianism, a gentleman is one who pays for the cost of the commons by not only contributing in his manners, but by policing the rest of society as any good nobleman would. And as such one who does not insure the truth, the normative, institutional, and physical commons, is not a gentleman. And anyone who does so is one.

    So my perception of gentleman is simply the smallest unit of nobility: a man with nothing but his actions to justify his nobility.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-12 04:27:00 UTC

  • THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY: UNNECESSARY (from elsewhere) The question

    THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY: UNNECESSARY

    (from elsewhere)

    The question is whether or not christian religion can function as a means of restoring western civilization. And my argument (and that of many others) is that it cannot. And for the reasons I stated: (a) that just as justification(rationalism) replaced mysticism, science(criticism) has replaced justification (rationalism), and people will not tolerate a return to primitive monotheistic mysticism. And (b) the forces that led to western success in the ancient and enlightenment world, were independent of the christian mythos – and much older. and (c) we cannot impose religious institutions, yet we can impose academic and legal institutions. (d) given that the differentiating feature of western civilization is truth, truth telling, jury, independent judges, and the common organic law, it is possible to use nothing more than the law to restore traditional values, and education to explain them.

    We may need a new civic religion. But the few people who ponder that new religion all suggest that it will be much closer to stoicism, buddhism and nature worship than to christianity. And given that neo-puritanism is a christian heresy, and social democracy a christian heresy, it is certainly not a safe vehicle for the transmission of our civilization.

    The germans almost exited christianity at least twice now. Had they done it in the Romantic period we might have had a chance to keep the best of old and new.

    We need our churches. We need jesus as a philosopher of the poor. But Justinian imposed christianity by force and shuttered the stoic schools (the western religion), so that they could use eastern despotic central rule in the failing empire. And Caesar murdered all our Druids, to wipe out our culture, so they could impose roman imperialism. And the enlightenment was our first attempt to restoring our people to our original correspondence with nature, rather than with babylonian tyrants deified.

    We have need of myth and ritual. We have no need for totalitarianism in our religion.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-12 01:48:00 UTC

  • MORE ON GEOGRAPHIC IGNORANCE Interesting offline conversation about american ign

    MORE ON GEOGRAPHIC IGNORANCE

    Interesting offline conversation about american ignorance. Yes, we are ignorant. But ignorance is a geographic necessity. Yes we are ignorant of our policies. But then, we have the best disinformation system in the world making the truth opaque to us. Yes we are ignorant, because we have a tragic education system that values eliminating the problem of diversity that preserves the political system over the education of a labor force capable of competing in a post-european world.

    Our geographic ignorance is forgivable – it’s not valuable. Our policy ignorance is something that should make us angry – it is valuable. Our educational ignorance is something that should cause us to revolt – it’s necessary for our survival.

    What we have that no one else has is total saturation in entrepreneurship, innovation, the scientific method, and heroism.

    This is enough to allow the upper classes to compete against the rest of the world, but it is not enough to allow our middle forces and labor forces to compete against the rest of the world.

    We need better education or we need to start impaling everyone in the administration of public education on spikes until we run out of bodies. I’ve been to both the Northwest and Canada. We’re never gonna run out of spikes.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-11 11:41:00 UTC

  • Traditionalists Will Fail. But We Can Still Succeed

    [C]onservatism, has failed because the enlightenment fallacy of an aristocracy of everyone could never come into being. Darwin put an end to it. We tried to turn our ancient aristocratic ethics into social science, but the european civil war exterminated Germany, where all our conservative aristocratic thought originated. Then the left created a pseudoscience to replace religion (Marx, Boaz, Freud, Cantor, Mises, Frankfurt School, Heidegger). And the neo-Puritains created pseudo-morality(victimism, feminism, progressivism, propaganda, relativism, and individualism). Since then, we have failed to convert our institutions, traditions, myths and rituals, into a rational and scientific set of arguments. Every single libertarian and conservative movement has failed. The only progress we have made is in producing our own propaganda systems (think tanks, radio-stations, network news, and web sites). And from these we still maintain power. I am working very hard to complete the neo-reactionary movement, and to convert our ancient traditions into a rational and scientific set of arguments. And I will tell you, with absolute certainty, that the reason for our western success – our rate of evolution compared to each competing civilization – is due to our discovery of testimonial truth, our near total requirement for truth telling, the jury, independent judiciary, common law, rule of law, and the heroic literature. And that the only value the church added, and still continues to add, is in breaking family and tribal bonds by prohibiting inbreeding (cousin marriage), and extending private property rights to women, and in threatening the aristocracy with revolution if they resist natural law (rule of law, property rights), and the invention of the university. And that aside from those four functions, the church has been a negative force for us. Because it is the destructive christian universalist sentiments that have been used by the neo-puritans (the christian left), and the socialists (the jewish left), via academy, school, state, and media, to sway us to suicidal self destruction using propaganda. (The west’s original religion is Stoicism – an action oriented equivalent of an inaction-oriented buddhism. and it is very close to what is practiced in secular Germany today.) The answer is not to restore myth and mysticism. They have conquered us with comforting lies to our less able. It is not up to us to learn to lie, or to restore lying by analogy as well. That is counter to the reason the west excelled compared to all other civilizations: truth telling. Our only chance for our western civilization to survive is to restore its original premise: heroism, truth telling, the jury, the common (organic) law, independent judiciary, universal standing, property rights, and to institute the physical, normative, and informational commons as property all are required to, and able to defend. Our origins are in Athens and Sparta, London and Koenigsberg, not Jerusalem and babylon. One need not ‘believe’ in law. One need only let law and truth telling do its work. One need not lie using mysticism. Truth, property and law are enough. One does not need foreign myths. Homer, Alexander, Aristotle, Aurelius, Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hayek, and the thousands of other heroes in the western cannon are enough. Because, Truth is enough. If we only will use violence to demand it. Aristocracy uses organized violence to prohibit tyranny, not deceit and consensus. There is no more truthful action than violence. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • Traditionalists Will Fail. But We Can Still Succeed

    [C]onservatism, has failed because the enlightenment fallacy of an aristocracy of everyone could never come into being. Darwin put an end to it. We tried to turn our ancient aristocratic ethics into social science, but the european civil war exterminated Germany, where all our conservative aristocratic thought originated. Then the left created a pseudoscience to replace religion (Marx, Boaz, Freud, Cantor, Mises, Frankfurt School, Heidegger). And the neo-Puritains created pseudo-morality(victimism, feminism, progressivism, propaganda, relativism, and individualism). Since then, we have failed to convert our institutions, traditions, myths and rituals, into a rational and scientific set of arguments. Every single libertarian and conservative movement has failed. The only progress we have made is in producing our own propaganda systems (think tanks, radio-stations, network news, and web sites). And from these we still maintain power. I am working very hard to complete the neo-reactionary movement, and to convert our ancient traditions into a rational and scientific set of arguments. And I will tell you, with absolute certainty, that the reason for our western success – our rate of evolution compared to each competing civilization – is due to our discovery of testimonial truth, our near total requirement for truth telling, the jury, independent judiciary, common law, rule of law, and the heroic literature. And that the only value the church added, and still continues to add, is in breaking family and tribal bonds by prohibiting inbreeding (cousin marriage), and extending private property rights to women, and in threatening the aristocracy with revolution if they resist natural law (rule of law, property rights), and the invention of the university. And that aside from those four functions, the church has been a negative force for us. Because it is the destructive christian universalist sentiments that have been used by the neo-puritans (the christian left), and the socialists (the jewish left), via academy, school, state, and media, to sway us to suicidal self destruction using propaganda. (The west’s original religion is Stoicism – an action oriented equivalent of an inaction-oriented buddhism. and it is very close to what is practiced in secular Germany today.) The answer is not to restore myth and mysticism. They have conquered us with comforting lies to our less able. It is not up to us to learn to lie, or to restore lying by analogy as well. That is counter to the reason the west excelled compared to all other civilizations: truth telling. Our only chance for our western civilization to survive is to restore its original premise: heroism, truth telling, the jury, the common (organic) law, independent judiciary, universal standing, property rights, and to institute the physical, normative, and informational commons as property all are required to, and able to defend. Our origins are in Athens and Sparta, London and Koenigsberg, not Jerusalem and babylon. One need not ‘believe’ in law. One need only let law and truth telling do its work. One need not lie using mysticism. Truth, property and law are enough. One does not need foreign myths. Homer, Alexander, Aristotle, Aurelius, Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hayek, and the thousands of other heroes in the western cannon are enough. Because, Truth is enough. If we only will use violence to demand it. Aristocracy uses organized violence to prohibit tyranny, not deceit and consensus. There is no more truthful action than violence. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • The Demographics of Gun Ownership

    A CORRELATIVE ANSWER, THEN THE CAUSAL ANSWER

    The Correlative Answer: Part 1: Social Structure
    Northern Europeans above the Hanjal Line (The North Sea Peoples who successfully out-bred) sometimes referred to as the Protestant Peoples) retain an ancient set of traditions requiring all men to obtain legitimacy and honor (equal status) through participation in the militia, and the purpose of the militia is to deny all men power over all other men. This is preserved most strongly in the anglos dutch and less so in the germans, who were anglicized.

    The Causal Answer: Part 2 Tradition
    There are a small number of underlying heroic traditions that carry the western Aristocratic (meritocratic) Egalitarian (enfranchisement to all who fight) tradition – and that tradition is the cause of the rapid rate of western development compared to all other civilizations, both in the ancient, and modern eras. These are:
    1) Heroism (purchase of enfranchisement and status through sacrifice)
    2) All property is private (all property is earned)
    3) Every man is his own legislator over his domain.
    4) The common law and independent judiciary permit the resolution of differences between equals without appeal to authority.
    5) The rule of law, the common law (organic law, natural law) applies to all men equally. 
    6) Hierarchy is necessary for decision making in war, the resolution of conflicts, and for the suppression of free riding.

    The value in this structure is that the common law can evolve with the first judicial ruling, and therefore both transaction cost and risk are reduced, and the chance of free riding, parasitism, fraud and predation are eliminated before they can be institutionalized. The market for law suppresses parasitism as fast as innovations in parasitism are created. In turn, innovation in products, services and ideas can progress with the least resistance from predators. Costs: The consequence for the underclasses is that while they benefit from the rapid innovation, they are more aware of the difference between those who are less productive and those who are are more so.

    The Causal Answer: Part 3 : Incentives
    As population destiny increases, all effects increase by approximately 20% for every doubling of the population. 
    The incentives for people in rural areas where all men bear a high cost of policing the commons, is more restrictive than the incentives for people in urban areas where few bear the cost of policing the commons.

    In general, people in areas of dense population discount the cost of policing commons and norms because opportunity, transaction and policing costs are lower.

    The Causal Answer Part 4: Diversity.
    Diversity decreases trust, increases political divisiveness and decreases economic velocity. Urban areas can afford immigrating diversity. Rural areas cannot.

    It’s all rational really.

    WHAT IS HAPPENING
    The effort to expand ownership has been successful and once people have limited skill with, and ownership of guns, it tends to transfer like all traditions between families.

    The greater the effort to suppress gun ownership the greater the passion with which gun owners preserve the tradition.

    We have roughly tripled gun sales under this administration. Demographically the argument is over and the pro gun movement has won. (surprisingly)

    The supreme court has learned a tragic lesson from Roe v Wade: that the court should not solve social matters until they are first resolved by the states. That decision has nearly destroyed the court. “The Democratic Process Must Do Its Work” is the phrase we hear from the court.

    The general consensus is that we have a problem controlling mental illness, and urban poverty, and not a problem with firearms.

    So as far as I understand, the matter is settled for at least the next generation.

  • The Demographics of Gun Ownership

    A CORRELATIVE ANSWER, THEN THE CAUSAL ANSWER

    The Correlative Answer: Part 1: Social Structure
    Northern Europeans above the Hanjal Line (The North Sea Peoples who successfully out-bred) sometimes referred to as the Protestant Peoples) retain an ancient set of traditions requiring all men to obtain legitimacy and honor (equal status) through participation in the militia, and the purpose of the militia is to deny all men power over all other men. This is preserved most strongly in the anglos dutch and less so in the germans, who were anglicized.

    The Causal Answer: Part 2 Tradition
    There are a small number of underlying heroic traditions that carry the western Aristocratic (meritocratic) Egalitarian (enfranchisement to all who fight) tradition – and that tradition is the cause of the rapid rate of western development compared to all other civilizations, both in the ancient, and modern eras. These are:
    1) Heroism (purchase of enfranchisement and status through sacrifice)
    2) All property is private (all property is earned)
    3) Every man is his own legislator over his domain.
    4) The common law and independent judiciary permit the resolution of differences between equals without appeal to authority.
    5) The rule of law, the common law (organic law, natural law) applies to all men equally. 
    6) Hierarchy is necessary for decision making in war, the resolution of conflicts, and for the suppression of free riding.

    The value in this structure is that the common law can evolve with the first judicial ruling, and therefore both transaction cost and risk are reduced, and the chance of free riding, parasitism, fraud and predation are eliminated before they can be institutionalized. The market for law suppresses parasitism as fast as innovations in parasitism are created. In turn, innovation in products, services and ideas can progress with the least resistance from predators. Costs: The consequence for the underclasses is that while they benefit from the rapid innovation, they are more aware of the difference between those who are less productive and those who are are more so.

    The Causal Answer: Part 3 : Incentives
    As population destiny increases, all effects increase by approximately 20% for every doubling of the population. 
    The incentives for people in rural areas where all men bear a high cost of policing the commons, is more restrictive than the incentives for people in urban areas where few bear the cost of policing the commons.

    In general, people in areas of dense population discount the cost of policing commons and norms because opportunity, transaction and policing costs are lower.

    The Causal Answer Part 4: Diversity.
    Diversity decreases trust, increases political divisiveness and decreases economic velocity. Urban areas can afford immigrating diversity. Rural areas cannot.

    It’s all rational really.

    WHAT IS HAPPENING
    The effort to expand ownership has been successful and once people have limited skill with, and ownership of guns, it tends to transfer like all traditions between families.

    The greater the effort to suppress gun ownership the greater the passion with which gun owners preserve the tradition.

    We have roughly tripled gun sales under this administration. Demographically the argument is over and the pro gun movement has won. (surprisingly)

    The supreme court has learned a tragic lesson from Roe v Wade: that the court should not solve social matters until they are first resolved by the states. That decision has nearly destroyed the court. “The Democratic Process Must Do Its Work” is the phrase we hear from the court.

    The general consensus is that we have a problem controlling mental illness, and urban poverty, and not a problem with firearms.

    So as far as I understand, the matter is settled for at least the next generation.

  • The Operational Revolution

    (important piece)

    [O]ne can describe events subjectively (how we feel about them); 
    one can describe them objectively (how we observe others), and;
    one can describe them operationally (by the actions taken).

    One of the most useful methods of overloading, framing, and loading is to describe a process subjectively. Hence why physical scientists write operationally, why mathematics requires the test of intuitionism, and why psychology requires the test of Operationism; and why in economics (cooperation), we write in human actions.

    The chief innovation of the left was to legitimize the pseudoscience of psychology for the purpose of loading, framing, and overloading. Postmodernism and propaganda are the ultimate achievement of the technology of ‘lying’.

    – If we see myth as an attempt to convey truths. We can see monotheism as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – if we see reason as an attempt to convey truths. We can see philosophy as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see empiricism as an attempt to convey truths, we can see rational philosophy as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the darwinian scientific revolution as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the psueudoscientific revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing, and overloading.

    – If we see the logical revolution (analytic philosophY) as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the postmodern revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the (Failed) operational revolution:
    – intuitionism in mathematics 
    – operationalism in physics
    – strict construction in law.
    – operationism in psychology.
    – praxeology in economics.
    – e-prime in language
    – performative truth in philosophy
    we can also see the the development of the academy since its seizure by the left, public intellectuals prior to the conservative 1980 movement, the media prior to the fox news and drudgereport movement, as a means of preventing the completion of the operational revolution.

    We are defending truth but liars compete with us. They compete with us because we tolerate their competition. Lying and parasitism and immorality in all its forms are just thefts from the commons.

    PROPERTARIANISM
    I can fix all of this even if I cannot alone, distribute the technology for defeating liars. The only means of defeat is the common law, the informational commons, universal standing, and the mandate for warranty of all public speech.

    They will simply invent a new method of lying. However, we will have the tools to constrain them for centuries I suspect.

    Curt Doolittle 
    The Propertarian Institute 
    Kiev, Ukraine