Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • AMERICAN POLICY IN A NUTSHELL American policy (frustratingly) demonstrates rathe

    AMERICAN POLICY IN A NUTSHELL

    American policy (frustratingly) demonstrates rather than explicitly states, that you may have any government you willingly elect. But if you willingly elect a government that does not adhere to the charter of human rights both internally and externally; or if that government acts as a bad citizen in the network of finance and trade, then you and your government will be punished for the choice of the government you have elected, and you will be punished repeatedly and severely until you choose to elect a government that respects the charter of human rights and acts as a good citizen in the network of finance and trade.

    They only talk about the carrot, but not the stick. They don’t do much distribution of carrots, but they distribute sticks all-the-live-long day.

    That paragraph should be required as a warning label on all US diplomats, messages, goods, commercials, movies, passports, tickets, whatever we export. Just like we require warnings on cigarettes.

    The USA is not a country. It’s a corporation. That corporation runs an empire. That empire controls the finance and trade system worldwide. We are all consumers of that system. In the main, it’s a better system than most that have existed. But the quality of that system is declining rapidly.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-22 09:57:00 UTC

  • TRUTH: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. AND NO LOGICAL ARGUMENT IS EITHER. (reposted from el

    TRUTH: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. AND NO LOGICAL ARGUMENT IS EITHER.

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    My definition of Truth under Scientific Realism, is that any notion of Truth whatsoever can only exist if we say it is a) Performative, consisting of b) Correspondence (external correspondence) and c) Coherence (internal consistency). And that all other truth claims are analogies to some subset of these properties.

    Further:

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-22 07:11:00 UTC

  • PARLOR GAME, GENTEEL, LIBERTARIAN SURRENDER MONKEYS Parlor Game, genteel, libert

    PARLOR GAME, GENTEEL, LIBERTARIAN SURRENDER MONKEYS

    Parlor Game, genteel, libertarian surrender monkeys. Gah! You cannot seduce the renters and free riders into liberty. You’re just generating your own reality distortion field in a pathetic desperate hope to surround yourself with crumbs of positive, bias-confirming signals entirely of your own creation.

    The truth is radical: liberty is obtained at the point of a piercing metal object, for the good of man, over the vehement objection of those who would choose an easier path through life by parasitic conquest of those of us willing and able to pay the high cost of our liberty.

    There is no possible discount on liberty. We cannot obtain it by genteel argument. It is an unnatural if desirable state of affairs. And the lie that humans desire liberty rather than humans desire consumption perpetuates the myth that we can obtain our liberty at a discount. We cannot. They do not.

    Liberty is perhaps a matter for ratio-scientific argument on the institutions necessary for its construction and preservation.

    But the net requirement for liberty is the same: the organized use of violence by a liberty seeking minority to produce private property rights for their own benefit, and the benefit of others, against the will of those who would seek to construct EXTRACTIVE institutions for the benefits of themselves and the deception of others.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-22 03:01:00 UTC

  • NOT ONLY ATLAS SHRUGS The average anglo american male acts as if he’s an owner o

    NOT ONLY ATLAS SHRUGS

    The average anglo american male acts as if he’s an owner of the commons, even if he doesn’t express it that way. His ‘civic’ cultural values are inherited.

    But, what if, instead of walking around constantly caring for the commons in both physical and behavioral contexts, those same men, ceased to care about, maintain, defend, or care about those commons. And instead, like the non-germanic world, treated the commons as something not their responsibility, not worthy of their attention, not worthy of their sacrifice.

    I mean, thats how the rest of the world works. Why not here?

    Why is it that northern europeans developed the universal commons, an the rest of people didn’t?

    John Galt doesn’t have to disappear. He doesn’t have to stop working. He just has to stop caring.

    And, so, are we seeing John Galt expressed in the actions of men?

    We are. Not in elites. In common men. Not by active rebellion. But by simply ‘opting out’.

    The most destructive acton we can take, is not revolution.

    It’s just not caring any more.

    Feminism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-21 13:56:00 UTC

  • APOLOGIES TO LIBERTARIANS: BUT WE’RE IN THIS FOR THE SPECIES. 🙂 I know. I’m goi

    APOLOGIES TO LIBERTARIANS: BUT WE’RE IN THIS FOR THE SPECIES. 🙂

    I know. I’m going to alienate some of my Anarcho Capitalist friends by slaying their false gods, and actively depreciating the value of their intellectual investments.

    I’m sorry. Liberty is on life support. We’re in this for the species.

    I’m out to reform libertarianism. To return liberty to it’s aristocratic origins. To save liberty from extinction.

    The source of property is the organized application of violence to suppress criminal, unethical, immoral, and corrupt behavior.

    Property is the result of that organized application of violence in the suppression of criminal, unethical, immoral, and corrupt behavior.

    Property is not the cause. It is the consequence.

    The greatest act of heroism a man engage in, is the use of violence to suppress criminal, unethical, immoral, and corrupt behavior, such that we possess freedom, property rights, in the absence of criminal, unethical, immoral, and corrupt behavior.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-20 09:17:00 UTC

  • CHOICE WORDS AGAINST SOCIALISM (expanded) In the context of intellectual history

    CHOICE WORDS AGAINST SOCIALISM

    (expanded)

    In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”.

    The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each.

    Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning.

    Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception.

    So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible.

    The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably.

    The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception.

    The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants.

    The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production.

    Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience.

    If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-20 07:50:00 UTC

  • THE LIES OF THE IRRATIONALS Conflating fact, value and preference : Marx and Mar

    THE LIES OF THE IRRATIONALS

    Conflating fact, value and preference : Marx and Marxists

    Conflating action and perception : Heidegger and Postmoderns

    Lies, lies, lies. All lies.

    If someone cannot state something to you in operational language they are either lying to you, or they don’t know what they’re talking about.

    LIFE CYLCE OF OF THEORIES

    0) PROBLEM: I may understand a problem.

    1) THEORY: I may have a theory of how to solve the problem.

    2) TEST OF INTERNAL CONSISTENCY: I man be able to construct a ‘tool’ for the solution of a problem.

    3) TEST OF EXTERNAL CORRESPONDENCE: I may be able to use a tool, and understand how it came to be.

    4) PRODUCTION (HABITUATION): I may use a tool but not understand how it came to be to either solve the problem or avoid the problem.

    5) DISTRIBUTION (SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION): I may may unknowingly rely on a tool to avoid a problem, AND NOT know how that tool came to be, or the problem.

    6) COMMODITIZATION (METAPHYSICAL ASSUMPTION): I may be ignorant of a tool, not how to use it, or how it came to be, but exist in a world where all of us avoid the problem for which the tool was intended and designed.

    The problem is that by the time we get to COMMODITIZATION, I’m know sure we can call what we’re doing ‘knowledge’. It’s just a habit. An informational instinct, rather than biological instinct.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-19 11:12:00 UTC

  • Over the past five or six years I’ve wondered how to measure the ability of huma

    Over the past five or six years I’ve wondered how to measure the ability of human beings to identify relations. We know that it’s hard work and there is a limit. We know that we must be able to construct those relations in a fairly short period of time. But, how do we measure it?

    I didn’t think it was possible. But now I think it might be.

    Sure, IQ is still a loose proxy. But it describes our relative differences, it does not tell us enough (that I am aware of) about how to weigh the different types of content other than verbal and mathematical. While I don’t discount empathic intelligence, I dont think it tells us much of value, about our minds, even if it’s utilitarian in practice.

    The question I’m struggling with is, that given our sort of fascination with ideal types, and given the clear necessity for logics (instrumentation) and our clear inability to think in increasingly complex numbers of dimensions without the help of cartesian or three dimensional models, and given our need to name functions (sets of operations) there is some sort of limit that I cannot put my arms quite around. But I am fairly certain if I struggle with that I will be able to eventually answer.

    We have IQ, and response time. We know that it only takes about 300 words to articulate all human experiences. We know that we can load terms, phrases, sentences, explanations and narratives, almost infinitely. But we also know that at some point we lose the ability to reconstruct or deconstruct those terms. So how do we measure that?

    What is the objective, experiential difference between concepts?

    I know that figuring out that property was the sort of unit of commensurability helps get to a solution. But what is that solution?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-19 09:44:00 UTC

  • LUXURY VERSUS NECESSITY IN ETHICS : PARLOR GAMES VS POLITICS The difference betw

    LUXURY VERSUS NECESSITY IN ETHICS : PARLOR GAMES VS POLITICS

    The difference between the structure of my arguments, and the more common of those in moral philosophy, is one that is common in western philosophy. Because western philosophy was created and developed by its aristocratic classes, and those classes that performed sufficiently to afford the luxury of philosophy, and sought enfranchisement.

    Namely: necessity.

    Marx, for all his error, does not make this mistake, nor does perhaps our most influential moral philosopher: Adam Smith against whom Marx, like Freud against Nietzsche, Marx is a reactionary.

    So, the difference in our approaches to philosophy, is that I start with necessity, and then choose preference from the available options.

    From that position I take the mutually moral and scientific requirements that (a) it is only moral to compel necessities not preferences. (b) the only moral preferential political action is one that others voluntarily comply with. (c) the evidence is that most of our attempts to interfere with social orders, other than increasing participation in them, has proven to be a failure when we attempt to achieve ends, rather than provide means.

    There are many preferences that we could seek to pursue, the externalities of which are counter productive to the prosperity that decreases the possibility of choices.

    As such, philosophical discourse on luxuries is interesting. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that what we are discussing is the luxuries that our implementation of necessities has made possible.

    Discussing luxuries is a nice parlor game. It is like young men fantasizing about which supercar they can buy if they save for the next ten years. But I do not work on philosophy for entertainment. I work on it for the purpose of identifying possible solutions to looming problems: what is necessary for continued expansion of our ability to cooperate in a division of knowledge and labor so vast that we can exist with such wealth?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-19 08:54:00 UTC

  • The ongoing struggle to extend in-group trust to out-group members. Or, the ongo

    The ongoing struggle to extend in-group trust to out-group members.

    Or, the ongoing struggle to extend the cooperation demonstrated between consanguineous relations, to beyond those relations, such that it is possible for us to evolve a division of knowledge and labor, in which there is as little risk of misappropriation of our efforts in the market, as there is within the consanguineous family. While inside the family free riding is a form of mutual insurance, manageable by threat of deprivation and ostracization, the fact remains that one’s genetic kin prosper even at the cost of unequal distribution of gains and losses. But outside the kin, the same free riding, and unequal distribution of gains and losses, is neither of benefit to kin, nor controllable by ostracization and deprivation. There is always another group to prey upon if one is mobile enough. And it takes but a minority of predators engaging in immoral activity to render all external trust intolerable, and thereby undermine the people’s economy, polity, and competitive survival.

    Simple property

    If it was hard to create the institution of simple-private-property such that we could prosecute and suppress the crimes of violence and theft.

    Low trust private property

    If it was hard to create the institution of low-trust private property such that we could prosecute and suppress the crimes of fraud and blackmail.

    High trust warrantied private property

    It was hard to create the institution of high-trust, warrantied, private property such that we could prosecute and suppress the crimes of fraud by omission, negligence, and externalization.

    High Trust Political Institutions

    It was hard to create the formal institutions of high political trust american classical liberalism in an attempt to suppress corruption in government, all forms of free riding.

    “Perfect-Trust” Informal and Formal Institutions

    So, the why would it not be even more difficult to create formal and informal institutions such that we could prosecute and suppress the crimes of deception by obscurantism, mysticism and loading?

    Because cooperation across reproductive strategies is impossible without trust that operates independently of our differences in property rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-16 12:02:00 UTC