Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM: IT’S PRETTY SIMPLE REALLY —“I think it’s pretty simp

    REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM: IT’S 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.”–

    In-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. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-20 18:08:00 UTC

  • ON COMPREHENSION OF PROPERTARIANISM I’m trying to put my arms around who underst

    ON COMPREHENSION OF PROPERTARIANISM

    I’m trying to put my arms around who understands what, and why. Because I can test pretty clearly each individual, and I see patterns between individuals.

    LEVEL 1) POLITICS – Can you understand politics?

    (a) The informal and formal institutions of cooperation and coercion, and the ability to model changes to those institutions, and to forecast the results.

    (b) Can you distinguish the difference between personal philosophy, informal institutions and moral norms, and formal political institutions. And can you distinguish between making arguments of personal philosophy, moral norms, and political institutions?

    The problem I encounter is the inability for individuals to model all three at once, since all three do function at once in any polity.

    Eli Harman, Paul Bakhmut, and an increasing number of people who have conservative libertarian intuitions, seem to grasp these matters quickly. Although I think Eli may be a better communicator than I am.

    LEVEL 2) ETHICS – Can you understand ethics?

    The moral rules necessary for cooperation, and the ability to model changes to those rules given a heterogeneous polity whose incentives vary significantly.

    The problem I encounter is moral blindness. Moral blindness combined with the inability to model ethics, or distinguish between philosophy, informal institutions and formal institutions. Or the selective choice of one rather than all three.

    Roman Skaskiw grasps these matters immediately.

    LEVEL 3) EPISTEMOLOGY – Can you understand epistemology?

    The methods by which we ascertain the quality of our understanding of the correspondence between our ideas, our actions that result from our ideas, and the natural world.

    I seem to be able to get pretty far with a few Critical Rationalists ( Frank Lovell for example. Ayelam Valentine Agaliba clearly can manage these issues. Better than I can I think.) But even CR’s are locked into pervasive platonism. A platonism they protect with religious zeal.

    Philosophy is largely a Platonist discipline. So it’s actually pretty hard to find people with both scientific and economic backgrounds sufficient to grasp the differences between reason, exchange, and science.

    I seem to get pretty far with a few mathematical philosophers and professors who were educated before the ‘mystical’ sixties and later.

    If I can find mathematicians who have some experience with the problems of mathematical philosophy I seem to have no problem showing them the parallel of their problem in logic, ethics and science. But otherwise, epistemology is simply a pretty hard topic for most people to manage.

    We certainly have a problem in libertarianism because of jewish pseudoscientific rationals. And we have a pervasive and crippling problem of german continental platonism. We have a problem of mathematical and logical platonism in anglo analytic philosophy.

    LEVEL 4) Can you understand metaphysics?

    I cant really get very far with anyone on metaphysics. Skye Stewart is better than I am at grasping different philosophical points of view. But in general, my view of metaphysics is on of absolute Scientific Realism, just as my view of ethics is one of absolute Ethical Realism.

    This is not terribly difficult terrain for professional philosophers. But there are not a lot of professional philosophers with libertarian leanings.

    SUMMARY

    This is a ladder from the least to the most complex problems in political philsophy. And while I may engage some at the lowest level, by the time I reach the highest there are just very few people to converse with.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-17 18:51:00 UTC

  • THE VALUE OF PERFORMATIVE TRUTH (cross posted for archival purposes) The scope o

    THE VALUE OF PERFORMATIVE TRUTH

    (cross posted for archival purposes)

    The scope of problems [performative truth] solves is awe inspiring actually.

    But if I want to (and must) morally forbid (outlaw) deception whether intentional (obscurantism) or accidental (platonism) I must show in every field where either intentional deception or accidental platonism is used, that all such uses are contrivances to obscure either a failure to understand (philosophy), an efficient utilitarianism (the verb to-be in language, and the conflation of number and function in mathematics), an analogistic pseudoscientific error ( infinity ) a necessary form of pedagogy (myth and religion). And a dozen others.

    This does not mean that we cannot use the verb to-be, conflate numbers with functions, use infinity in calculations for the purpose of obtaining scale independence, or tell children fairy tales as a guide to moral norms.

    It means that in philosophy we must know the difference between knowledge of construction and the testability of that knowledge, and the linguistic, conceptual, and procedural ‘hacks’ (contrivances) that allow us to stuff vast concepts through our minds which can only construct analogies within a few second window, and only out of a limited number of steps.

    My problem isn’t the problem or the solution. I know the problem and the solution. My problem is understanding multitude of contrivances that we have constructed in all the fields so that I can cover all the applications such that there is no escaping the conclusion.

    I don’t really like criticizing CR (or Popper) because it’s the best solution we have. But it is precisely because it is the closest to correct that it is the best candidate for reformation with the least amount of work.

    —-

    OK… I had to sleep on it. But I figured it out.

    Performative Truth + The “Epistemic Method” (or the instrumental method, previously known as the scientific method) , in which the discipline of scientific inquiry places a premium on some outputs and discounts other outputs. By weighting different outputs we tailor the general rule (process) to the problem we wish to address. This accurately describes what humans do as a general rule. The process is universal because the problem is consistent across all domains of inquiry. However we weigh different outputs according to our needs. And as in any discipline we tend to ‘privatize’ the language within that discipline.

    There is a supply and demand chart in there waiting to be drawn…. I have to figure out how that would look.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-15 21:17:00 UTC

  • THE RIGHT MEME: LAW AND ORDER VERSUS CRIMINAL CORRUPTION –“Yes, Russian spets-n

    THE RIGHT MEME: LAW AND ORDER VERSUS CRIMINAL CORRUPTION

    –“Yes, Russian spets-naz are involved but the other layer is the huge network of criminal corruption trying to save itself or at least gain leverage. That’s why it is important not to see this just as “Russian vs. Ukrainian”–that is only one dimension and doesn’t capture the complexity of what is going on. One way to look at this is that this is the extension of the Maidan to the East. It’s the great front in the battle against criminal corruption. This moment was inevitable. As we now know, Yanukovych’s son has for years been supplementing the low pay of the security services and militia in Donetsk with envelopes of cash. They essentially privatized the security services. But that doesn’t make them reliable in the heat of battle. It’s also why the solution is not as easy and straightforward as it may seem–it’s not a simple military operation.

    People are going to have to liberate themselves. And that’s not a bad thing. In Kramatorsk last night, the green men occupied the militia, got drunk, got bored and left. How do you think people in Slaviansk are feeling today? The mayor fled. The local city administration workers were forced to gather and were instructed that “they are now working for them”. What great joy have the armed men brought to their lives? And who can the armed men trust in Slaviansk? This is the problem with occupation. Pretty soon every resident of Slaviansk will start looking like a ‘Banderite”.

    The Russian spets-naz are the most lethal and dangerous–but they don’t want to be captured and will try to elude direct confrontation at all costs. The green men, the Crimean blow-hards (sorry for the vulgarity) aren’t nearly as formidable and the local criminal thugs for hire are in it for the money. It’s not a winning formula, especially if the locals begin to fight back, as they seem to be doing. What happened in Zaporizhzhia was instructive, the “pro-Russian” protesters turned out to be mostly members of a local criminal gang, paid to stir up trouble. People came out by the thousands to surround them. It’s no secret that people are organizing and arming themselves in the East in pro-Ukrainian partisan groups.

    The battle line is less “Russian” vs. “Ukrainian”–it’s criminal corruption vs. hope for law and order. That is the narrative that should find the greatest resonance. To complicate things further–I think the real target is Dnipropetrovsk. The third layer in all of this is the longstanding war between the Donetskie and the Dnipropetrovskie. But the difference there is that Dnipropetrovsk actually makes money and their guys are less afraid of the EU, as opposed to Donetsk.”–

    RUSSIA IS A SOCIETY OF CRIMINAL CORRUPTION. UKRAINE WANTS TO BE FREE OF CRIMINAL CORRUPTION.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-15 18:17:00 UTC

  • WE ARE MORALLY BLIND, LIMITED IN OUR PERCEPTIONS AND MEMORY, AND SEVERELY IN OUR

    WE ARE MORALLY BLIND, LIMITED IN OUR PERCEPTIONS AND MEMORY, AND SEVERELY IN OUR REASON. THE LAST THING WE SHOULD DO IS CONSTRUCT LARGE RISK-PRONE INTENTIONALLY MANAGED STATES.

    I have to accept the evidence, but I do not like it.

    I would like very much to believe that we grasp the world as it is. And it appears that, at least with the help of instrumentalism (logic and science), we can grasp the physical world with a high degree of accuracy – at least, sufficiently to make use of it for our purposes.

    The cooperative world of human beings consists of inconstant relations, we desperately try to reduce to an ideal type, a stereotype, a single simple rule, a universal value. But it is more complex than the physical world that consists of constant relations. For that reason we may be limited to a logic of cooperation and every prohibited from a mathematics of cooperation – except at the highest levels.

    The data is conclusive: we are far more morally blind than I had expected. Our moral and ethical intuitions are genetically weighted but our moral biases evolve and are emergent – still invariant. Our metaphysical assumptions (assumptions about the way the world functions) are far more unconscious and unalterable than I’d expected. And very, very, very few of us are capable of working hard to modify those assumptions. (The process of which I am at this moment writing about.)

    Libertarians can speak of morality in it’s logical language: economics. But that is partly because libertarians are both severely affected by moral blindness, less dependent upon others for information and decision making, and less vulnerable to deception. Libertarians not only are blind to morality, but discount it because it’s not useful to them.

    Our language, common protocol that it is, fools us into a sense of similarity.

    Progressives are interesting in that the world appears simple to them, and is simple to them computationally, because like any form single-variable calculation, it is in fact much simpler to reason with. But they are also the most morally blind demographic: progressives dysgenically and anti-socially apply their moral simplicity to all matters – like the mother of a serial killer who believes her son is merely misunderstood, and incapable of the crime. That analogy is all one needs to understand the moral blindness of progressives.

    Conservatives have the worst computational problem. They weigh all of the moral instincts about the same. Which means that they must contend with seven or more different weights and values that must be compared at any given time – something that the single-axis human capacity for reason cannot possibly manage, and abandons to the wind. So conservatives speak in moral language. Partly because it is simply too complicated to speak in any other. And largely because we have only recently understood these underlying intuitions. While Machiavelli, Hume, Pareto, Durkheim and others have attempted to derive the answers, only in the past twenty years with the help of science, anthropology and experimental psychology, have we been able to understand them.

    We humans speak to justify our genes. That is about all.

    The very last thing that we should try to engage in, is the politics of anything larger than an extended and homogenous family.

    The market – in this case, a market of communities (states) – is the only possible means of computing and calculating the future by scientific means.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-15 06:51:00 UTC

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM RETURNS? It’s been an interesting spring. We learned

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM RETURNS?

    It’s been an interesting spring.

    We learned that international law is an illusion and that only the ability to use economic and military power determines policy.

    We learned that the only means of controlling the government is if armed civilians encircle and threaten their oppressive government thugs.

    We learned that western governments do not live up to their promises to defend the desire for freedom of people who give up their arms.

    We we learned that nuclear weapons are the only guarantee of self governance.

    The source of liberty is the organized application of violence by a minority willing to die to deny military, political and economic power to the state.

    Violence is a virtue. Violence is the first and most important form of wealth.

    Invest your violence wisely.

    Use it against the state.

    A militia of every able bodied male is the only guarantee of liberty.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-14 12:35:00 UTC

  • ARGUMENT, MORAL BLINDNESS, AND INSTITUTIONS I can tell your moral code and polit

    ARGUMENT, MORAL BLINDNESS, AND INSTITUTIONS

    I can tell your moral code and political preference by the method you use to argue, as much as I can the moral bias of your arguments.

    And I’m still surprised at myself, despite knowing that (other than conservatives) people are morally blind, I try to reason with people.

    Now the fact is, that I know when I’m doing it, that it’s impossible. Like anyone else I hope to do a little education – to provide a light into the moral darkness.

    But, my objective is actually to learn how to state my arguments in a multitude of fashions, such that they explain those different areas of moral blindness. I know I cannot convince others to change their moral bias. It’s genetic. But I can consistently improve my arguments.

    My arguments are prescriptive. I know that is impossible. What I can do is construct institutions that allow us to cooperate despite these moral biases.

    But in the end, we are other than gene-machines, using very elaborate language to justify our reproductive strategies.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-12 23:30:00 UTC

  • ON ENGLISH AS THE LANGUAGE OF ETHICS (cross posted for archival purposes) Englis

    ON ENGLISH AS THE LANGUAGE OF ETHICS

    (cross posted for archival purposes)

    English is a very precise and technical language. Probably the most empirically framed language we have. As such it’s burdensome. The verb “to-be” problem (the problem of ‘is’, and solved with E’) evolved and exists largely as an operational simplifier in an already burdensome language.

    Secondly it’s an emotionally unloaded language – very german. And so we have to invent all sorts of devices to add emotion to an emotionally unloaded language. We used to do that with artistry – riddle, poetry, rhyme, insinuation, innuendo, and allegory. I think that with the rise of mass education, marketing, military and technical language, as well as cultural diversity those more artistic means of adding emotional content have been replaced by simplistic exaggeration and euphemism as you’ve mentioned above.

    Now, assuming that we want to eliminate mysticism, platonism, postmodernism, obscurantism, and various forms of loading and framing, so that we can construct a scientific language of ethics, morality, law and politics (a logic of cooperation), in which it is impossible to obscure involuntary transfers (thefts); and assuming that the performative theory of truth is correct and that it requires an individual to possess not only knowledge of use, but knowledge of construction; and assuming that with such knowledge one can, and must, and assuming that the only means by which we can test both transparency of transfers and and knowledge of construction, and therefore the only means of speaking honestly is with E’ in operational language; then the burden on the speaker is quite high. Extraordinarily so.

    This set of ethical and moral constraints upon language of produces a few very interesting consequences:

    (a) Because of that high burden, similar to the burden of memorization placed on ‘wise men’ in oral tradition societies, it severely limits the number of people who can participate in public discourse – effectively recreating our druidic ancestors.

    (b) it makes it possible for anyone to prosecute obscurantists of all kinds for conspiracy to commit fraud, under the common law. Public intellectuals, attempted statists, lawyers, judges, and the common folk included.

    Actually, I don’t think it’s possible to state a logic of ethical, moral, legal, and political argument in any language OTHER than English or German – and I’m not sure about German. (I only studied it for one year and I can’t speak it at all. I just understand its structure.)

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-12 05:33:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : GAY LIFE IN KIEV You know, Ukrainian’s get a lot of flac

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : GAY LIFE IN KIEV

    You know, Ukrainian’s get a lot of flack over their supposed intolerance of gays. But I don’t see any evidence of it. The Butch college girls sitting next to me look and act just like they do in in the west. They could be from Seattle given the way they’re dressed – particularly the girl with blue hair.

    It might be that I live in one of the university districts, but the gay men here are just a little less flamboyant at attracting attention than their american counterparts. But ALL Ukrainians are less flamboyant and seeking of attention than their American counterparts. They have these strange things called ‘extended family’ and ‘real friends’, and daily participation in ‘social life’ that they get attention from, rather than living in McBoxes, surrounded by ‘stuff’ and dependent upon media for a sense of membership in a group that gives them positive status rewards. (Strange as it is, Americans are outliers in this regard – aliens to the rest of the world.)

    You can’t celebrate being gay, which is to force it into the social and political realm. And you certainly can’t politicize it. You can’t politicize much of anything here really. Politicizing anything is (rightly) considered an attempt to gain privileges of some sort – and attention. Both of which are not ‘Ukrainian’ values.

    I mean, my ‘hairmaster’ (hairdresser) would look right at home in San Francisco or Seattle – both of which are pretty friendly to gender differences.

    RACISM VS GAY LIFE

    I see the very clear genetics of every damned tribe from the Urals to the western Celts in this city. It’s absolutely beautiful, and a crucible for the study of european tribalism. But it’s pretty clear that there is a very big difference between the western Indo European/Uralic, Turkic, Afro-Asiatic (Arabic), African cultures and the third group: East asians, and southeast asians. And while in the states our history with slavery has forced us to attempt equality, it’s pretty clear here that ‘troublemakers’ are not desirable. But why are they considered ‘troublemakers?’ Well, for the same reason blacks and hispanics in the states and muslims and Romanians in the UK, and Turks in Germany are considered ‘troublemakers’: because statistically it’s true.

    All clubs do exercise “Face Control”, which means that if your face would reduce the desirability of the club then they’ll reject you. You don’t have any ‘rights’ per say to enter a business. Nor they to serve you. The clubs just protect their brand value.

    A lot of turkic and arabic men come to Kiev trying to find women. A very few black men. (A lot of ‘douchebag’ Americans do too, and that’s just one of the reasons that I avoid the expat community like lepers. A trip to the Embassy is all I need to remind me how pathetic fat, ignorant and privileged americans are.) Yes, Ukrainian women are absolutely the best women in the world. It’s true. It’s one of those things that’s just inconceivable to people who haven’t lived here. And because of the open sexuality (pervasive display of feminine confidence, pride, desirability and power) a lot of men think that these women will be ‘easy’. Which is pretty much the opposite of the truth. Women are more honest here. But you must COURT them. They ‘give it up’ a lot less easily than in the west. They just do it honestly. Sure, it’s a lot easier to have a fling with an attached woman here, and it appears to me that italian-style ‘mistresses’ are pervasive, family is still the center of all personal life. And courting a woman is a matter of determining your potential as a family member. (I think I have that right. The generations differ a bit. But I think I have that right.)

    And like any society, especially one where so many men are ‘useless, unproductive, alcoholic, and lazy’ a less desirable, but aggressive, higher testosterone male, who is willing to court, can pick up marginal and below the margin women here, who are vastly superior to the women they could find at home.

    Unfortunately, they’re considered ‘creepy’, profane and rude. So the clubs use ‘Face Control’ to keep the places ‘desirable and safe’ for women. Women in turn draw men. And that’s the economics of clubs.

    COMPARISON

    So I tend to look at these things the same way: society is just a big extension of the FAMILY and families here – not a corporation. So within your ‘family and circle’ you can do whatever you want. But politicking aside from criticizing the corrupt government seems to pretty much reject particularism of any kind.

    It’s actually a means of enforcing the local perception of equality.

    Given that all political privileges are by definition thefts, I have to pretty much agree with how things are done here.

    If it weren’t for the pervasive political corruption and soviet-induced absence of the rule of law, then this would be one of the most desirable societies on earth.

    Curt Doolittle

    Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-11 08:13:00 UTC

  • GENDER RELATIONS : OFFSPRING VS TRIBES Women are more comfortable with free ridi

    GENDER RELATIONS : OFFSPRING VS TRIBES

    Women are more comfortable with free riding and with charity, and men are extremely conservative about resources. Women happily sacrifice for their children. Men cautiously sacrifice for their tribe. Women advocate for their children regardless of their merits, while men are more parsimonious because they desire the strongest tribe. For men, a woman and his children are just the smallest possible tribe that he can lead. For a woman, it is very risky, especially in the ignorance of youth, to choose just one man upon which to risk her future.

    While men cannot articulate this set of intuitions and strategies, women often confuse the difference in evolutionary strategies between men and women. And particularly the difference between a woman’s offspring, and a man’s tribe.

    I’ve seen so many marriages where the woman expects the man to have the same interest toward her and the children, as she has. And there are some men who approach a woman’s sacrifice. But for the majority of us, it is a very bad investment. And with the state making it impossible for us to save for retirement, given our shorter productive life spans, and greater specialization, and greater variation – it’s now an extremely bad idea to engage in marriage.

    Marriage is an artificial construct. For a man, he is best off if he trades productivity (no longer protection) and affection for as many women as he can get attention from. And a woman’s best interest is to form a group with other women and select from different men what she wants and needs. This is how we evolved: everyone having sex with everyone else – some of which was for bond building, and some of which was for the purpose of reproduction.

    Any society that does not maintain at least the nuclear family will be dominated an exterminated by those that do.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-09 08:05:00 UTC