Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT We learned art criticism in college. We lea

    A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

    We learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art.

    I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming.

    But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people.

    The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia.

    As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums.

    So what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.)

    However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies.

    However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies.

    Liberty in our lifetimes.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    Kiev Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-26 05:33:00 UTC

  • ASPIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE (riffing off the shooter) (Aspies are usually pretty

    ASPIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE

    (riffing off the shooter)

    (Aspies are usually pretty peaceful people. But while we can lack from a little to a lot of empathy, we have normal levels of desire for social integration. This is one of the reasons aspies are attracted to rothbardian libertarianism – it’s an anti-social philosophy in the sense that it consists of rules that do not require one to empathize in order to function. However, we do get the people who are extremely frustrated by constant social rejection, and who become angry and depressed because of it. As we see in the news today. Social anxiety drugs are pretty effective but it takes years to re-learn social skills. And most aspies are left to flounder on their own without help in learning those skills. Some of us are just annoyingly persistent and relentlessly pursue them. In my case, so that I could chase girls. 🙂 One of the problems the rest of the world does not see, is how the lack of family and culture in america is alienating, and more so than any other culture I have witnessed – except for niches in japan – americans are lonely people starved for attention. Which is why they idolize people who get a lot of it, even by crass means. So it’s a culture more likely to foster alienated people than cultures that both have normative rules that are highly enforced, and extended family and social networks that train people to cope. Very dysfunctional society really. )

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-25 13:31:00 UTC

  • Aristocractic Government : A Conference and a Journal

    A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT [W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art. I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming. But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people. The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia. As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums. [S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.) However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies. However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies. Liberty in our lifetimes. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute The Philosophy of Aristocracy Kiev Ukraine

  • Aristocractic Government : A Conference and a Journal

    A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT [W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art. I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming. But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people. The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia. As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums. [S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.) However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies. However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies. Liberty in our lifetimes. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute The Philosophy of Aristocracy Kiev Ukraine

  • ARISTOCRACY IS THE HEIR TO THE LIBERTARIAN MOVEMENT. CONTINENTAL AND COSMOPOLITA

    ARISTOCRACY IS THE HEIR TO THE LIBERTARIAN MOVEMENT. CONTINENTAL AND COSMOPOLITAN LIBERTARIANISM IS DEAD.

    (edited and reposted for archival purposes)

    The continental and cosmopolitan movements contributed to the theory of property rights and the construction of non-monopoly formal institutions. However, both the continental and more so the cosmopolitan movements, were dead ends, because they were reactionary movements in response to classical liberalism.

    I see 20th century libertarianism (I think accurately) as a moralistic and philosophical, pre-scientific, neither scientific nor institutional line of inquiry. Since we know now that liberty is only in the near term interests of a minority, and that preferences for liberty are genetic, arguments to persuasion of others are immaterial. Since we know that much of libertarianism is, like progressivism, just a means of obtaining self-induced status signals, and that libertarians are measurably blind to the importance of morals and norms in a polity dependent upon one another for information. And since we know that democracy and voluntary organization of political systems are impossible, and as such justification is neither necessary nor desirable. I tend to see libertarianism as a dead movement. The means of obtaining the power necessary to deprive others of power over us is not consensual, but coercive: requiring force, or at least the threat of it.

    That does not mean that the anarchic program was not a valuable research program. What we obtained from the anarchic program is:

    1) All that is required for cooperation is property rights (albeit the scope of those property rights is still open to dispute – since I think the evidence mandates suppression of at least unethical if not immoral actions, but likely both in order to eliminate demand for the state.)

    2) The common law is the only known means of replacing the need for authoritarian resolution of conflicts, and evolving along with the division of knowledge and labor.

    3) The state (or the government) functions primarily as an insurer of last resort, so we can replace it with competing insurers, and obtain the same services, albeit competitively, without the free riding and rent seeking of a monopoly bureaucracy.

    4) Should a government be necessary (or desirable) for the production of commons and defense of the common law, then a private government of long term self interest is superior to corporate government of short term self interest.

    5) That with the wealth that comes from the near total suppression of free riding, and the incentives to produce that accompany that suppression of free riding, ‘left’ luxuries may be possible, even if they are not preferable. But that such incentives present a moral hazard if not constrained to ingroup members (kin).

    I maintain, and I think the evidence is incontrovertible, that Aggression is a fallacy, and that the means of transgressing against property are immaterial. The question is the limit on property claims, not the means of transgressing against them. That limit is not determined by arbitrary preference, but by the need to suppress demand for the state as a means of suppressing immoral and unethical behavior, OR the means of suppressing the violence that results from immoral and unethical behavior. (States usually engage in the latter, which is where rothbard mistakenly obtained his ghetto ethics, by reverting to the ethics of the ghetto and the ghetto of crusoe’s island, where the host civilization, or the sea, constrain one’s actions.

    As such, I see the only debate, discussion, worth having, is a scientific, not moral or justifications one, in which scientists (not secular theologians) discuss the means by which power is obtained to deny power to authoritarians, and to discuss the outstanding question of the limits of property rights in homogenous vs heterogeneous polities. And the means of constructing heterogeneous polities if they are possible to construct at all.

    Secular theology has no more place in formal institutions than it’s predecessors. And that is what nearly all libertarians promulgate: secular theology.

    So, the line of inquiry I am interested in participating in (and financing) is the one that advances Aristocracy (formal institutions) within which religious and secular theologians can do as they wish. But where all attempts at coercive transfer of property independent of fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange independent of negative externality (free riding) is prohibited under threat of violence.

    The purpose of the church (whether secular or religious) is to create moral persuasion needed to construct voluntary preference for charity, and the status signals obtained by that voluntary charity. Because only voluntary charity is worthy of status. And free riders who resist such charity, worthy of loss of status, if not boycott and ostracization.

    Libertarianism as an expression of both the Cosmopolitan and Continental attempts to preserve local cultural means of competition, is a dead movement as we can see from its abandonment by intellectuals, media, press, and financiers. (Myself included). Natural aristocracy, and aristocratic egalitarianism are the only logical heirs to the social order that is dependent upon voluntary organization of production, voluntary cooperation, and inviolable property rights. If democracy is dead, so is continental and cosmopolitan libertarianism.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-24 04:10:00 UTC

  • OPERATIONALISM, TRUTH AND HONESTY (a little deep for FB, but worth reading) (sho

    OPERATIONALISM, TRUTH AND HONESTY

    (a little deep for FB, but worth reading) (should be getting easier to understand)

    I’m going to ‘correct’ this statement by Brouwer, and say that the (law of the excluded middle) LEM was abstracted from contexts of correspondent precision, to general statements, independent of context and therefore of arbitrary precision. (The same criticism applies to the AOC: axiom of choice.)

    —“Intuitionistic logic can be succinctly described as classical logic without the Aristotelian law of excluded middle (LEM): (A ∨ ¬A) or the classical law of double negation elimination (¬ ¬A → A), but with the law of contradiction (A → B) → ((A → ¬B) → ¬A) and ex falso quodlibet: (¬A → (A → B)). Brouwer [1908] observed that LEM was abstracted from finite situations, then extended without justification to statements about infinite collections.”— S.E.P.

    The fact that these philosophers and mathematicians failed to see the implication of their work on intuitionism and operationalism as one of arbitrary precision, is as humorous or ironic, as it is that advocates of praxeology (operationalism in economics) rely passionately on apriorism. In hindsight (since I only intuited this problem and did not immediately understand it) this is all absurdly obvious. But the work to remove ‘spiritual and platonistic’ language from our vocabulary and our thoughts is still in need of a great deal of work. As an Operationalist, when I hear people rely upon Continental and Cosmopolitan arguments, I hear exactly what an atheist hears when he listens to religious arguments: really weak and ill founded analogy and nothing more.

    The insight that we find from studying the loss of precision (context) in the construction of general rules in mathematics, and therefore the loss of LEM and AOC, can be applied to economics, where we lost constant relations. We can no longer predict constant relations out of a causally dense, kaleidic system, open to black swans. But that does not prevent us from using analysis of events to describe general cases, and from those general cases, attempt to state those cases in operational language. And once stated in operational language to determine whether or not they possess the status of laws (subject to manipulation, shocks and black swans, but as general rules, subject to the limits of non-contradiction).

    In my attempt to reform ethics and politics, I am fighting an extraordinarily difficult battle that essentially boils down to ‘your linguistic conveniences and contrivances, which provide such utility, and as such which you understand as knowledge of use, are, like religious analogies, producers of profound social and economic external consequences, because those analogies are as devoid of knowledge of construction as are religious arguments.”

    Math works. Religion ‘works’ too. That something ‘works’ does not mean you understand its construction, or the external consequences of your employment of analogy rather than description. That mathematics, other than the natural numbers, consists entirely of functions, not numbers, is a matter of convention, not reality.

    if you cannot state something in operational language you do not understand it. If you do not understand it you cannot make truth claims about it. Its impossible. Period. You can state an hypothesis. But you cannot claim it is true. And once aware of this fact, you cannot claim you are making an honest statement either.

    This is the insight that I want to bring to praxeology and economics. To restore ethics and morality to economics and politics by the requirement for operational language. To require fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange free of negative externality (free riding), rather than the construction of laws (commands), constructed of moralistic deceptions.

    Because cooperation is either mutually beneficial or it is parasitism, and that is a contradiction. Cooperation is either fully informed, warrantied, productive exchange free of negative externality (free riding) or it is by law of contradiction, not cooperation but parasitism, conquest, or destruction.

    And one need not abandon his wealth of violence, nor refrain from violence when he is the subject of non cooperation: parasitism, conquest, or destruction.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-24 03:16:00 UTC

  • OBJECTIVE MORALITY AND REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGY (good piece) Whenever any organism

    OBJECTIVE MORALITY AND REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGY

    (good piece)

    Whenever any organism that can cooperate, chooses to cooperate, it confronts the problem of free riding, which eliminates the value of cooperation.

    By suppressing free riding we force others to engage in production themselves. Many hands make lighter work, and the more of us are engaged in production the more productive we are. Moral prohibitions both prohibit free riding and as a consequence provide an incentive to produce.

    Property then is the necessary consequence of the prohibition on free riding. And given that cases of kin selection are not in fact cases of free riding (child rearing), constraints on property in-family, in-group, and out-group can be quite different. Property rights are those necessary within a given structure of production utilizing a given reproductive structure (family). Those property rights represent the necessary rules for the suppression of free riding within that order.

    Colloquial language encourages imprecise usage of precise terms. While the terms “crime, ethics and morals” each describe very different prohibitions, we conflate them frequently, which obscures their differences: Crimes describe physical transgressions. Ethics describe trust transgressions internal to an exchange. Morals describe trust transgressions into the commons. Unfortunately, while it is easy to determine whether crimes refer to cases of free riding , and largely easy to determine whether ethical prohibitions refer to cases of free riding, it is somewhat difficult to determine which moral rules refer to free riding on the commons, which are merely ritual (signal costs) and which are random error. It is difficult, but not impossible.

    For these reasons, we can determine whether or not a given criminal, ethical, or moral prohibition is a case of free riding, all objective morals are ascertainable. In any given structure of production and reproduction, we can determine whether any criminal, ethical, and moral prohibition is a matter of free riding or kin selection or familialism (insurance) within that structure of production.

    The difference is not subjective but instead a necessity of competition given available productive and reproductive structures. in other words, moral codes that suppress more free riding in broader division of knowledge and labor will allow the expression of talents held by members of the polity. Conversely, increases in free riding within the division of knowledge and labor compensate for weaknesses in the talents held by members of the polity.

    Rothbardianism fails because aggression is a means of violation not a definition of property independent if means of transgression. Furthermore NAP/IVP only limits crime, and not only does not limit, but licenses unethical and immoral actions.

    No group demonstrates this rothbardian low level of trust in-group. And those that demonstrate it out-group are the subject of persecution and genocide. Rightfully so since they are engaging in predation and parasitism, not cooperation.

    As such, morals are not subjective but objective. They are necessities of competition in a given structure of production, under a given family structure.

    In a homogenous polity of closely related outbred individuals with exceptional talents, very expansive property rights are useful for movement of the group against other groups. In a diverse polity of not-closely related inbred individuals, expansive property rights inhibit the parasitism of groups on other groups.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine

    “North Eurasian and Circumpolar hunter-gatherers (Hutterites and Amish, Puritans) will be more prone to altruistic punishment than those from Middle Old World culture area (Jews, Gypsies, Chinese)…. Puritan groups seem particularly prone to bouts of moralistic outrage directed at those of their own people seen as free riders and morally blameworthy.” -Kevin MacDonald

    –MORE–

    See: Family Types

    http://www.propertarianism.com/glossary/#kin

    Families as unity of cultural production

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/04/27/families-as-the-unit-of-cultural-production-in-a-civilization/

    *The Unique Culture of the North Sea Peoples

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/02/15/on-the-north-sea-peoples/

    The Culture That Suppresses All Discounts, All Free-Riding, All Involuntary Transfer, All Unethical And Immoral Action

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/04/27/7158/

    The Uniqueness of the North Sea Peoples

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/02/15/on-the-north-sea-peoples/

    The Ethics of the high trust northerner europeans

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/04/03/descriptive-high-trust-ethics-of-northern-europeans/

    Circumpolar Altruistic Punishment

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2013/11/26/but-is-it-genetic/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-24 01:23:00 UTC

  • WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED? (cross posted for archi

    WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED?

    (cross posted for archival purposes)

    Did you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking?

    The story didn’t change, you did.

    I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception.

    So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments.

    Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end.

    Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us.

    Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this.

    The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude.

    If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that.

    Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost.

    Human cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation.

    As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of

    I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation.

    So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure.

    I hope that adds some clarity to my position. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-22 01:51:00 UTC

  • PATRIOTISM Reverse Patriotism is no better an excuse for irrational and morally

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/inside-putins-campaign-of-social-media-trolling-and-faked-ukrainian-crimes/REVERSE PATRIOTISM

    Reverse Patriotism is no better an excuse for irrational and morally blind behavior, justification of immoral action, and immoral inaction, than is the absurd expansionary patriotism of the Neocons. Hating the state does not justify looking for excuses to hate the state, nor applying selection bias, and every other cognitive bias possible to justify your hatred. It does not mean justifying the lunatic fringe, nor abandoning reason and morality. You cannot both call the Neocons stupid and immoral and at the same time support Putin’s expansionism.

    The only moral violent political action is self determination in pursuit of freedom. Both of those properties must exist at the same time – self determination AND liberty. One cannot morally pursue the construction of corruption, even if it benefits yourself, by means of self determination. One can only morally pursue freedom and non-corruption via self determination.

    Facts are facts, Reverse Patriotism as Justification is not honest, moral, or rational. It is aiding and abetting the usurpation of liberty. Period. Without exception. WIthout justification.

    Ukrainians sought to shed russian oppression once again, and evicted one of the demonstrably, factually, most corrupt politicians in the world. Russia, in fear of contagion of the revolt, violated the territorial integrity of another nation, and stole a vast portion of the country via armed conquest.

    Ukrainians in all parts of the country, in every independent survey, demonstrate a supermajority desire to retain their independence as a sovereign nation. Period.

    Meanwhile the Russian state, through state media, has hired THOUSANDS of people to conduct a disinformation media campaign, and a social media campaign, to fabricate news, spread it, support it in social media, and to overwhelm opponents by sheer numbers.

    The Guardian alone has to edit out cut 40,000 of these posts a day, and they only remove the fraction that they are certain are part of the state sponsored campaign by russians to fabricate news for consumptoin by well meaning fools.

    We are all aware that the media creates consensus, it does not arbitrate it. And the russians, copying the germans from ww2, have done so.

    I am an anti-universalist, pro-ethnonationalist, because I believe that is the most likely means by which peole will be free. I advocate the overthrow of the american and european governments. And I am an advocate of even the rather foolish russian people, who I love.

    But corruption is corruption is corruption, and conquest is conquest, and I know the difference between the pursuit of freedom, and the pursuit of tyranny.

    And if you do not, you are not sufficiently wise to call yourself other than a libertine. Although I will refer to you in private as an anti-social, reverse patriot, full of loathing for societies that clearly reject you, and you them.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/inside-putins-campaign-of-social-media-trolling-and-faked-ukrainian-crimes/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-19 10:36:00 UTC

  • Why Did The Philosophers Of Science Only Partly Succeed?

    WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED? (cross posted for archival purposes) [D]id you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking? The story didn’t change, you did. I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception. So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments. Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end. Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us. Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this. The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude. If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that. Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost. [H]uman cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation. As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation. So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure. I hope that adds some clarity to my position. Cheers