Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • I invest in my staff – a lot. When it doesn’t pay off I move on. When it does pa

    I invest in my staff – a lot. When it doesn’t pay off I move on. When it does pay off I’m always absolutely thrilled. The best way to invest in your staff is to negotiate decisions with them, until their decisions are as good or better than yours. You must never lose control in the sense that decisions are ‘deals’ between you and your staff. The deals must persist. But at some point they begin to understand the overall deal structure (they have adopted your goals) and you are really able to rely on them for stopping you from making mistakes rather than you stopping them from making mistakes.

    So, the best approach is to constantly consider how to spend your time. It is much more time consuming to negotiate (train) your staff so that they make good decisions, but it is a much larger long term payoff to try to train everyone to make good decisions. When they do, they have sovereignty, and are in control of their lives and we all desire that. They feel respected, and are respected, because they participate. I dont do this for purely warm and fuzzy reasons – even though the sociology of the work place is something very important to me. I do it because I am, at all times, trying to invest now, so that I can tackle other problems later without the fear of absorbing risk by doing so.

    My staff has hit a sort of critical mass since the spring, but particularly since we sent them to work together in a villa for the spring and summer. When you are that close to people, all sorts of external influence and posturing eventually disappears from the daily work and a level of trust develops that is something beautiful to behold.

    Managers can really be separated into those who do such things and those who either don’t or can’t, because they aren’t craftsmen. This is one of the things I’ve learned from the ‘good to great’ research: that you really must build people from within, and from craftsmen, mature them into managers.

    Otherwise nobody respects those managers, and they are right not to. They’re just bureaucrats. And no trust can develop in that environment. And thats why it doesn’t.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-28 05:42:00 UTC

  • WE NEED ONE HUNDRED My job, I think, is to solve the problem of western ethics a

    WE NEED ONE HUNDRED

    My job, I think, is to solve the problem of western ethics as an evolutionary strategy, formally, and if possible reduce it to aphorisms. I’ve had very good advice to leave dumbing it down so to speak, to others.

    But I always keep both Einstein and Darwin in mind: for all the people who talk of Einstein, very few understand the central idea in context of the history of ‘thinking’ rather than the history of science. And Darwin to this day is constantly misunderstood even by people who claim to. Relativity(invariance) shouldn’t have been an intellectual problem, and directionlessness (outside of complexity) shouldn’t be either. Science as a discipline is not even understood by philosophers of science.

    As far as I can tell one or two humans define something useful, some small fraction of a percent of people understand it, and talk about it. Some slightly larger fraction of people teach and employ the application of it. And everyone else treats it as a given because someone can demonstrate the application in some way or another.

    When you talk about ethics, and the institutions that enforce ethical action, and the philosophy that defends those propositions, all that matters are the institutions, the few guardians of them, and everyone else runs on Epstein’s ‘Simple Rules’: aphorisms in my case. They have to. They don’t have any other choice. Understanding at any depth is not only impossible for most but unnecessary. Imitation provides what understanding fails to.

    So when I say ‘understanding is overrated’ that’s what I mean. Knowledge of construction is necessary for truth statements, but knowledge of use (application), and the recognition that the conceptual tools work for purposes intended, is all that is POSSIBLE, for all but a few members of a society. I dont confuse understanding with utility, acceptance, or at least non-rejection.

    I just need 100 people (aspie-leaning guys preferably) who can:

    (a) to argue aristocratic egalitarianism as the only possible source of liberty, and the necessity and utility of violence for the construction of good.

    (b) argue in the propertarian method: using economic language to reduce all of ethics to the grammar of voluntary exchanges.

    (c) argue propertarian ethics: the spectrum of free riding, imposed cost and involuntary transfer.

    (d) argue the structures of the family, production, and property rights in the development of trust and reduction of transaction costs, in creating the demand for, or lack of demand for the state.

    (e) at least hobble their way through testimonial truth, operationalism. empiricism, and instrumentalism. The deeper arguments here are fairly difficult I think.

    There are plenty of sub-arguments, but if people can master the (bullshit) of rothbardian drivel, or argue with the (nonsense) of conservative romanticism, or spew the various forms of (lying, deceitful) postmodernism, socialism, and marxism, then arguing the propertarianism instead of errors, fallacies and lies ought to be fairly easy.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-27 04:24:00 UTC

  • Consequences: The Unloaded Language of Autistics

    [I]t is interesting, as an autistic, who thinks in almost entirely spatial terms, and who, for many, many years, as struggled to find a language for communicating those ideas in as unloaded form as I visualize them (and found it), to watch one’s own skill improve with constant practice, to the point where one sees all humans making similar mistakes using loaded language of convention that they do not understand except as loose associations. Whereas as an autistic a loose association is extremely uncomfortable, if not disturbing – something to be avoided at all costs. We lacked (prior to the work I’m doing) a language for communicating ‘loaded’ social concepts in unloaded form, and had to rely on the closest analogies available (physics and science) as proxies. But those analogies are only that – not descriptions, but analogies, and human behavior is not, like the physical universe, insulated from heuristic and constant changes in relations, methods, and properties.

    I have always been able to identify autistic speech, but it wasn’t until recently that I understood that we all do exactly the same thing – sense a reality that we have no words for, and cannot quite complete, and frustratingly use analogies unsuited to the application to express those ideas. These analogies are useful because they lack the loading that rather ‘poetic’ human discourse develops with use, like the marks in an old an still functioning machine part – still useful for the original purpose but no longer suitable for the fine work it was originally designed to produce.

    Normals do not shy from loaded speech – they revel in it. They use it to attempt to persuade or lie to one another that the world is, or should be one way or another. Truth is undesirable unless it advances that world view. And our world views are but representations that suit our reproductive strategies. Truth is for aristocracy.

    Is propertarianism but the logical consequence of attempting to solve autistic speech in the social sciences? Its Propertarianism – the formal logic of cooperation – merely the natural result of an autistic mind’s frustration at the inability to express ideas in unladen form? Am I just a genetic machine, probabilistically, if not deterministically, producing an available output given that the patterns developed in multiple fields of inquiry made such a leap possible given human ability to form parallels between patterns of limited difference?

    I don’t really like to think about life in those terms, because it’s dehumanizing. But I suspect that is closer to the truth than not.

    I wonder if propertarianism can help all autistics, as it can help normals. But I suspect that the truth it provides us with is further alienating.

    He who breeds wins, and the locusts breed better than the lions.

  • Consequences: The Unloaded Language of Autistics

    [I]t is interesting, as an autistic, who thinks in almost entirely spatial terms, and who, for many, many years, as struggled to find a language for communicating those ideas in as unloaded form as I visualize them (and found it), to watch one’s own skill improve with constant practice, to the point where one sees all humans making similar mistakes using loaded language of convention that they do not understand except as loose associations. Whereas as an autistic a loose association is extremely uncomfortable, if not disturbing – something to be avoided at all costs. We lacked (prior to the work I’m doing) a language for communicating ‘loaded’ social concepts in unloaded form, and had to rely on the closest analogies available (physics and science) as proxies. But those analogies are only that – not descriptions, but analogies, and human behavior is not, like the physical universe, insulated from heuristic and constant changes in relations, methods, and properties.

    I have always been able to identify autistic speech, but it wasn’t until recently that I understood that we all do exactly the same thing – sense a reality that we have no words for, and cannot quite complete, and frustratingly use analogies unsuited to the application to express those ideas. These analogies are useful because they lack the loading that rather ‘poetic’ human discourse develops with use, like the marks in an old an still functioning machine part – still useful for the original purpose but no longer suitable for the fine work it was originally designed to produce.

    Normals do not shy from loaded speech – they revel in it. They use it to attempt to persuade or lie to one another that the world is, or should be one way or another. Truth is undesirable unless it advances that world view. And our world views are but representations that suit our reproductive strategies. Truth is for aristocracy.

    Is propertarianism but the logical consequence of attempting to solve autistic speech in the social sciences? Its Propertarianism – the formal logic of cooperation – merely the natural result of an autistic mind’s frustration at the inability to express ideas in unladen form? Am I just a genetic machine, probabilistically, if not deterministically, producing an available output given that the patterns developed in multiple fields of inquiry made such a leap possible given human ability to form parallels between patterns of limited difference?

    I don’t really like to think about life in those terms, because it’s dehumanizing. But I suspect that is closer to the truth than not.

    I wonder if propertarianism can help all autistics, as it can help normals. But I suspect that the truth it provides us with is further alienating.

    He who breeds wins, and the locusts breed better than the lions.

  • No. More. Guilt.

    [I] wish I could bottle the experience of the transformation of life in the early 80’s after the tragedy of the 60-77 period. Star wars started the new positive mythos. Reagan restored confidence, discourse and hope. Gibson and Scott gave us visions of a technological rather than warfare future. Technology promised economic opportunity. Studios produced moral movies with white characters, a hint of pagan magic and christian justice, after a decade of degeneracy.

    That brilliance lasted through the 2001 collapse, and the 2002-2008 period that followed was but a temporary interwar peace funded by transfer of excesses into the housing market – America’s most important and nearly exclusive industry.

    I knew the end was nigh because our advantages were consumed.

    We have made moral and yet self destructive and world harming policies since the first world war.

    We are not the worlds parent. We cannot defend Brittania – something she herself would not do. We cannot defend europa. Had the world degenerated into the poverty of communism and had we crushed the communists and socialists at home with the ruthless violence they deserved, then we would still be the wealthiest people on earth, and the rest still wallowing in socialist poverty.

    But we killed europa to constrian germany against the moral corruption of england, and we sacrificed ourselves to constrain communism.

    All so that we would not feel guilty crushing local socialists, most of whom we had only recently allowed to immigrate.

    No. More. Guilt. It drives us to actions we are indeed guilty for.

  • No. More. Guilt.

    [I] wish I could bottle the experience of the transformation of life in the early 80’s after the tragedy of the 60-77 period. Star wars started the new positive mythos. Reagan restored confidence, discourse and hope. Gibson and Scott gave us visions of a technological rather than warfare future. Technology promised economic opportunity. Studios produced moral movies with white characters, a hint of pagan magic and christian justice, after a decade of degeneracy.

    That brilliance lasted through the 2001 collapse, and the 2002-2008 period that followed was but a temporary interwar peace funded by transfer of excesses into the housing market – America’s most important and nearly exclusive industry.

    I knew the end was nigh because our advantages were consumed.

    We have made moral and yet self destructive and world harming policies since the first world war.

    We are not the worlds parent. We cannot defend Brittania – something she herself would not do. We cannot defend europa. Had the world degenerated into the poverty of communism and had we crushed the communists and socialists at home with the ruthless violence they deserved, then we would still be the wealthiest people on earth, and the rest still wallowing in socialist poverty.

    But we killed europa to constrian germany against the moral corruption of england, and we sacrificed ourselves to constrain communism.

    All so that we would not feel guilty crushing local socialists, most of whom we had only recently allowed to immigrate.

    No. More. Guilt. It drives us to actions we are indeed guilty for.

  • For Aspies: Understanding Normals

    FOR ASPIES: UNDERSTANDING NORMALS
    (Normals talk about meaningless nonsense all the time. we can learn to talk about meaningless nonsense too. it’s kind of hard at first to imagine meaningless nonsense, or even why you’d care about it. but it’s a product that the market wants, and if you want to obtain attention in the market, you have to use the currency of choice, and the currency of attention is meaningless nonsense: signals that do not require much of the recipient. once you try to talk about nonsense enough, it’s really just returning served pingpong ball with a little spin, not adding much to it at all. You sort of pick five topics that normals know something about, and keep informed about those in some niche, so you can always add niche info to a conversation. Most aspies specialize. But specializing in nonsense is unprofitable. So it is good to spread your specialization to something popular like fashion, music, politics, news, and spend the rest of your time on your specialization. This will let you talk to normals about meaningless stuff and enjoy it, as long as you simply understand that the entire purpose is NOT to share meaning, but pleasant images, and positive associations. we really like to talk about things that require thinking. normals have to work at thinking. we just think at the same volume that they feel. so they want to free associate with feelings, not with facts. when we free associate with facts, we look for contradictions. when they free associate with experiences they look for confirmations. when we look for dominance in our facts, they look for submissions in their experiences, so that they signal ‘I’m safe’ to one another. We find safety in knowledge and understanding, they find safety in shared experiences. They find pleasure in experiential novelty, and we find pleasure in informational novelty. Conversely, they find discomfort in the unknown information, and we in the unknown experience. It is far easier for us to work at contributing to the experiential association of normals, than it is for normals to work at contributing to the informational association of autistics. don’t be hard on normals for being dim. but don’t be easy on yourself for being dim either. Imagine that each of us sees a slightly different section of the spectrum of radiation, and that normals see most of the visual spectrum, and some of them are a little color blind. We on the other hand see in the equivalent of infrared. It is a much simpler view of the universe with clearer lines of delineation between entities that are meaningful (heat) and hose that are not (cold). But that is our only difference. Our world must be constructed of perceptions and analogies to perception. But with instrumentation and practice we can observe each other’s worlds. It just has to be cost effective. It isn’t really cost effective for them to perceive our world. But it is usually very cost effective for us to learn to perceive their world. It was very hard for me, and I am very bright and I worked very hard, but it is possible.

  • For Aspies: Understanding Normals

    FOR ASPIES: UNDERSTANDING NORMALS
    (Normals talk about meaningless nonsense all the time. we can learn to talk about meaningless nonsense too. it’s kind of hard at first to imagine meaningless nonsense, or even why you’d care about it. but it’s a product that the market wants, and if you want to obtain attention in the market, you have to use the currency of choice, and the currency of attention is meaningless nonsense: signals that do not require much of the recipient. once you try to talk about nonsense enough, it’s really just returning served pingpong ball with a little spin, not adding much to it at all. You sort of pick five topics that normals know something about, and keep informed about those in some niche, so you can always add niche info to a conversation. Most aspies specialize. But specializing in nonsense is unprofitable. So it is good to spread your specialization to something popular like fashion, music, politics, news, and spend the rest of your time on your specialization. This will let you talk to normals about meaningless stuff and enjoy it, as long as you simply understand that the entire purpose is NOT to share meaning, but pleasant images, and positive associations. we really like to talk about things that require thinking. normals have to work at thinking. we just think at the same volume that they feel. so they want to free associate with feelings, not with facts. when we free associate with facts, we look for contradictions. when they free associate with experiences they look for confirmations. when we look for dominance in our facts, they look for submissions in their experiences, so that they signal ‘I’m safe’ to one another. We find safety in knowledge and understanding, they find safety in shared experiences. They find pleasure in experiential novelty, and we find pleasure in informational novelty. Conversely, they find discomfort in the unknown information, and we in the unknown experience. It is far easier for us to work at contributing to the experiential association of normals, than it is for normals to work at contributing to the informational association of autistics. don’t be hard on normals for being dim. but don’t be easy on yourself for being dim either. Imagine that each of us sees a slightly different section of the spectrum of radiation, and that normals see most of the visual spectrum, and some of them are a little color blind. We on the other hand see in the equivalent of infrared. It is a much simpler view of the universe with clearer lines of delineation between entities that are meaningful (heat) and hose that are not (cold). But that is our only difference. Our world must be constructed of perceptions and analogies to perception. But with instrumentation and practice we can observe each other’s worlds. It just has to be cost effective. It isn’t really cost effective for them to perceive our world. But it is usually very cost effective for us to learn to perceive their world. It was very hard for me, and I am very bright and I worked very hard, but it is possible.

  • Weaponizing Reproduction

    WEAPONIZING REPRODUCTION [Y]ou know, I had bought into the ‘equality’ thing pretty deeply. But yet again, I”m overturning my own biases. While patriarchy made possible by property helped to constrain female reproduction rates, and female reproductive parasitism, one of the northern european innovations was to further improve on the suppression of feminine reproductive parasitism, by delaying childbirth as well. Both patriarchy, the absolute nuclear family and manorialism further suppressed female reproductive parasitism. The state by contrast, within just one generation of enfranchisement of women, was used by women to reverse thousands of years of innovations in the institutions of property which controlled female reproduction – particularly in the lower classes. The state has not only been the source of predation but under universalism the sponsor of both dysgenia and suicide. The most paternal cultures are the most successful. The most aggressive males produce the most aggressive paternalism. The most aggressive paternalism produces the most aggressive family structure. We weaponized norms and technology, while other groups of people weaponized reproduction, and yet others weaponized deception. Why then should we abandon truth and violence so that we can be conquered by reproduction and deception? (This was a conclusion I certainly didn’t expect to come to. Especially as a maker of alpha widows. The family is more important than my own demonstrated preferences illustrate.)

  • Weaponizing Reproduction

    WEAPONIZING REPRODUCTION [Y]ou know, I had bought into the ‘equality’ thing pretty deeply. But yet again, I”m overturning my own biases. While patriarchy made possible by property helped to constrain female reproduction rates, and female reproductive parasitism, one of the northern european innovations was to further improve on the suppression of feminine reproductive parasitism, by delaying childbirth as well. Both patriarchy, the absolute nuclear family and manorialism further suppressed female reproductive parasitism. The state by contrast, within just one generation of enfranchisement of women, was used by women to reverse thousands of years of innovations in the institutions of property which controlled female reproduction – particularly in the lower classes. The state has not only been the source of predation but under universalism the sponsor of both dysgenia and suicide. The most paternal cultures are the most successful. The most aggressive males produce the most aggressive paternalism. The most aggressive paternalism produces the most aggressive family structure. We weaponized norms and technology, while other groups of people weaponized reproduction, and yet others weaponized deception. Why then should we abandon truth and violence so that we can be conquered by reproduction and deception? (This was a conclusion I certainly didn’t expect to come to. Especially as a maker of alpha widows. The family is more important than my own demonstrated preferences illustrate.)