—“It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. “—(Frege?) I disagree. “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as “I attest that I smell the scent of violets”or “I promise to you that I smell the scent of violets.” Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with your utterance. –“The snow is white, if and only if the snow is white”– The snow can’t ‘be’ anything. It cannot act, nor perceive the passage of time, which gives rise to the ability to determine changes in state. Instead the operationally correct statement is “I observe that the snow appears white in color. I promise that if you observe the snow, that you will also agree that it appears white in color. If both of us observe that it appears white in color, then we can agree that all observers of the snow will also observe that appears white in color.” [N]ow, this is extremely burdensome language. That’s why we don’t use it. But it is a mistake to take an aggregate “the snow is white in color” and attribute the same logical meaning to it as “I observe that the snow appears to be white in color, and I promise that if you observe the snow that you will also agree that it appears white in color.” All aggregates launder (lose) information. That’s the problem with aggregates. It’s not only a problem when we create a category, or when we add numbers together to create a sum, or call the square root of two a ‘number’ when it is a function, but it’s also a problem when we summarize informationally dense statements for the sake of brevity. Operational language is burdensome. But it prevents the evolution of what appear to be complex problems, from that which is merely a byproduct of aggregation (laundering). MORE ON PROMISES AND TRUTH –“Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth. … When they aren’t overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn’t true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available “representation”, in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape. Maps aren’t true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.”– [T]his is a wordy paragraph that simply states that better theories correspond to and explain reality, than less good theories. But theories can never be identical to reality, since they are always representations (I would call them ‘aggregates that exclude information’). I can promise you that I followed the scientific method, and that my theory is internally consistent, externally correspondent and falsifiable (and perhaps a few other things). If you agree that my theory is useful, internally consistent, externally correspondent, and falsifiable, (and perhaps a few other things) then you can say that I spoke the truth. You may, for sake of manners and brevity say that the theory is then true. But that is merely an abbreviation for the fact that the theory is true, and useful. As far as I know this is the limit of our ability without entering the fantasy world of platonism.
Form: Mini Essay
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(Edited and Reposted) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintain their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. [W]e are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(Edited and Reposted) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintain their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. [W]e are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(important piece) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintian their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. We are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(important piece) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintian their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. We are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
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Propertarianism And Aristocratic Egalitarianism
(important piece) [P]ropertarianism is an ethical model for use in self government. Under Propertarianism I do not advocate a form of self government, other than an independent judiciary under the common law and under a constitution enumerating propertarian ethics – as such I advocate only rights that must be observed by ANY form of self government – anywhere – if people are to possess liberty. Most political philosophy advocates forms of government in the hope of creating certain rights or opportunities, rather than addressing the fundamental problem of whether or not those rights necessary for flourishing exist. Flourishing requires that we suppress free riding in all its forms. Some groups may suppress more, and some less, but those that suppress more will always and everywhere flourish (over the long term) more so than those that suppress less, because free riding is perhaps the most expensive and burdensome transaction cost that can be imposed upon a society by its own institutional failures. Under Aristocratic Egalitarianism – I make use of Propertarian Ethics. Under Aristocratic Egalitarianism, we obtain our property rights from others in exchange for the promise of defending their property rights with violence. We must accept exchange with any person who wishes property rights, and therefore defend the rights of all others who desire freedom. Rothbardian Libertarianism is an unethical, immoral and parasitic philosophy. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism under Propertarian Ethics, is the most moral philosophy that I believe man has yet developed. If one wants liberty and property rights, he may have them in exchange for his commitment to use violence to defend them always and everywhere. This was the origin of Aristocratic Egalitarianism of the Northern Europeans. Unfortunately our ancestors practiced it by habit and tradition, not by written articulation and so it did not survive the attack on by the enlightenment and the democratic revolutions. The reasons are simple: First, written rules tend to freeze evolutionary development unless limited to fundamental first causes. Secondly, we lacked the knowledge of economics to translate that tradition from moral and traditional terms into rational terms. If you fill fight for my rights. I will fight for yours. That is the contract for aristocracy. That is the contract we must bring back, if we are to have our liberty once again. Cheers.
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Propertarianism And Aristocratic Egalitarianism
(important piece) [P]ropertarianism is an ethical model for use in self government. Under Propertarianism I do not advocate a form of self government, other than an independent judiciary under the common law and under a constitution enumerating propertarian ethics – as such I advocate only rights that must be observed by ANY form of self government – anywhere – if people are to possess liberty. Most political philosophy advocates forms of government in the hope of creating certain rights or opportunities, rather than addressing the fundamental problem of whether or not those rights necessary for flourishing exist. Flourishing requires that we suppress free riding in all its forms. Some groups may suppress more, and some less, but those that suppress more will always and everywhere flourish (over the long term) more so than those that suppress less, because free riding is perhaps the most expensive and burdensome transaction cost that can be imposed upon a society by its own institutional failures. Under Aristocratic Egalitarianism – I make use of Propertarian Ethics. Under Aristocratic Egalitarianism, we obtain our property rights from others in exchange for the promise of defending their property rights with violence. We must accept exchange with any person who wishes property rights, and therefore defend the rights of all others who desire freedom. Rothbardian Libertarianism is an unethical, immoral and parasitic philosophy. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism under Propertarian Ethics, is the most moral philosophy that I believe man has yet developed. If one wants liberty and property rights, he may have them in exchange for his commitment to use violence to defend them always and everywhere. This was the origin of Aristocratic Egalitarianism of the Northern Europeans. Unfortunately our ancestors practiced it by habit and tradition, not by written articulation and so it did not survive the attack on by the enlightenment and the democratic revolutions. The reasons are simple: First, written rules tend to freeze evolutionary development unless limited to fundamental first causes. Secondly, we lacked the knowledge of economics to translate that tradition from moral and traditional terms into rational terms. If you fill fight for my rights. I will fight for yours. That is the contract for aristocracy. That is the contract we must bring back, if we are to have our liberty once again. Cheers.
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Reforming Libertarianism Is Pretty Simple Really
—“I think it’s pretty simple: the NAP has proven to be demonstrably insufficient to use as the basis of the common law, because it preserves and licenses immoral and unethical behavior, which impose high transaction costs on in-group members. As such, no such polity is possible, and that is evidenced by the fact that no such polity has ever existed. … Rothbard’s ethics license parasitism, and the high trust society that created liberty requires contribution to production. It’s not complicated. Rothbard was wrong. Its impossible to form a polity on rothbardian ethics. Period.”– [I]n-group ethics necessary for the formation of a voluntary polity require the standard of moral action be based upon a requirement for contribution, which mirrors the human moral instincts for cooperation. if you want an involuntary polity then you can choose any property rights (or lack of) that you want. If you want a high trust polity that organizes voluntarily, and in which production is voluntarily organized, then you must find an institutional means of resolving ethical and moral conflicts as well as criminal conflicts. The only institution that we have yet developed that is capable of providing dispute resolution without the presence of a central authority is independent courts under the common law, with articulated property rights. If property is well defined such that it mirrors ethical and moral prohibitions on free riding in all its forms, all that remains is the voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, productive voluntary exchange free of negative externalities. You may choose a less moral and ethical society. And I am not sure at what point all humans will demand the state, or a sufficient number to form a voluntary polity will prefer anarchy, but I do know that regardless of that point of inflection, this is the means by which to achieve it that we know of. Cheers.
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Extending Kahneman: "System 0" Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like -
Extending Kahneman: "System 0" Is Property.
(interesting)(important piece)
[O]ur logical capacity extends to the limits defined by the flight of an arrow. For more complex multi-dimensional relations we resort to the cartesian representations. And if the problem is more complicated than that, then our reason, and ability to envision causal relations, is terribly frail.
And if I am correct (and it appears at present that I am), then “System 0″ is little more than a producer of reward and punishment endorphins in response to increases or decreases in an individual’s inventory of “property”. Property that is necessary for his life, cooperation and reproduction.
Emotions are reactions to changes in state. Changes in state are determined by changes in property. Humans act to acquire that which improves their condition. Humans resent, and punish, at great personal expense, appropriations of that which they have acted to acquire.
Reason (Kahneman’s System “2”) rides on the elephant of intuition (Kahneman’s System “1”), whose objects of consideration (System “0”) are what we call ‘property’. Our brains are difference engines. And we calculate differences in property: that which we have acted to obtain.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.COMMENTS
William L. Benge likes this.Curt Doolittle
I wrote, I think, about six months ago, that property was the missing necessary means of commensurable data representation required for functional AI to simulate the behavior of man. I knew this back when David Trowbridge and I were thinking about Runcible.
April 17 at 9:38am · LikeWilliam L. Benge Utterly fascinating interview of Kahneman by Charlie Rose.
April 17 at 5:28pm · Like · Remove PreviewWilliam L. Benge
This really is an amazing post, Curt. Grateful for your work.
April 17 at 5:34pm · LikeCurt Doolittle
Thank you william. That means a lot to me.
April 17 at 6:20pm · Like