Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Your confusion is common. Inference and induction vs deduction. Validity vs Trut

    Your confusion is common. Inference and induction vs deduction. Validity vs Truth. Criticism vs Justification.

    We can deduce logically within any tautology (in any axiomatic system), because the information is complete.

    We can identify contradictions logically (in both axiomatic and rational systems), where information is sufficient to do so.

    We cannot *infer* logically a truth proposition, we can only *theorize* logically. Because information is incomplete, and therefore insufficient for deduction.

    That is the limit of what logic can do for us: assist us in the test of internal consistency and non-contradiction (an act of criticism or falsification), and assist us in the formation of theories.

    In addition, once we construct a theory, we can test a theory:

    – We can test for external correspondence (empiricism)

    – We can attempt to falsify by external correspondence. (parsimony)

    – We can test for existential possibility. (Operational Definitions, Operationalism, Operationism, Intuitionism) and that we are not substituting imaginary information.

    – We can test for morality (the absence of involuntary transfer, Propertarianism)

    And even then, when we have done our due diligence in internal consistency, external correspondence, attempts at falsification (parsimony), existential possibility free of imaginary substitution,

    There are no non-tautological, non-trivial, and therefore certain premises. As such, the limit of logic (and why people like me criticize formal logic when used for other than its narrow utility) is in either falsification of statements, or the construction of theories that can be further tested. But you cannot determine truth propositions of non-tautological non-trivial propositions by logical means.

    The function of logic is criticism, not truth. Once exhaustively criticized, you can say an argument or proposition is valid in the sense that it is well constructed. But this says nothing about the truth of the argument or proposition. It says only that it is well constructed.

    A theory that survives all criticism has been validated (“strong”), not true. It is the tests themselves that are sufficiently critical to validate the theory. As such, tests are valid, and theories have been validated. Whether we want, in turn, to say that a theory is ‘valid’ is a matter of whether we want to suggest that the theory itself (an instance of an inference), is a criteria for action (worthy of risking costs).

    I prefer to refer to “valid tests”, and to “warrantied” or “truthful” theories in order to avoid any taint of justificationism.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-13 22:49:00 UTC

  • CONFUCIUS AND HIS ANALECTS – NO TRUTH TO BE FOUND Translated into western langua

    CONFUCIUS AND HIS ANALECTS – NO TRUTH TO BE FOUND

    Translated into western language, and read by western minds, the Analects of Confucius sound similar to the writings Plato attributed to Socrates.

    But this is an illusion. A less than careful reading reveals that the origin of the sacred texts is indeed speaking of virtue, of fidelity, but not truth.

    But… what good is the true, if not good for the commons?

    Truth breaks the bias of familialism and renders all men kin.

    The truth evolved in the west because it is more valuable than conformity.

    This is why in both eras where the martial middle-class was sufficiently able to seize power, that innovation could continue.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 06:42:00 UTC

  • IMMORTALITY AND IDENTITY Was DaVinci an artist or an engineer? Was Spinoza a Phi

    IMMORTALITY AND IDENTITY

    Was DaVinci an artist or an engineer? Was Spinoza a Philosopher or a Lens Grinder? Was Jefferson a philosopher or a lawyer? What about Thomas Paine?

    I don’t mind being positioned as a technology entrepreneur. Or as an analyst of business processes. Or as a software architect – which is what I often did to make money – and I am good at it, in no small part because it is marginally indifferent from the kind of philosophy that I practice. I am not comfortable with the label programmer. My first technical job was as a CTO, and architect of software – very complicated software. I have never really been a programmer in the typical sense of the term – I’m just not that good at it. It requires short term memory and textual precision that is not in my nature – my memory is biased in the long term and synthetic instead. And worse, I find programming nearly as addictive an obsession for my autism as opiates would be for my emotions. It consumes my life.

    I have been practicing what we call philosophy since the age of twelve, and written philosophy casually since college and seriously since 2009. And it took the sum total of my life until that point to solve a problem in philosophy worth talking about. My vocation pays for my habits. It has made me wealthy. My vocation supplies emotional gratification from the act of working on a team with others. But in practical terms, since around the age of twelve, vocation has been a means to an end. My avocation is quite different from my vocation. I will not be remembered for the ten companies I have started. There is no immortality there to be had. I will be remembered, if at all, for unifying philosophy (the discipline of speaking truthfully), and Science (the procedural means of warrantying that we speak truthfully) and all the disciplines identity, logic, mathematics, physics, economics, law, and politics into a single language and forever dispelling religio-‘right’ argument, ratio-moral argument, and psychological argument, to the dustbin of intellectual history history.

    What I prefer to be known for is something else, yet to come. If I live long enough. We are remembered for our greatest achievement. If we are remembered at all.

    Immortality exists. Heaven exists. They are constructed in the memories of living man, transferred between generations, and hosted there as surely as any digitalized representation of our minds, and with far greater influence than we as individuals could have by direct action.

    It is the memory of the demonstration of our will that grants us a seat among the heroes. And our heroes are our only true gods – they drive our minds, and as such drive our hands.

    Engage in production. Speak the truth. Punish the wicked. Exterminate the evil. Seek to be remembered. By leaving this world a greater place than when you entered it.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 06:32:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE IS EVIDENCE OF THE FOLLY OF HOPPE’S DEFINITION OF PROPERTY We have an ol

    UKRAINE IS EVIDENCE OF THE FOLLY OF HOPPE’S DEFINITION OF PROPERTY

    We have an oligarchical government in Ukraine. That government is populated by the people who own the property – not judges resolving conflicts. What has happened is that they either rent seek, privatize commons, or socialize losses wherever possible.

    As far as I can see, Rothbardian and Hoppeian arguments lead to Ukrainian despotism. Without prohibition on involuntary transfer of property-en-toto by full informed voluntary exchange, and the requirement for productivity, the law cannot be used to construct a condition of liberty.

    We have Hoppeian/Rothbardian law here. The courts resolve conflicts in physical property only.

    Hence, systemic, intergenerational parasitism.

    Hoppe may be right that only property matters in so far as he means it. However, Hoppe is wrong that the scope of property can be limited to the intersubjectively verifiable.

    Either your law is predicated upon property en toto, or you gave up your wealth of violence in exchange for being subject to indirect and dishonest predation.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 03:18:00 UTC

  • THE NECESSITY OF PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION (wort

    THE NECESSITY OF PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION

    (worth repeating) (from elsewhere) (hayek)

    While, 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 than Hayek (and one that eliminates equality, and monopoly decision making). And so 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. Likewise, hygiene, dress, 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.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 16:10:00 UTC

  • PROPERTARIANISM AND SATISFACTION IN MORAL ARGUMENT It is appealing to seek feeli

    PROPERTARIANISM AND SATISFACTION IN MORAL ARGUMENT

    It is appealing to seek feelings of satisfaction by criticizing the morality of one’s opponents; or the rejection of others’ criticism of one’s opinions on moral grounds.

    In propertarianism, we avoid almost all the various emotional distraction, loading, framing, overloading and consequential entanglements by identifying the various forms of property that are affected the described actions, and determine whether voluntary or involuntary transfer is being advocated (or caused), and whether such transfers are truthfully or untruthfully articulated. In this way we make clear arguments in economic terms that are free of loading and framing. But we do not escape the moral conclusion. Because, in the end, if you are a thief or a liar, we call you a thief and a liar. But we do it on logical, internally consistent, and unavoidable grounds.

    Religious argument in the form of scriptural decree; it’s reformation into Moral argument as rationalism; and its reformation into pseudoscientific argument as psychologizing; are all forms of deception perpetrated through the use of analogy, loading, framing, overloading, and suggestion, in an attempt to abuse our cognitive and moral biases, by largely guilting and shaming us into justifying one form of parasitism or another: involuntary transfer.

    Propertarianism replaces pseudoscientific psychologizing, moral rationalism, and religious scripturalism, with a single universal test, and a single universal operation. That single test being that the only moral action is the fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer of property-en-toto, and the single operation of voluntary exchange.

    Propertarianism is a language for the logical analysis of the content of moral statements. In propertarianism all moral statements are commensurable. And and all moral questions are decidable.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 16:09:00 UTC

  • MORAL ARGUMENT AND RUSSIA’S AGGRESSION It was entirely possible, and often recom

    MORAL ARGUMENT AND RUSSIA’S AGGRESSION

    It was entirely possible, and often recommended, that Russia purchase Crimea and Donbas from Ukraine, by means of discounted oil price for 99 years. This would have been mutually beneficial, since the Donbas was the source of most ukrainian corruption, gangsters, and russophilia. And was the responsible for the political divisiveness that prevented reform.

    The Russians systematically conquered eastern Ukraine over the past two centuries, and created a false mythology to justify the muscovite conquest of european lands. Ukrainians had frequent debates about splitting the country. And this was the correct, non-aggressive means of solving the problem for all sides. But solving the problem was not the Russian intentino. The Russian intention is to preserve their power by preventing the spread of capitalism into Russia by the same form of uprisings that have restored Poland and Ukraine to european civilization after Muscovite (mongolian) conquest.

    I have only one moral principle I must follow: liberty for all who will exchange it with me. But in exchange for liberty I require not only insurance of physical property, but truth telling: the total prohibition of parasitism. Because without the total prohibition of parasitism, it is irrational for me to forgo the utility of violence to obtain what I desire.

    This demand for the total suppression of parasitism what separates european aristocratic liberty, from parasitic libertine pretenses of liberty.

    Speak the truth, by warrantying your speech, or admit that you do not warranty your speech to be truthful, and as such engage in parasitism:

    1 – Internally consistent (logical)

    2 – Externally correspondent. (empirical)

    3 – Operationally Defined (praxeological)

    4 – Free of parasitism, consisting only of voluntary transfers. (moral)

    5 – Parsimonious (falsified)

    We must end parasitic deceits in the pursuit of liberty. Rothbardian ethics are another pseudoscientific, elaborate, cosmopolitan deceit, just as Freudian Psychologizing, and Marxist History.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 06:29:00 UTC

  • THE NEXT EVOLUTIONARY STEP IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM I think the debate in classic

    THE NEXT EVOLUTIONARY STEP IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM

    I think the debate in classical liberalism is unfortunately (as Hayek tried to inform us) too much on the structure of government (the market for the production of commons), and too little on the rule of law (the evolution of means of suppression of parasitism) and distracted by the artificial (false) demarcation in property rights, and totally absent of the debate on the problem of suppressing immorality (the total suppression of involuntary transfer, and the forcible removal of all alternatives to market participation).

    Humans are want to reduce debates to single issues. Unfortunately, most issues are determined by equilibria not states. In the case of politics, the rule of law as the means of suppressing immorality and forcing people into productive activity is one topic. And the construction of commons that cannot be produced by the incentives of the market is something else.

    As far as I know the solution to the rule of law is known. Two problems remain: (a) the problem with the production of commons – primarily because of the problem of free riding among tax payers; and because of the problem of bureaucratic incentives among administrators. And (b) because of the problem of the declining presence of means of participating in the market (employment) – a problem which we anticipate increasing.

    The problem (b) is solvable by shareholdership and dividends, and loss of shareholdership in the event that one violates the shareholder agreement.

    The problem (a) is solvable by eliminating monopoly decision making under majority rule, and instead, providing the individual commitment of funds. In other words, independent of whether we rely on (i)elected representatives, (ii)representatives chosen by lot (juries), or (iii)direct participation, if the total revenues were divided by the number of participants in i,ii,or iii, then we voted our dollars, we could pursue policies (commons) that interested us, and not pursue commons that did not. And competition would provide answers that reason cannot. There is no need for majority rule.

    However, that is a prescription for the production of material commons, not of normative commons. And it is necessary to redistribute (de-centralize) the production of normative commons (rules of public behavior). Again, competition will drive adoption. And there is no value in normative tyranny.

    This model allows us to federate insurance (universal insurance), cooperate in the production of material and economic commons, and to choose to compete in the production of normative commons.

    As such the classical liberal method expanded such that the government remains a market for the production of cooperation on commons and mutual insurance, rather than a means of the projection of monopoly.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-08 03:08:00 UTC

  • EXPERIENCE WITH INTENTIONAL IMMORALITY IN BUSINESS (worth repeating) Before I ha

    EXPERIENCE WITH INTENTIONAL IMMORALITY IN BUSINESS

    (worth repeating)

    Before I had my personal moral reformation, and rejection of what I learned in university, I considered going into the private espionage business. (Such business does exist, and is totally above board when it is used to uncover illegal activity. You can hire security firms that have specialized groups that perform the work legally.)

    After working with the Koenigs, the Golubs and the Seminoffs (all descendants of Russian jews) and filing racketeering charges against the Koenigs, turning the Golobs in to the justice department for wire fraud, and turning Seminoff in for Tax Evasion and Fraud, it seemed like I was making a career out of stumbling into illegal financial activity, and I might as well take the moral high ground.

    Instead, I did the opposite, which was to search for only moral people to work with, and avoid the scumbags entirely. It was a good personal decision. But the awareness of how damned evil some people were never left me. And I always felt that my moral business partners were naive idiots that I had to make sure didn’t hurt themselves or me. (I failed by the way.)

    I used to tell these stories to everyone. I don’t anymore. I prefer to focus on the positives. But there is a whole world of shitty people out there using every financial and legal scam in the book to hook crook and steal from others. And you would be surprised that that list includes some of the most prestigious legal firms in america with whom I have sat on boards, and listened to explicit instructions on how to get away with theft.

    My ancestors were puritans and I suspect that it’s a genetic bias. But I have come to detest the institutionalization of immorality imposed on my people during the 20th century.

    And so I am fighting back at grand scale.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-08 02:23:00 UTC

  • RULE OF LAW AND THE FAILURE OF THE PRESIDENCY. All, This problem – of the Presid

    http://nomocracyinpolitics.com/2015/04/06/after-the-rule-of-law-by-john-samples/THE RULE OF LAW AND THE FAILURE OF THE PRESIDENCY.

    All,

    This problem – of the Presidency – is well studied in the literature. The general argument, and as far as I know, the general consensus, is that the presidency is a failed experiment. That had Washington accepted monarchy with veto power, and had we as a consequence adopted the British (English) system of prime minister, that we would find more consistent long term policy and less politicization of the bureaucracy.

    People overwhelmingly prefer monarchs – familial, tribal, cultural, and spiritual leaders and families that symbolize the populace. Curiously, countries with Monarchs outperform countries without. So the question of whether presidents abuse rule of law is a misplaced one: of course they have. The presidency was a mistake. Very few men in power respect rule of law. Their vanity, pride, idealism, legacies, entourage, pressures, dependents, and the people that put them into power guarantee it.

    RULE OF LAW

    As for rule of law, as far as I know, that lasted until Lincoln at best. And ended with FDR. It’s just taken this long to transform from a president who abused it but the public and academy wouldn’t tolerate (Nixon) to a president who can’t conceive of it (Obama), an academy the actively undermines it, and a public that is ignorant of and dismisses it.

    Either laws completely and totally limit our executives in all circumstances other than defensive warfare, or there is no rule of law. Administrative ‘law’ is an impossibility. We can issue administrative commands, and by deceit, claim that they hold the same properties as law. We can issue regulatory commands, and by deceit claim that they hold the same properties as law. But they always have been convenient deceits – to grant to arbitrary human wish that which is necessary law of cooperation.

    Law is discovered, and recorded by neutral jurists, no less scientifically than physical laws, biological processes, and mechanical operations: as we invent new means of involuntary transfer – from the most simplistic and obvious violence theft and fraud, to the most indirect and obscure socialization of losses, privatization of commons, rent seeking and free riding – we register this new means of involuntary transfer (just as we register patents) as new prohibitions on involuntary transfer: law.

    We can choose to construct contracts for the production of commons, using government, and we can resolve those contracts in courts, using laws. But beyond the voluntary production of commons, all else is usurpation and command.

    LIE BY ANALOGY

    One can lie easily using analogies. It is extremely difficult to lie using operational language. That is why science requires operational definitions. Whenever someone makes a statement about ‘law’ and rule of law, it is helpful to ascertain whether the person is engaged in deceit, by questioning whether he is talking about law, contractual provision, command, or permission.

    Humans evolved cooperation from non-cooperation because it was an unequalled multiplier in the production of calories, and concentration of calories in expensive offspring. But as soon as one develops cooperation one invites free riding (parasitism). The prevention of free riding is necessary for the preservation of cooperation – otherwise cooperation is irrational and counter-productive. Without the prevention of free riding, and without aggressive punishment of free riders – from the lazy family member to the aggressive alpha, to the predatory competitor – people cease to cooperate, and must cease to cooperate. And productivity declines accordingly. And trust declines accordingly. And economic velocity declines accordingly. And violence theft, fraud, free riding, and rent seeking and corruption and conspiracy – including political conspiracy at scale, and bureaucratic conspiracy of common malincentives expand to the point of equilibrium.

    We either possess rule of law: constraint, without exception, on discretion, or conversely, independence from discretion in matters of involuntary transfer – or we do not.

    THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE IS RULE OF LAW

    So on two questions, the presidency and rule of law, it is of little sense throwing money into a hole in the water, and of equally little sense debating the wishful virtues of men. Plato caused us enough harm doing so for one civilization to bear. We will not solve this problem or any other without restoring rule of law: there is no reason that the public is prohibited from universal standing for suing individuals in the government. The voting booth fails outside of the neighborhood of the voters.

    If we restore rule of law we can keep the president, even if the choice between president or prime minister is a matter of the quality of long term policy. But without rule of law, it matters little whether we have president or prime minister – because we merely obey commands.

    Without rule of law we are not provided with the means of conflict resolution for the purpose of developing cooperation by the organized and incremental prevention and prosecution of free riding. Instead, we are subjects, commanded, by an elaborate, obscurantist, operatic, ceremonial means of justifying those commands. And nothing else.

    And hence, there exists no incentive to cooperate. There is only incentive to obey commands offset by incentives to disobey commands. Liberty is the effect of rule of law. And rule of law cannot exist when courts cannot redress grievances.

    Sic Semper Tyrannis.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-07 13:35:00 UTC