Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • On Popper’s Position, vs Action and Instrumentation

    ON POPPER’S POSITION VS ACTION AND INSTRUMENTATION (reposted from cr page for archiving) All we can say is x set of recipes have y properties in common, and all known recipes have z properties in common, and therefore we will likely find new recipes that share z properties. Logic is one of the instruments we use to construct recipes. Logic is a technology. Just as are the narrative, numbers, arithmetic, math, physics, and cooperation. These are all instrumental technologies or we would not need them and could perform the same operations without them. Science, as in the ‘method’ of science, is a recipe for employing those instruments ‘technologies’. Science is a technology. It is external to our intuitions, and we must use it like any other technology, in order to extend our sense, perception, memory, calculation, and planning. So I simply view ‘fuzzy language’ as what it is. And statements reducible to operational language as the only representation of scientific discourse. Theory means nothing different from fantasy without recording, instrument, operations, repetition, and falsification. A theory is a fantasy, a bit of imagination, and the recipes that survive are what remains of that fantasy once all human cognitive bias and limitation is laundered by our ‘technologies’. Recipes are unit of commensurability against which we can calculate differences, to further extend and refine our imaginary fantasies. Just as we test each individual action in a recipe against objective reality, we test each new fantasy against the accumulated properties stated in our recipes. From those tests of fantasy against our accumulated recipes, we observe in ourselves changes in our own instruments of logic. Extensions of our perception, memory, calculation – knowledge – is the collection of general instruments that apply in smaller numbers, to increasingly large categories of problems. (This is the reason Flynn suspects, for the Flynn effect as well as our tendency to improve upon tests.) It is these general principles (like the scientific method) that we can state are ‘knowledge’ in the sense of ‘knowledge of what’ versus ‘knowledge of how’ (See Gifts of Athena). Recipes are knowledge of ‘what’. General principles of how the universe functions are knowledge of ‘how’. Popper failed to make the distinction of dividing the problem into classes and instrumentation. And he did so because, as I have stated, he was overly fascinated with words, and under-fascinated with actions. And while I can only hypothesize why he is, like many of his peers, pseudo-scientifically fascinated with words, rather than scientifically fascinated with actions, the fact remains, that he was. And he, like Mises and Hayek and their followers, failed to produce a theory of the social sciences. CR is the best moral prescription for knowledge because it logically forbids the use of science to make claims of certainty sufficient to deprive people of voluntary choice. Popper justified skepticism and prohibited involuntary transfer by way of scientific argument. A necessary idea for his time. In science, he prohibited a return to mysticism by reliance on science equal to faith in god. But that is his achievement. He was the intellectual linebacker of the 20th century. He denied the opposition the field. But prohibition was not in itself an answer. Instrumentalism is necessary. Calculation is necessary. Reduction of the imperceptible to analogy to experience is necessary. Morality consists of the prevention of thefts and discounts. Actions that produce predictable outcomes, not states of imagination. That is the answer.

  • Is Philosophy A Vehicle For Theft?

    Is nearly all of philosophy then, outside of logic, an artful construct for the purpose of justifying theft? One can justify suppression of, prevention of, and restitution for, the taking of discounts. (thefts) One can justify the selection of one priority of investment over another. But one cannot argue for the necessity of a monopoly of investments. Nor the mandatory enforcement of participation in investments, other than the suppression of free riding. One can argue the necessity for a homogeneity – monopoly – of property rights for the purpose of logically resolving disputes over property and contract – albeit, private property solves that problem, and articulated shareholder rights, retains that ability even under complexity. But once a monopoly of property rights exists, one cannot argue the necessity for a monopoly of law making. In fact, logic and evidence suggest precisely the opposite is true: that laws evolve and evolve best under the common law, since they must be interpreted by ordinary citizens, and are open to constant revision without external approval as the world evolves. The failure of the common law was (a) its usurpation by the state, and (b) failure to define property rights sufficiently in the face of industrialization. (c) its use by the middle class to dispossess the aristocracy, and consequential use by the proletarians and feminists to dispossess the middle classes. Philosophy is quite simple really. It’s only complicated if you’re trying to lie. And theft requires lying. And lying is best covered by obscurity. Cheers.

  • Is Philosophy A Vehicle For Theft?

    Is nearly all of philosophy then, outside of logic, an artful construct for the purpose of justifying theft? One can justify suppression of, prevention of, and restitution for, the taking of discounts. (thefts) One can justify the selection of one priority of investment over another. But one cannot argue for the necessity of a monopoly of investments. Nor the mandatory enforcement of participation in investments, other than the suppression of free riding. One can argue the necessity for a homogeneity – monopoly – of property rights for the purpose of logically resolving disputes over property and contract – albeit, private property solves that problem, and articulated shareholder rights, retains that ability even under complexity. But once a monopoly of property rights exists, one cannot argue the necessity for a monopoly of law making. In fact, logic and evidence suggest precisely the opposite is true: that laws evolve and evolve best under the common law, since they must be interpreted by ordinary citizens, and are open to constant revision without external approval as the world evolves. The failure of the common law was (a) its usurpation by the state, and (b) failure to define property rights sufficiently in the face of industrialization. (c) its use by the middle class to dispossess the aristocracy, and consequential use by the proletarians and feminists to dispossess the middle classes. Philosophy is quite simple really. It’s only complicated if you’re trying to lie. And theft requires lying. And lying is best covered by obscurity. Cheers.

  • WE NEED A NEW MATHEMATICAL REVOLUTION ON THE SCALE OF CALCULUS : THE UNIT OF COM

    http://shar.es/QBhQ0YES WE NEED A NEW MATHEMATICAL REVOLUTION ON THE SCALE OF CALCULUS : THE UNIT OF COMMENSURABILITY IN THAT MATHEMATICS, IS PROPERTY, AND ITS GRAMMAR IS MORAL

    The mathematical order of big data? Property.

    1) Humans (life) is acquisitive.

    2) Humans seek to acquire a limited number of categories of things. from experiences (feelings), to information, affection, mates, associates, and all manner of material things.

    3) Human seek to avoid losses – more so than to acquire. especially life, children, kin, and mates, but also anything else that they have acted to acquire.

    4) Humans must cooperate, and seek to cooperate, in the pursuit of their acquisitions.

    5) The problem of cooperation for humans(all life) outside of kin, is the prevention of, and suppression of, free riding (involuntary transfer)

    6) Humans develop layers of complex rules (myths, traditions, habits, manners, ethics, morals, and common laws) to assist in cooperating in whatever structure of production they exist under.

    6) All human language can be expressed in a grammar. Even the most complex and abstract ideas can be expressed in the grammar of acquisition and cooperation we commonly call ‘property’: “That in which we have acted to acquire, and the moral (legal) constraints under which we have done it.

    (I kind of wonder if this allows us to get past the comprehension limits of juries. At present, the trick is to have enough money, to afford to overwhelm the cognitive processing ability of the jury. It may be possible to analyze for example, a large trial, and produce a mathematical reduction of it, into terms that the jury can comprehend. The trial is still required, but we can reduce its complexity to an analogy to experience.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-14 03:48:00 UTC

  • VOICES IN IN YOUR FINGERTIPS To write strategically, you have to find a voice. I

    VOICES IN IN YOUR FINGERTIPS

    To write strategically, you have to find a voice.

    I tried the conciliatory voice (which in politics is foolhardy). The romantic voice. (Which I adore but is very hard to do in analytic language, and sometimes ruins the argument.) The antagonistic voice (which I’m good at but depresses me). The contrarian voice (which I still use now and then because it captures attention.) The ridicule voice (which doesn’t really suit me because ridicule requires lateral thinking that is really unavailable to me as an aspie – and I see ridicule, correctly, as dishonest). And finally settled on the scientific voice with a mix of tactically romantic, heroic and critical positioning.

    I’ve been writing long form since I was six years old. I still don’t think I’m a very good writer. Mixing the communicative, the romantic and the analytic is terribly hard, and I haven’t figured out how to do it. Hayek does it best of any modern thinker.

    So the trick is that I couldn’t have figured this all out in advance. The point of writing is to write. You can get better at it. But it takes more writing that’s just one word better than the last, than it does trying to write to an abstract model.

    One last thing that I can’t emphasize enough. Americans tend to believe in the nonsense of talent. Yes, smarter people are better at most everything, and less so people less good at nearly everything. But extraordinary practice narrows that gap significantly even if cannot narrow it completely. You may possess talent but anything worthwhile to others is obtained by marginally different skill and marginally different skill is obtained through practice and lots of it.

    To develop that level of skill, you must love what you do. I would rather write than do almost anything else except maybe drive roadsters on backroads in summer, sing Nirvana or something similar, make an aesthetically interesting dinner for ten, and enjoy good sex. And I”m not sure about the last three. 🙂 But writing used to give me headaches, and I used to struggle so hard with it. Until I understood that the typewriter was my enemy – I was afraid of mistakes. And my handwriting is all but unreadable even to me. Computers changed that for me.

    The point being that you have to find the tools that help you master your craft. I”m still amazed at the people who write books by hand -there are plenty of them really. But the old saw that an artist is only as good as his tools, applies to every single discipline.

    And the illusion that you’re looking for ways to express your talent is a dangerous idea.

    Instead:

    1) Work on something that is both rare and fascinates you. Pop nonsense just means you’re too ignorant to find something uncommon but still interesting.

    2) Master the subject matter through repetition and investigation and collection of every possible example and detail. Keep a database. I keep an enormous glossary of terms that I try to restate in propertarian language.

    3) Play by reorganizing those details into multiple types of organization. This is where you’ll come up with something creative.

    4) Find tools that help you overcome your weaknesses, not ‘express your talents’.

    5) Then go through and just try test yourself. Now if you’re a nuclear physicist then it’s expensive to run tests. The reason I like philosophy is that my only cost is food, water, and an internet connection. It’s cheap to run tests consisting of arguments.

    What I’ve found is that I am not so much a good writer: because good writing requires a lot of empathy for the reader. But I am good at figuring stuff out.

    And in politics, the problem we face is figuring stuff out so that we can win arguments and defeat the opposition.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 03:34:00 UTC

  • DOOLITTLE’S ARGUMENTS WRAPPED UP IN A BOW? Well, I can’t quite do that without a

    DOOLITTLE’S ARGUMENTS WRAPPED UP IN A BOW?

    Well, I can’t quite do that without a whole book. But I think some people are beginning to understand the whole package I’ve put together, and why I’m criticizing feminism, postmodernism, ghetto libertarianism, left libertarianism, and even to some degree, conservatism: because the moral codes of all these groups advocate are predicated on assumptions about the nature of man, our common interests, and our economy, that are a mix of agrarian, industrial, and marxist thought dependent upon assumptions about our equality of reproductive value , equality of reproductive organization, our equality of value in organizing and participating in production, and organizing and participating in the production of norms that facilitate production at low transaction costs.

    All advancement of productivity and therefore wealth in civilization requires advancement in institutions that assist in creating ‘calculability’: the means by which we cooperate in a division of labor while suppressing the ability for anyone in that division of labor to conduct free riding.

    Outside of our direct perception, which is very limited, we can only know anything else about the world if it is calculable – and therefore reducible to analogy to experience. Otherwise we cannot sense or perceive it. And we are notoriously bad in our perceptions without instrumentation and calculation to assist us in judging even the most trivial of things.

    Prices for example are calculable. Our imagination of people’s lives in different parts of the world is not. The evidence that someone is wiling to trade with us, is proof that we have calculated the use of resources and time correctly. Just as their failure to do so tells us we have wasted them – or consumed them as entertainment. Science is a discipline entirely devoted to using instrumentation to sense what we cannot, then reduce it to analogy to experience, where we can use our limited faculties of deduction by employing our various fascinating tools of logic to ensure that what we sense is both internally consistent and externally correspondent.

    So whether we are talking about science, technology, production, money and accounting, cooperation or law, we are still talking about various forms of instrumentation that assist us in performing calculations on what we are not able to perform without relying upon those tools.

    Now, because productivity was so important in the past, we assumed that our relative equality of value in production, organizing production, reproduction, organizing reproduction, investigation and discovery, were all the same, and we limited our concept of moral life to attempting to create universal rules and incentives for each of us to follow.

    But that turns out to not make any sense. Because one must have the incentive to follow rules. And if we are marginally different in what we value, and in what we NEED to value as reproductive organisms; and we very clearly demonstrate that we are different, then the incentives that we have are quite different. And if the incentives are quite different we must construct alternative means, other than a MONOPOLY definition of human morality, that provides the incentives for us to act with common interests, despite the fact that we have uncommon interests.

    That is the job of institutions. The market allows us to cooperate on means even if we cannot cooperate on ends. But the market assumes that the primary value we each provide is our productivity in the market. (Which was true during the formation of market towns, and when human labor was necessary for production.)

    However, if we take into consideration, that in fact, only some of us have value in organizing production, only some others have value in participating in production, and still others only have value in organizing the norms such that production is possible, then we are all simply participating in a division of knowledge and labor. And therefore the rewards of production would be earned by those who prefer and are able to engage in production. But we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible.

    As such these people who are outside of the production process, but who facilitate the creation of the high trust society by suppressing free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist behavior, therefore must be paid for their services (or not paid if they fail to deliver them.)

    Furthermore, every individual who eschews criminal, immoral, unethical, conspiratorial, (statist) behavior, pays a cost with every opportunity he forgoes. Respect for property rights is costly for each individual. Every time an individual suppresses another’s ability to conduct free riding on others: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial (statist), it is a cost to him. To ask someone to obey these rules which facilitate the voluntary organization of low transaction cost hight trust society, when they are unable to participate in production or the fruits of it, is to ask them to conduct security guard work, and to exert restraint without compensation. Producers are nothing without consumers. Producers must compete for the attention of consumers. The more successful producers gain greater rewards, which in current civilization means little more than greater status signals and associations with others who likewise possess greater status signals, for more successfully satisfying the wants of consumers.

    This argument is entirely consistent with property rights theory.

    I will get to the criterion for compensation in one of my next posts.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 15:47:00 UTC

  • THE TERM “BREADWINNER” MAKES NO SENSE WITHOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

    THE TERM “BREADWINNER” MAKES NO SENSE WITHOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

    And the term ‘family’ is just nonsense today. Families are a minority.

    In a two person household both must work and pay taxes to support the state.

    Why should we be forced into labor so that other people can afford not to labor? I don’t understand at all how that’s moral, ethical, honest or anything other than simple, basic, slavery.

    Yet economists argue in favor of slavery all day long.

    There is no ‘we’.

    I agree to cooperate with you as long as you agree to cooperate with me. But as you say, we are all individuals. I’m an individual. The state is a corporation. Or, a slave master from my perspective.

    The only ‘we’ I recognize are my kin. Outside of my kin, everyone else is not ‘we’ – that’s “you” or ‘them’. If you tell me that you get to appropriate my effort, and force my wife to work so that someone else doesn’t have to work I don’t really see how that’s moral and just.

    In fact, I think that married, cohabiting people with a single person in the labor force should be taxed FAR LESS than single people, rent seekers and free riders. Why shouldn’t we pay mother’s stay home with kids and household?

    You see where I”m going.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 10:18:00 UTC

  • WELL MR FULLER. YOU’RE WRONG. ITS THAT WE DONT NEED A JOB IN PRODUCTION- BUT WE

    WELL MR FULLER. YOU’RE WRONG. ITS THAT WE DONT NEED A JOB IN PRODUCTION- BUT WE DO NEED A JOB. EVERYONE DOES.

    Everyone has to earn a living. Everyone has to have a job. But the compensation for that job, and the job itself may not require that we engage in PRODUCTION in the marketplace. But instead, that we police all society against free riding, we care for and maintain the commons, and provide emergency care and support for one another.

    If one performs these duties then of course, one is due compensation for them.If one does not perform these duties, or worse, violates them, then one does not earn compensation on the backs of those who do police, care for, support and provide production. Production is not the only valuable activity in society. In fact, it appears, that labor and clerical work are of near zero productive value. As such, we are all of us due compensation for our policing and maintenance of the commons, including the criminal, moral, ethical and material commons.

    There are ‘negative jobs’. The negative job is to actively police yourself and others against free riding on the backs of others. This is a full time occupation without vacation, days off, or commissions. It does not require that you learn a skill other than moral behavior, and it does not require that you engage in production. It does require that you deny others the ability to engage in criminal, unethical, immoral behavior, or lax or destructive treatment of the commons.

    Fuller is wrong. We all must have a job. We must be paid for our jobs. But the job of production is increasingly limited to minority of highly productive people. While the job of preventing criminal, unethical, immoral, and destructive behavior is increasingly abandoned by those who suggest that they are due compensation for merely existing. Which simply means that the most degenerate among us have the greatest claim to the productive efforts of others. That cannot be, in an rational or scientific world, considered moral by any stretch of the imagination.

    Labor has no value in production. But labor has enormous value in the defense of life, liberty and property via the suppression of all criminal, ethical, immoral, conspiratorial, corrupt behavior.

    Profit from production is a luxury good earned by those with greater talents and ambitions. But that luxury good requires the active suppression of free riding in all its multitude of forms in every part of society: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and corrupt behavior.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 07:24:00 UTC

  • THE BLEEDING HEART LIBERTARIANS, THE PRINCIPLE OF CALCULABILITY, THE SOLUTION TO

    THE BLEEDING HEART LIBERTARIANS, THE PRINCIPLE OF CALCULABILITY, THE SOLUTION TO DIRECT REDISTRIBUTION (Part 1)

    POSITIONING LIBERTARIAN ETHICS BY PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL

    1) CLASSICAL “PSYCHOLOGICAL” (Smith,Hume,Locke,Burke)(BHL’s)

    2) GHETTO COSMOPOLITAN (Rothbard),

    3) CONTINENTAL RATIONAL (Hoppe),

    4) ANGLO ANALYTIC (Doolitte),

    I keep intuitively wanting to classify the Bleeding Heart Libertarians led by Matt Zwolinski as right-continental rationals, but it’s pretty clear if you go through the past two years of articles on BHL, that their arguments are consistent with the classical psychological while borrowing arguments from everyone else where helpful.

    I pretty much agree with the BHL’s sentiments. But formal institutions that depend on psychological (and normative) moral intuition and belief, cannot possibly survive postmodern, obscurant, and pseudoscientific propaganda.

    Worse, they cannot survive the dissolution of the nuclear family. And it’s the nuclear family, or the Absolute Nuclear Family of the anglo tradition that is the primary source of our anglo american moral code. And in a world where immigrants no longer practice that family structure, where single mothers produce 40% of the population, and where ‘alternative marriages’ and ready divorce undermine the institution of the nuclear family, the moral intuitions upon which the Psychological School depends are statistically irrelevant.

    The family structure is the constructor of moral intuitions which merely direct and modify genetic and gender driven differences in moral sensitivity. Period. Conservatives were correct about the family and norms and we were not. In a democratic polity, where the majority can implement policy, the family structure of the majority will determine morality. And since morality determines property rights, no such property rights can exist within a democracy.

    We are in our current crisis because the American founders did not grasp the necessity and utility of the principle of calculability (no did any one until Weber). Had they for example, required original intent, and strict construction, and placed explicit authority in the common law, our world might be a very different place. At that time, given the state of science, and the prevalence of religious and poetic phrasing, it was impossible for them to grasp the concept of operational language as a necessary structure of all calculable statements.

    The BHL’s are not able to innovate per se, because they have no calculable and rational argumentative structure to rely upon. And so their arguments are victim to the moral predisposition their audience. But instead they are positioning libertarian arguments through sympathetic psychological contrasts and advocacy. Which is excellent marketing. And given the damage done by Rothbard’s morally reprehensible parasitic Ghetto Ethics to the cause of liberty, we certainly need good marketing.

    Propertarianism is not morally loaded. It’s analytic and calculable. In propertarian ethics I’ve placed the formal requirement for operational language. For that reason it isn’t morally aspirational – like most scientific argument it’s a little unsatisfying to reduce all human behavior to it’s physical properties – but it’s factually moral and defensible by science and reason. Whereas the Psychological model may advocate the correct ideas but they are not argumentatively powerful unless one is predisposed to agree with them. As such they are not arguments, but statements of confirmation bias.

    I have tried to provide the BHL’s with a Propertarian argument for redistribution. My argument requires full calculability from start to finish. And it fully warrants, justifies, explains in causal terms, why direct redistribution to consumers is necessary compensation mandated by respect for property rights.

    My criticism of the BHL’s to date has been limited (as my autistic arguments often are) to the fact that they are not contributing to innovation in libertarian theory, only to libertarian propaganda. Because I don’t disagree with their sentiments. I disagree with their Psychological School arguments.

    My hope is that at some point they will grasp that the formal logic of property is sufficient to justify their psychologically argued, and morally intuited ends. And they can back their good marketing with good science, reason, and institutional solutions that are calculable and therefore impervious to the multitudinous forms of fraud that are used by the obscurantist left both socialist, Postmodern, Feminist and whatever else they manage to invent.

    Property under Propertarianism is a scientifically moral, not rationally moral, or psychologically moral construct.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 03:52:00 UTC

  • What Are Bleeding Heart Libertarians? How Do They Differ From Libertarians?

    The BHL’s rely on the classical liberal Psychological Arguments as justification for the moral sentiments of care-taking, and grab ideas from everyone else. Good marketing but no arguments as yet other than psychological (moral).

    The Cato Institute group relies more on a mix of historical, moral and legal arguments. But we can also classify them as a mix of Psychological school. Their blog tends to the Continental, even if their publications and policy recommendations remain Psychological.

    The Austrian leaning libertarians at George Mason University rely on economic arguments. There arguments tend to mix Empirical and Psychological. Their error is that they keep trying to find an optimum morality for a polity to believe in. Which is irrational for an economist in particular.

    The Misesians at Ludwig Von Mises Institute use the rationalism from continental jewish cosmopolitan arguments derived from the ethics of the ghetto during the jewish enlightenment. Unfortunately for liberty, their use of the internet was brilliant, and so the three other think tanks above (I’ll have to include myself in that group) are trying to restore liberty to the anglo empirical tradition, or the anglo psychological tradition. The reason being that Ghetto Ethics may be useful between states, but they are insufficient for the formation of a high trust polity. Unfortunately, the wealth of literature they produced sounds all well and good to some of us, but to conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) they sound completely immoral. And people like Walter Block constantly advocating the morality of things like blackmail, or the right of extortion, simply make the case for liberty worse.

    So I’ll argue that Vijay Krishnan’s positioning is OK in the sense that it’s true but insufficient to help the curious mind understand the moral content of these different philosophical traditions and the method in which they’re argumentatively structured. The better answer would be that these groups use parts of this spectrum of arguments:
    1. Sentimental (emotional intuition)
    2. Mythical (metaphor)
    3. Historical (analogy)
    4. Psychological (moral arguments = classical liberals)
    5. Rational ( continentals, ghetto cosompolitans, leftists of all stripes)
    6. Empirical (scientific and economic arguments – anglos)

    These groups rely on some combination of arguments, with only the last three combined as something bordering on scientific.

    Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Hoppe tried to reconcile their continental backgrounds with anglo-analytic arguments and economics. But they did not rely on science. Instead argued against science. But they didn’t have the evidence we have today.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-Bleeding-Heart-Libertarians-How-do-they-differ-from-Libertarians