Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • LIBERTY FOR SMART PEOPLE The Dark Enlightenment is the next step in a libertaria

    LIBERTY FOR SMART PEOPLE

    The Dark Enlightenment is the next step in a libertarian’s intellectual development. It’s where we end up when we see that man does not act as homo-economicus except in a rothbardian dream world.

    It took thirty years to abandon rothbard’s ethics of the anarchic ghetto and to turn our attention back to aristocratic monarchy. That was thirty years too long.

    But without rothbard’s interesting combination of errors and insights, aristocracy might have continued to be lost in conservative religio-moral pseudo-intellectual nonsense-speak.

    The Dark Enlightenment embraces the natural sciences, rather than rejecting them and relying on the absurd proposition of the a priori.

    But the Dark Enlightenment is not as philosophically rigorous – which is to be expected for a movement started just a few years ago.

    Time to add the philosophical rigor of libertarianism (and marxism) to the Dark Enlightenment.

    Time to construct liberty for smart people.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-02 09:48:00 UTC

  • WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POST

    WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POSTMODERN LIE

    WHY IS TERRORISM USEFUL?

    1 – It’s inexpensive.

    2 – It only requires a small number of people.

    3 – It doesn’t require coordination of activity.

    4 – It gets a LOT of attention for very little effort.

    5 – It both influences policy and modifies public perception.

    6 – It encourages sympathizers and imitators by granting them a vehicle for self image, status, perception of power, and identity.

    7 – It illustrates the inherent weakness of the state and state actors (it dispels the illusion of control)

    8 – It creates intolerable political, public, and economic stress even if it causes little real damage to property.

    “TERRORISM IS THE BEST ADVERTISING STRATEGY, EVER.”

    Worse: And it’s fun. You have to grasp that it’s empowering. It’s exhilarating. Or you can’t understand the motivation for participating in it. Most of us walk through life feeling powerless. Radicals don’t.

    Two guys, one car, and random shooting almost did almost as much damage to the economy as the spring 2008 rise in oil prices. Terrorism is effectively employed by revolutionaries and reactionaries internally, and terrorists and state sponsored terrorists.

    PURVEYORS OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    – State Actors (War/Warriors/Soldiers)

    – State Sponsored Private Actors (state sponsored terrorists)

    – External (out-group) private actors (terrorists)

    – Internal (in-group) private actors (radicals, revolutionaries)

    THE USE OF POSTMODERN VERBAL OBSCURANTISM TO JUSTIFY THE CORPORATE STATE

    1) It’s an abuse of the terms “terrorist” or “terrorism” to apply them to internal actors, because it grants the assumption of legitimacy to the state, and the pejorative illegitimacy of the actor.

    I no case is an external (out group) actor a revolutionary. In no case is an in-group member a terrorist.

    2) the problem of stating in-group and out-group members only emerges under state corporatism and it’s advocacy of multiculturalism as a means of importing low cost labor to support aging social systems. Or in the USA where racial divisions have been a source of conflict since the founding of the government.

    The use of ‘terrorism’ for internal actors is another “postmodernism”: a linguistic contrivance to obscure the causal properties of a conflict, as the natural problems that arise when we attempt to launder causal properties from terms in order to … lie.

    Postmodern obscurantism – the effort to justify the multi-cultural state and the socialist program – is the reason for this false dilemma. There is no difficulty in defining terrorism, as we can see above. Instead, there is an obvious falsehood in the definition of a corporate democratic state: it is impossible for groups with different reproductive strategies, the associated signals and mythos, the associated allocations of property rights, and the different capabilities those groups possess in organizing and conducting production, to cooperate in political systems under majority rule, since by definition such a system imposes a monopoly set of definitions of property rights and obligations – when property rights allocations must reflect the reproductive strategies of the groups.

    As such, without the false assumption of the legitimacy of state corporatism, then the original definitions stand.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 14:04:00 UTC

  • THANK YOU -ALL- FOR LETTING ME TEST MY RECENT IDEAS ON YOU AND YOUR PATIENCE 🙂

    THANK YOU -ALL- FOR LETTING ME TEST MY RECENT IDEAS ON YOU AND YOUR PATIENCE 🙂

    It was necessary. It’s the only way to test ideas that I know of. I just construct arguments. They’re like little robot gladiators. If they succeed we learn, if they fail we learn. But the only way to test your own understanding is to argue your points, and see if they survive.

    UNITING FACTIONS

    I should, at this point, be able to achieve my goals, and unite the Conservative (normative and moral), Dark Enlightenment (scientific and political) and Anarcho Capitalist (economic and philosophical) movements in a common rational, political and moral language.

    Each group is ‘right’ about something and ‘wrong’ about other things. This is because each group gives greater weight to some social properties and less to others.

    POLITICAL IDENTITIES

    The rough strategy involves giving each group an identity or specialization, and using propertarian language as a means of working together, so that each group does not have to master, or even value, the biases of the other.

    Although the work of doing all that ought to be a bit daunting. Mostly because intellect is not evenly distributed across these groups. It’s hard enough to have a challenging talk with libertarians, but …. you know, having that talk with conservatives, and some DE folks, is an exercise in futility.

    But reality is created by chanting. Repetition allows us to gradually connect the networks of neurons needed to understand associations.

    The grammar of this language is pretty simple. It takes some getting used to. Because we’re linguistically lazy, and formal logic is linguistically burdensome, in exchange for argumentative clarity, and praxeological testability.

    I HAD TO TEST MY ARGUMENTS AGAINST ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS TO REPLACE THEM WITH PROPERTARIAN ETHICS.

    I’m sure that I frustrated some libertarians. No one likes the slaughter of their sacred cows. Even though, it’s pretty clear that I’ve forever dispatched Rothbardian ethics from rational consideration.

    I put a bullet in the NAP/PrivateProperty that it cannot recover from. The wound is mortal. It just depends on how long it will take for the idea to die.

    I’ve demonstrated that either the NAP is the wrong test of violation of property, OR that the definition of property is insufficient in scope for rational use in a polity.

    In propertarianism I have taken the approach of extending the definition of property and maintaining the principle of aggression against it because I have based, correctly, the source of property rights on the organized use of violence, and aggression is consistent with that argumentative logic.

    I HAD TO TEST OPERATIONALISM AS AN ATTACK ON PLATONISM IN ORDER TO CREATE UNIVERSAL ETHICS, AND CONVERT PRAXEOLOGY INTO THE MISSING BRANCH OF LOGIC.

    It was actually fascinating to see people in math and science DESPERATELY cling to their platonic arealism with the same fervor that mystics justify their defense of a supernatural god.

    I’m still …. really… awed, that anyone presented with constructive(intuitionist,realist,operational) arguments would even for a MOMENT question that platonism was merely a crutch for the weak mind.

    But operationalism and the logic of cooperation (praxeology) form the missing logic with which we begin to see all philosophy as a theory of action.

    SO THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

    I guess I have to get serious now about (a) contributing to the other political dialogs, (b) introducing them to these ideas, and (c) producing the grammar and (d) finishing the first book (at least).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 03:54:00 UTC

  • If you get all your neighbors together, sing a few songs, march in a parade, joi

    If you get all your neighbors together, sing a few songs, march in a parade, join in a feast, participate in a festival, celebrate a holiday, listen to speeches, watch plays, or play games, then pretty much it’s a good thing at all times. It pretty much doesn’t matter what songs are about, the reason for the parade, the food you eat, the origins of the festival, the content of the speeches, the plot of the play, or the rules of the game.

    What matters is that everyone feels the joy of all these many substitutes for running with the pack – where we act as one. As a tribe, pack, flock, school … a single body and soul.

    That’s what ‘church’ is for.

    Now, I would prefer that w sang songs of our pagan and heroic past, toasted our generals and politicians, celebrated the festivals of our scientists, philosophers and poets, gave speeches to current good deeds, watched plays about the civic virtues, and played games that celebrated our victories.

    But we can do non of that living in commercial rabbit warrens, protecting our status signal nest, and insulating ourselves from the reality of our irrelevance independent of one another.

    In the end of it all, you cannot be happy without people whom you love and are loved by. Everything else is just decoration.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-30 09:08:00 UTC

  • LEARNING: WHAT WAS RIGHT FROM HOPPE AND HAYEK. WHAT WAS WRONG FROM ROTHBARD I le

    LEARNING: WHAT WAS RIGHT FROM HOPPE AND HAYEK. WHAT WAS WRONG FROM ROTHBARD

    I learned pretty much everything that made a marginal difference in my understanding of what was right in libertarianism from Hoppe and Hayek. I learned what was WRONG with libertarianism I learned from Rothbard.

    Unfortunately, Hans is romantically attached to Rothbard for justifiable reasons. Something which pains me pretty much every day. Because it’s unnecessary, and detrimental to both our cause, and to his legacy.

    Socialism isn’t meaningful for us to devote intellectual energy to any longer. Postmodernism and Feminism are the weapons being used in the collusion between academia and the state to deprive us of property right. Rothbard’s ethics aren’t meaningful any longer. They were an ideological rather than ratio-scientific means of argument no better than those of the postmodernists. Other than his historical work, his philosophical work is ideological drivel.

    But the Hoppeian solution to the problem of institutions *IS* relevant. Anarchism in the sense of a purely normative social order isn’t relevant any longer – because data confirms that this approach would be against the self interests of the many. But micro-private-government is, and heterogeneous government is, because smaller is better. Bigger is a vehicle for war. But a swiss militia as the afghans have proved, is the most effective means of preventing aggression: men behind every rock – or blade of grass.

    It’s time for a reformation. A cleansing. A meeting of the minds. A council of Nicaea. An expunging of immoral and unethical obscurantist doctrines from the philosophy of liberty.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-29 05:34:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY’S POINTS Libertarianism needs a reformation. The church was an instrumen

    LIBERTY’S POINTS

    Libertarianism needs a reformation.

    The church was an instrument of totalitarianism whose pacifism came from its weakness, not it’s intentions, where were always self interest.

    The Aristocracy ACTED, and the church TALKED.

    The church’s rhetoric is a dialectical competitor to Aristocratic action.

    The church’s arguments cannot be understood EXCEPT as only half of the dialectical argument with Aristocracy.

    The pacifist church could not exist without the warrior caste.

    And liberty cannot exist without a militia.

    A militia do not beg for liberty – they take it by force.

    And by taking it with force, they make it for others.

    The source of liberty was, is, and always will be the organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms.

    Property is the result of that prohibition on free riding – ‘cheating’.

    Property is not the cause of liberty, and it is not created by ‘appeals to reason’.

    Property is the consequence of the organized suppression of ‘cheating’ in all its forms.

    And Rothbardian ethics fully endorse and justify ‘cheating’.

    THAT IS WHY WE FAIL

    We need leadership with solutions that will work. Not tolerance.

    Appeals to tolerance are merely a symptom of our lack of good philosophical arguments.

    Our lack of good philosophical arguments is evidenced by our failure to enfranchise the worlds moral specialists: conservatives.

    Conservatives are the moral specialists, not us. And we can, and have, measured that fact empirically.

    But conservatives cannot reform their ancient moral code because their philosophy is metaphorical, not rhetorical.

    Their moral arguments are not open to rational criticism.

    Which is why they retreat into religion.

    And we are not, with Rothbard’s ethics, either giving them a tool to express their morality in rational terms, so that THEY can reform their ideas.

    By failing our role as the intellectual leaders of aristocratic egalitarian liberty, we drive the conservatives into religion as their only defense against the state.

    Our failures: The failure of libertarianism. The failure to obtain liberty.

    The failure to constrain the expansion of the state.

    All of this is our fault.

    We fail not because the world does not understand us.

    It is because our prophet was terribly, terribly, immorally wrong.

    The source of liberty – property rights – is the enfranchisement of any individual who will use the threat of violence to suppress free riding – cheating – anywhere and everywhere.

    And all other arguments are cheap and failed attempts to obtain liberty at a discount by relying on the empty verbalism of the church.

    LIBERTY REQUIRES POINTED WEAPONS, POINTED ARGUMENTS, AND THE WILLINGNESS TO USE THEM BOTH.

    Everything else, is just a cheap and ineffective technique for trying to obtain liberty at a discount.

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-28 02:09:00 UTC

  • PROPERTARIANISM Types of Property The anarchist libertarians have artificially n

    PROPERTARIANISM

    Types of Property

    The anarchist libertarians have artificially narrowed the concept of property to suit their desired ends. Property exists in those forms that people ACT as if it exists. If the anarchists choose to suggest otherwise, they refute their own arguments for the Praxeological necessity for the institution of property. Humans demonstrably act as though there are four categories of property:

    I. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property

    Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”

    Mates (access to sex/reproduction)

    Children (genetic reproduction)

    Familial Relations (security)

    Non-Familial Relations (utility)

    Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties)

    Racial property (racial ties)

    Organizational ties (work)

    Knowledge ties (skills, crafts)

    Status and Class (reputation)

    II. Several (Personal) Property

    Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”

    Physical Body

    Actions and Time

    Memories, Concepts and Identities: tools that enable us to plan and act. In the consumer economy this includes brands.

    Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over.

    III. Artificial Property

    Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent again, upon the ORIGIN question above. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:

    Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership)

    Monopoly Property such as intellectual property. (grants of monopoly within a geography)

    Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography).

    IV. Institutional (Community) Property

    Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”

    Informal (Normative) Institutions: Our norms: manners, ethics and morals. Informal institutional property is nearly impossible to quantify and price. The costs are subjective and consists of forgone opportunities.

    Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. Formal institutional property is easy to price. costs are visible. And the productivity of the social order is at least marginally measurable.

    VOLUNTARY TRANSFER

    Types of Voluntary Transfer

    i – Self-Eschange: (for perks)

    ii – Other-Exchange (everything is exchange)

    iii – Commons-Exchange (contribution to the commons)

    Constraints on Voluntary Transfer

    1. Symmetry (Ethics): Fully informed exchange. The responsibility or lack of responsibility for symmetric knowledge in an exchange. Stated as “In any exchange the seller has an ethical obligation to mitigate fraud from the asymmetry of knowledge.” Classical liberals and Christian authors advocate symmetrical-knowledge ethics. Anarchists and Jewish authors advocate asymmetrical-knowledge ethics. Rothbard and Block are asymmetrical advocates. Most classical liberals lack the knowledge of Rothbardian/Hoppian ethics necessary to articulate their values in Propertarian terms. However, the classical liberals as well as the Hayekians, both advocate symmetrical-knowledge ethics whether they articulate the ideas effectively or not.

    2. Warranty: Implied warranty is a derivation of Symmetrical Knowledge Ethics above. Expressed as: “In any exchange the seller must warrant his goods and services to prevent fraud by asymmetry of information.” Classical liberal and Christian authors imply warranty. Anarchist and Jewish authors expressly deny warranty. (I address this elsewhere as the bazaar exchange ethic vs the warrior exchange ethic.)

    3. Contribution (value added): You must add value to any item exchanged for profit, and you certainly may not profit from others distress or harm.

    4. Externalities: “No exchange, action or inaction may cause involuntary transfers from others”. Whether or not there is a prohibition against all involuntary external transfers (classical liberal and Christian authors), or a prohibition only against state conduct of involuntary transfers (anarchist and Jewish authors).

    5. Exclusion (Ostracization) Whether individuals can aggregate into groups have the right of exclusion. That is, to prohibit individuals from a defined area. While all seem to agree that individuals must have the right of passage in some way, others deny groups from forming a boundary and in effect prohibiting immigration.

    INVOLUNTARY TRANSFER (PARASITISM)

    Types of Involuntary Transfer

    i-Direct Interpersonal

    – Murder

    – Violence

    – Destruction

    – Theft

    – Theft by Fraud

    – Theft by Fraud by omission

    ii – Indirect Interpersonal

    – Theft by Obstruction

    – Theft by Externalization

    iii – Indirect Social

    – Theft by Free riding

    – Theft by privatization

    – Theft by socialization

    iv – Conspiratorial Social

    – Theft by Rent seeking

    – Theft by Complexity, Rule, Process or Obscurantism

    – Theft by Extortion

    – Murder, Destruction and Theft by War

    v – Conquest

    – Immigration

    – Overbreeding

    – Religious Expansion

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-27 14:12:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIAN SHOULDN’T MEAN “STUPID” What libertarian means to me is: (a) a prefe

    LIBERTARIAN SHOULDN’T MEAN “STUPID”

    What libertarian means to me is: (a) a preference for liberty above all other political preferences, and (b) that all rights can be reduced to property rights, and (c) that I actively pursue obtaining liberty for myself and other a daily basis by sacrificing my time and effort to pursue it.

    LIBERTARIAN SHOULDN’T MEAN “WRONG”

    It does NOT mean that I agree with rothbardian ethics. Or that I think rothbard’s strategy of relying on the work of the french anarchist and jewish resistance movements, instead of the process by which property evolved in the high trust societies. In fact, I am pretty confident rothbard was a little bit right, but damagingly wrong.

    LIBERTARIAN SHOULDN’T MEAN “FAILED”

    So if libertarian means failing, and being wrong, then I’m not libertarian.

    LIBERTARIAN SHOULDN’T MEAN “ROTHBARDIAN”

    If you mean ‘rothbardian’ then no I am not a rothbardian since that would be irrational.

    LIBERTY IS THE PRODUCT OF ARISTOCRACY:

    The organize application of violence for the purpose of suppressing all involuntary extractions – including criminal, unethical, immoral, corrupt and conspiratorial actions. All of them.

    PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE WHAT’S LEFT ONCE YOU SUPPRESS ALL CHEATING.

    Property rights are what remain once we do that. You can suppress less, and have weaker property rights, and suppres more and have stronger property rights, but the velocity of your economy and therefore your wealth is predicated on the degree of suppression of involuntary extraction you suppress through the organized application of violence.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-23 16:03:00 UTC

  • Truth: No Man Is An Island. No Logical Argument Is Either.

    My definition of Truth under Scientific Realism, is that any notion of Truth can only exist if we say it is a) Performative, consisting of b) Correspondence and c) Coherence (internal consistency). And that all other statements are analogies to some subset of these properties. And that d) formal theories of truth (the ‘logics’) are each subsets of Coherence, which test certain properties of any “True” and therefore Performative, Correspondent and Coherent statement. And that e) property and involuntary transfer constitute a missing logic of cooperation, that renders all transfers open to analysis and criticism. And that f) praxeology constitutes a missing logic of the rationality of decisions and incentives, that renders all actions open to subjective testing. But because humans are marginally indifferent in their rationality and incentives, such subjective, SYMPATHETIC testing functions as an objective test of the rationality of incentives. And that: g) Constructive (meaning socially constructive, including Consensus theories) and Pragmatic theories of truth are failed attempts at obscurant coercion (theft) by adherents to enlightenment democratic equalitarianism, socialists, postmodernists, and totalitarian humanists. Just as the Rawlsian veil is yet another attempt at obscuring involuntary transfers, while relying on the impossibility of human judgement to make such decisions as would be required to achieve the abstract concept of ‘justice’. As such I view truth as Performative (attestation) constrained by and consisting of { i) Correspondent (with reality); ii) Cohesive (internally consistent and formal); iii) Identitarian (categories, properties and names) iv) Propertarian (cooperative moral action); v) Praxeological (rational action) } properties – each subset set of properties requiring separate logics for the isolation and analysis of each subset. Conversely, no ‘complete attest-able truth’ can be constructed in any subset without consideration of all. It may be (as in the case of any of the formal logics) that no external dependency is present (although I cannot think of one). But I am unaware of any formal logic without external dependency. This is a non contradictory, fully explanatory theory of the criteria for truth. And so far I am unable to formalize a criticism of CR, because for all intents and purposes that I can imagine, the CR definition of truth is platonic and non existent, and impossible. Since the only truth that can exist is attestation: the constant reduction in our own errors as we try to describe the properties of the universe. We can know what is false. That is our only certainty. But we can never know a platonic truth other than a tautology, because only tautological statements are complete. A complete statement is not open to attestation. If any statement is not tautological, and therefore incomplete, it is open to attestation. But how can we say an attestation is meaningful if it’s tautological? We are, with the concept of truth, improving our attestations about the universe. This is what we improve. That is the purpose and function of truth. Since only by improving our attestations and constantly testing them can we improve our actions, and by our actions, continue to increasingly outwit the deterministic processes in the universe by constructing minor alterations to that universe such that we can make use of the universe as we will. If I am to defend the claim that obscurantism must be prohibited from political speech (argument), then I cannot make this claim on irrefutable terms, without at least addressing the relationship between the logical disciplines, and the very nature of philosophy, as a moral endeavor. No man is an island. No argument in any sub discipline is either.

  • Truth: No Man Is An Island. No Logical Argument Is Either.

    My definition of Truth under Scientific Realism, is that any notion of Truth can only exist if we say it is a) Performative, consisting of b) Correspondence and c) Coherence (internal consistency). And that all other statements are analogies to some subset of these properties. And that d) formal theories of truth (the ‘logics’) are each subsets of Coherence, which test certain properties of any “True” and therefore Performative, Correspondent and Coherent statement. And that e) property and involuntary transfer constitute a missing logic of cooperation, that renders all transfers open to analysis and criticism. And that f) praxeology constitutes a missing logic of the rationality of decisions and incentives, that renders all actions open to subjective testing. But because humans are marginally indifferent in their rationality and incentives, such subjective, SYMPATHETIC testing functions as an objective test of the rationality of incentives. And that: g) Constructive (meaning socially constructive, including Consensus theories) and Pragmatic theories of truth are failed attempts at obscurant coercion (theft) by adherents to enlightenment democratic equalitarianism, socialists, postmodernists, and totalitarian humanists. Just as the Rawlsian veil is yet another attempt at obscuring involuntary transfers, while relying on the impossibility of human judgement to make such decisions as would be required to achieve the abstract concept of ‘justice’. As such I view truth as Performative (attestation) constrained by and consisting of { i) Correspondent (with reality); ii) Cohesive (internally consistent and formal); iii) Identitarian (categories, properties and names) iv) Propertarian (cooperative moral action); v) Praxeological (rational action) } properties – each subset set of properties requiring separate logics for the isolation and analysis of each subset. Conversely, no ‘complete attest-able truth’ can be constructed in any subset without consideration of all. It may be (as in the case of any of the formal logics) that no external dependency is present (although I cannot think of one). But I am unaware of any formal logic without external dependency. This is a non contradictory, fully explanatory theory of the criteria for truth. And so far I am unable to formalize a criticism of CR, because for all intents and purposes that I can imagine, the CR definition of truth is platonic and non existent, and impossible. Since the only truth that can exist is attestation: the constant reduction in our own errors as we try to describe the properties of the universe. We can know what is false. That is our only certainty. But we can never know a platonic truth other than a tautology, because only tautological statements are complete. A complete statement is not open to attestation. If any statement is not tautological, and therefore incomplete, it is open to attestation. But how can we say an attestation is meaningful if it’s tautological? We are, with the concept of truth, improving our attestations about the universe. This is what we improve. That is the purpose and function of truth. Since only by improving our attestations and constantly testing them can we improve our actions, and by our actions, continue to increasingly outwit the deterministic processes in the universe by constructing minor alterations to that universe such that we can make use of the universe as we will. If I am to defend the claim that obscurantism must be prohibited from political speech (argument), then I cannot make this claim on irrefutable terms, without at least addressing the relationship between the logical disciplines, and the very nature of philosophy, as a moral endeavor. No man is an island. No argument in any sub discipline is either.