Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • We humans are notoriously challenged with multi-dimensional problems. We evolved

    We humans are notoriously challenged with multi-dimensional problems. We evolved to run to intercept something running from us, and avoid something running at us – and we further evolved, to throw a rock, spear or arrow at something moving in relation to us. That is a very complex calculation to perform.

    It’s pretty interesting to go through the analysis of why we can only visualize three to five things, and only really remember five to seven, without hard work and mastering certain tricks.

    Our emotions for example seem very complex to us, but they ‘re constructed by as few as three different axis.

    Our personalities probably consist of no more than five or six major determinants, although numbers of properties is often discussed in the thirties.

    So if the number of axis that affect our philosophy is more than two or three it’s no wonder that we have trouble mentally reconciling them. Because it’s possible that we cannot usefully reduce these axis any further.

    But we try anyway. We strive for the simplistic ideal type at all times. But we fail. We sometimes under pressure consider a spectrum. And at others under confusion consider two or three axis (say, like the Nolan chart). But beyond the three dimensional we tend to fail.

    AXIS 1 (mind)

    [reality]

    sensation

    memory

    perception (awareness? awareness of change in state?)

    searching

    imagination

    AXIS 3 (instrumentation)

    identity (categorizing, naming – including numbering)

    logic (language of justification, argument or maybe persuasion?).

    relation (mathematics: logic of constant relations – ie: axiomatic)

    causality (physics: logic of constant causal relations – ie:determinism)

    organization (economics: logic of inconstant relations)

    AXIS 3 (truth)

    inconsistency

    internal consistency

    external consistency (correspondence)

    truth (internal and external correspondence)

    identity

    AXIS 4 (action and population)

    observation (accretion)

    action (choice)

    cooperation. (contract)

    spontaneous cooperation (market)

    unconscious cooperation (metaphysical value judgements)

    AXIS 5 (incentive)

    ignorance

    preference

    priority

    obligation

    necessity

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-16 11:18:00 UTC

  • POLITICAL BIASES AS REFLECTIONS OF THE VALUE OF THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS. Just lik

    POLITICAL BIASES AS REFLECTIONS OF THE VALUE OF THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS.

    Just like Engineers and Creatives think in different universes, libertarians and communalists think in different universes.

    For a libertarian (most of whom are very bright) other people’s opinions and knowledge aren’t very useful. Neither are social rewards. Or signals.

    For a communalist, (most of whom are around average) other people’s opinions and knowledge, are comforting, helpful, useful and necessary.

    This difference in the perception of the value of others thinking, and therefore the SIGNAL value of the approval of others, explains the political biases of the different groups.

    Likewise the dunning-kreuger curve demonstrates why the very lowest classes feel that the world actively conspires against them, because in fact, their opinions, approval, signals aren’t of any value except to satisfy the confirmation bias of peers as a defense against self loathing.

    We seem to think these differences are choices.

    They aren’t. They’re incentives. They’re logical. They’re necessary.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 17:04:00 UTC

  • TO “RETIRE” THE CONCEPT OF INFINITY (and cantor’s contribution to 20th century m

    http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/12/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement-edge-org?CMP=twt_fdTIME TO “RETIRE” THE CONCEPT OF INFINITY

    (and cantor’s contribution to 20th century mysticism with it)

    from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/12/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement-edge-org?CMP=twt_fd

    —–

    MAX TEGMARK

    Physicist, researcher, precision cosmology; scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute; author of Our Mathematical Universe

    I was seduced by infinity at an early age. Cantor’s diagonality proof that some infinities are bigger than others mesmerised me, and his infinite hierarchy of infinities blew my mind. The assumption that something truly infinite exists in nature underlies every physics course I’ve ever taught at MIT and indeed all of modern physics. But it’s an untested assumption, which raises the question: is it actually true?

    There are in fact two separate assumptions: “infinitely big” and “infinitely small”. By infinitely big, I mean the idea that space can have infinite volume, that time can continue for ever, and that there can be infinitely many physical objects. By infinitely small, I mean the continuum: the idea that even a litre of space contains an infinite number of points, that space can be stretched out indefinitely without anything bad happening, and that there are quantities in nature that can vary continuously. The two are closely related because inflation, the most popular explanation of our big bang, can create an infinite volume by stretching continuous space indefinitely.

    A galaxy photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope

    ‘We don’t actually need the infinite to accurately describe the formation of galaxies.’ Photograph: Scott Camazine/Alamy

    The theory of inflation has been spectacularly successful, and is a leading contender for a Nobel prize. It explained how a subatomic speck of matter transformed into a massive big bang, creating a huge, flat and uniform universe with tiny density fluctuations that eventually grew into today’s galaxies and cosmic large-scale structure, all in beautiful agreement with precision measurements from experiments such as the Planck satellite. But by generically predicting that space isn’t just big, but truly infinite, inflation has also brought about the so-called measure problem, which I view as the greatest crisis facing modern physics. Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this: when we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts that there will be infinitely many copies of you far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome, and despite years of tooth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So strictly speaking, we physicists are no longer able to predict anything at all!

    This means that today’s best theories similarly need a major shakeup, by retiring an incorrect assumption. Which one? Here’s my prime suspect: infinity.

    A rubber band can’t be stretched indefinitely, because although it seems smooth and continuous, that’s merely a convenient approximation: it’s really made of atoms, and if you stretch it too much, it snaps. If we similarly retire the idea that space itself is an infinitely stretchy continuum, then a big snap of sorts stops inflation from producing an infinitely big space, and the measure problem goes away. Without the infinitely small, inflation can’t make the infinitely big, so you get rid of both infinities in one fell swoop – together with many other problems plaguing modern physics, such as infinitely dense black hole singularities and infinities popping up when we try to quantize gravity.

    In the past, many venerable mathematicians expressed scepticism towards infinity and the continuum. The legendary Carl Friedrich Gauss denied that anything infinite really existed, saying “infinity is merely a way of speaking” and “I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics”. In the past century, however, infinity has become mathematically mainstream, and most physicists and mathematicians have become so enamoured of infinity that they rarely question it. Why? Basically, because infinity is an extremely convenient approximation for which we haven’t discovered convenient alternatives. Consider, for example, the air in front of you. Keeping track of the positions and speeds of octillions of atoms would be hopelessly complicated. But if you ignore the fact that air is made of atoms and instead approximate it as a continuum, a smooth substance that has a density, pressure and velocity at each point, you find that this idealised air obeys a beautifully simple equation that explains almost everything we care about: how to build airplanes, how we hear them with soundwaves, how to make weather forecasts, etc. Yet despite all that convenience, air of course isn’t truly continuous. I think it’s the same way for space, time and all the other building blocks of our physical word.

    Let’s face it: despite their seductive allure, we have no direct observational evidence for either the infinitely big or the infinitely small. We speak of infinite volumes with infinitely many planets, but our observable universe contains only about 10 to the power of 89 objects (mostly photons). If space is a true continuum, then to describe even something as simple as the distance between two points requires an infinite amount of information, specified by a number with infinitely many decimal places. In practice, we physicists have never managed to measure anything to more than about 17 decimal places. Yet real numbers with their infinitely many decimals have infested almost every nook and cranny of physics, from the strengths of electromagnetic fields to the wave functions of quantum mechanics: we describe even a single bit of quantum information (qubit) using two real numbers involving infinitely many decimals.

    Not only do we lack evidence for the infinite, but we don’t actually need the infinite to do physics: our best computer simulations, accurately describing everything from the formation of galaxies to tomorrow’s weather to the masses of elementary particles, use only finite computer resources by treating everything as finite. So if we can do without infinity to figure out what happens next, surely nature can too – in a way that’s more deep and elegant than the hacks we use for our computer simulations. Our challenge as physicists is to discover this elegant way and the infinity-free equations describing it – the true laws of physics. To start this search in earnest, we need to question infinity. I’m betting that we also need to let go of it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-12 15:51:00 UTC

  • YOU DON’T HIT WOMEN. Sorry guys, but, yes, we all understand that women are pret

    YOU DON’T HIT WOMEN.

    Sorry guys, but, yes, we all understand that women are pretty much all some degree of crazy. But a far as I can tell it’s their right to be crazy. It may even be a necessity for them. But as long as they aren’t trying to pierce the surface of your body with a foreign object, you don’t hit them.

    Ever. Never ever.

    There are certain costs of doing business so to speak. Ignoring crazy is one of them. Remind women that your life is yours to live and that the only ‘good’ is one that suits both your interests according to your own priorities. There is no abstract good.

    The way it works is, that in the womb, we get brain damaged by the mother, as part of the process of turning off what is female and turning on what is male. What remains is what’s male. And yes, it takes us longer to mature because of that in-utero damage to our brains. We have to sort of ‘grow around’ it to compensate for the damage. In exchange we get to be not-crazy: factual and rational, and perfectly happy in a world with food, beer, and fire to stare at. They get stuck in their world of crazy, empathic, and irrational, so that they can understand children, and be maniacally driven to care for such annoying things as babies (and us).

    So you know, it’s just a cost of doing business.

    You don’t hit them. Ever. You walk away. You keep your own bank accounts, off shore it if you must. But you walk away. Believe it or not there are far more women in this world than men, and they need us more than we need them. ‘Cause we have much lower maintenance costs by our nature. Just how it is. The trend looks like about a third of men, and as much as forty percent will drop out of participation in the work force, and out of self sacrifice for society. (If we aren’t there already to some degree.)

    Let the market do its work.

    Better to be John Galt than a woman-beater.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-12 08:05:00 UTC

  • MATH HAS BEEN FRUITFUL BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST SIMPLE DOMAIN “Naturalists are mot

    MATH HAS BEEN FRUITFUL BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST SIMPLE DOMAIN

    “Naturalists are motivated by the thought that scientific or mathematical standards are the most successful standards we possess.” -S.E.P.

    This is backwards. Philosophical naturalists are skeptical about the current state of science and mathematics, just as they are about the current state of academic philosophy.

    The reason math is the most successful tool we possess is that it is the SIMPLEST of the logics, because math is the tool of constant relations, almost all of which are self defined. (The more math I understand the more ridiculous I find claims about it.) (and its cheap)

    The reason physics is the next most successful tool we possess is that is the next most simple tool we possess for the study of existing constant CAUSAL relations. (And it’s costly)

    The reason biological (genetic) science are the next most successful tool we possess is that after physics, it is the next most simple tool we possess, and both properties and causal relations are extremely complex to determine. (it has been very costly)

    The reason economics (cooperation) is less successful, is that economics does not consist of constant relations, nor CAN it consist of constant relations, nor can we collect data about it at a granular enough level, nor is it testable without altering the course of the experiment. So mathematics fails to assist us in forecasting economics, because science as structured holds to the criteria of prediction. However, it is nothing to be proud of that math and science are predictable, any more than after observing a stone rolling downhill, that further stones will run downhill, since math is the study of constant relations, and the natural world of the physical sciences, outside of evolutionary biology consists of constant relations.

    We do not yet have the equivalent of a mathematics of non-constant relations sufficient to assist in forecasting rather than simply narrating, the economy. However, given that we invent the future, it is very unlikely that we can forecast anything other than the crudely obvious, most of which is in-actionable.

    I would love to be proven wrong, but this appears very unlikely without some external mechanism for thinking about greater systems of causal relations than humans can perceive. Such that if we did possess this technology, and it was capable of useful prediction, it would be indistinguishable from the creation of those outcomes.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-09 12:20:00 UTC

  • Which One Do You Prefer, A Socialist Or Capitalist Economy?

    I WILL DO MY BEST. BUT YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE ANSWER.

    The question poses a false dichotomy. 

    A socialist economy is logically impossible, and demonstrably impossible since the socialist method of production provides neither incentives, nor the pricing system necessary for the competitive satisfaction of wants and needs. We don’t have a choice of a socialist economy.

    Instead, the question is, given that a MIXED economy appears to be necessary to satisfy:
    (a) the requirement for providing people with incentives to participate in needed work regardless of their preference for work;
    AND
    (b )the means of economic calculation and planning in real time provided by money and prices;
    AND
    (c) to provide sufficient redistribution to satisfy the demand for state intervention, and to prevent the lower classes from rebellion, and to reduce the cost of their suppression;
    THEREFORE
    which BIAS do you prefer: i) greater retention of profits in the hands of those who produce it, OR ii) greater distribution of profits to those who do not produce it.  With the understanding that labor is of declining and near zero value, and that ORGANIZING PRODUCTION dynamically in real time under constant risk is the challenging part of the economy, not the labor involved in production which is at best a commodity that is easily replaced.

    The problem does not appear to be which mixed economy, but the intergenerational transfer of wealth dependent upon constant economic growth, while at the same time such redistributive wealth suppresses breeding rates of the most productive individuals.  As such societies must ‘feed the ponzi scheme’ by immigrating a permanent underclass as the native population shrinks.

    The germans have probably developed the superior model: make sure your working class is the worlds best working class, and the upper classes will take care of the rest. The American model looks like a failure since trying to get everyone to join the middle class (of independent professionals) is not possible because not enough people possess the genetic talents to fulfill those positions without training via repetition that is greater in cost than the benefit produced. 

    That is probably the most honest and accurate answer you will find.

    So since I cannot prefer a socialist, and there is no capitalist economy extant, and the only economies that do exist other than the very impoverished countries, are mixed, I prefer a mixed economy, since it is the only choice available. But I prefer one that does not depend on a genetic ponzi scheme.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-one-do-you-prefer-a-socialist-or-capitalist-economy

  • Which One Do You Prefer, A Socialist Or Capitalist Economy?

    I WILL DO MY BEST. BUT YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE ANSWER.

    The question poses a false dichotomy. 

    A socialist economy is logically impossible, and demonstrably impossible since the socialist method of production provides neither incentives, nor the pricing system necessary for the competitive satisfaction of wants and needs. We don’t have a choice of a socialist economy.

    Instead, the question is, given that a MIXED economy appears to be necessary to satisfy:
    (a) the requirement for providing people with incentives to participate in needed work regardless of their preference for work;
    AND
    (b )the means of economic calculation and planning in real time provided by money and prices;
    AND
    (c) to provide sufficient redistribution to satisfy the demand for state intervention, and to prevent the lower classes from rebellion, and to reduce the cost of their suppression;
    THEREFORE
    which BIAS do you prefer: i) greater retention of profits in the hands of those who produce it, OR ii) greater distribution of profits to those who do not produce it.  With the understanding that labor is of declining and near zero value, and that ORGANIZING PRODUCTION dynamically in real time under constant risk is the challenging part of the economy, not the labor involved in production which is at best a commodity that is easily replaced.

    The problem does not appear to be which mixed economy, but the intergenerational transfer of wealth dependent upon constant economic growth, while at the same time such redistributive wealth suppresses breeding rates of the most productive individuals.  As such societies must ‘feed the ponzi scheme’ by immigrating a permanent underclass as the native population shrinks.

    The germans have probably developed the superior model: make sure your working class is the worlds best working class, and the upper classes will take care of the rest. The American model looks like a failure since trying to get everyone to join the middle class (of independent professionals) is not possible because not enough people possess the genetic talents to fulfill those positions without training via repetition that is greater in cost than the benefit produced. 

    That is probably the most honest and accurate answer you will find.

    So since I cannot prefer a socialist, and there is no capitalist economy extant, and the only economies that do exist other than the very impoverished countries, are mixed, I prefer a mixed economy, since it is the only choice available. But I prefer one that does not depend on a genetic ponzi scheme.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-one-do-you-prefer-a-socialist-or-capitalist-economy

  • ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY – EVENTUALLY, IT WILL LOOK LIKE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Academ

    ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY – EVENTUALLY, IT WILL LOOK LIKE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

    Academic philosophy is pretty much a zombie profession. It’s actually humorous to read how bad the papers are. Every few months I just grab a dozen or two and read through them.

    And the consequences speak for themselves: the funding for philosophy departments, and administration’s tendency to group them in with religion has led to the progressive decline of departments.

    Conversely, economics and psychology together have pretty much taken over the social sciences. And that was probably a deterministic outcome, when late in the 19th century the analytical movement made the choice to try to make philosophy into a science, it was a pretty sizable bet that failed. And it was followed by a flurry of attempts to justify socialism in an effort to stay relevant. That failed too.

    It’s not that the study of philosophy has no value, it’s that except for very notable exceptions (Dennett) where philosophers are trying to integrate ethics and the product of scientific investigation, it’s pretty barren – like the study of medieval and ancient literature.

    **And given what I’ve learned from my own work, I’d argue that we can, within at most two generations, solve the problem of the logic of the social sciences. And when we do, I suspect that philosophy will, in practice, look not very much different from the scientific method, with each of the logical systems we have developed: language, logic, math, physics, and economics (cooperation), merely specializations for isolating one property of the universe or another, so that we are capable of reducing it to analogy to experience and therefore understanding it.**

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 17:37:00 UTC

  • THE ASSUMPTIONS OF ‘LIBERALISM’ (AND LIBERTARIANISM) “Libertarianism is applied

    THE ASSUMPTIONS OF ‘LIBERALISM’ (AND LIBERTARIANISM)

    “Libertarianism is applied autism.” – Steve Sailer

    For some reason this phrase affected me pretty deeply.

    UNIVERSAL ENFRANCHISEMENT A GIVEN?

    Libertarianism, as I practice it, and as I believe Mises and Hayek practiced their ‘liberalism’ (universal enfranchisement), is the scientific pursuit of political theory using the system of measurement we call economics, and the objective of material prosperity. Which was of course, the great achievement of the innovations of capitalism, empiricism (of which capitalism is a member) and the harnessing fossil fuels.

    Or rather, These philosophers were engaged in an attempt to define scientific political theory under the ASSUMPTION of universal enfranchisement.

    I still practice my philosophical inquiry under that same assumption of universal enfranchisement – the prohibition on the deprivation of the choice of “cooperation or boycott” from others.

    But once you assume some justification for not depriving others of choice, (a) we run into the problem of diverse interests and desires so that we now need a means of choosing between preferences, and the DEMONSTRATED preference of everyone is greater prosperity, for the simple reason that prosperity increases everyone’s choices and greatly reduces the cost of ANY choice.

    PRIMACY OF PROSPERITY – ECONOMICS AND COOPERATION

    So, the second assumption of “liberalism” is the priority of economic good. That is, that cooperation facilitates production of prosperity.

    MERITOCRACY OR NOT?

    The third assumption of “liberalism” is natural rotation (Meritocracy). But like prices and contracts, humans do not willingly rotate downward if there is any impact upon their status. In fact, people place higher value on their status than almost any other asset that they have.

    LIBERTY OR CONSUMPTION?

    The fourth assumption of ‘liberalism’ is that humans desire liberty, rather than that they desire choice and consumption. When in fact, only libertarians and conservatives demonstrate a preference for liberty, and almost all other humans on the planet do not. They demonstrate ONLY a preference for consumption.

    OTHER ALTERNATIVES TO LIBERTARIANISM EXIST

    0) Libertarianism (full enfranchisement, with meritocratic rotation)

    1) Select enfranchisement (Pre-enlightenment European, and early American with selective rotation)

    2) Totalitarian humanism (Chinese Corporatism and European Corporatist models ceremonial enfranchisement )

    3) Totalitarianism (pre-communist Chinese and most empire and state models)

    Libertarians are unique. Conservatives are unique. Most of the world does not want to engage in trial and error. They can’t. It’s too hard for them.

    Then again, why does universal enfranchisement imply monopoly?

    Why can’t we construct many small states some of which practice communal property and others that practice private property and everything in between? Because the statists could not profit from us?

    Because that is how humans MUST function precisely because we are not equal in ability whatsoever.

    A large organization has only so many people at the top. In many small organizations there are only so may people at the top, but there are many more organizations for people to reach the top of.

    Just as companies and economies have spread out into multiple flexible organizations, so must governments.

    That is the obvious conclusion: size allows you to conduct war and that is all. As such, if someone attempts to construct a scale empire, they have no other reason than warfare to do so.

    Our goal then should be to destroy large states so that war is nearly impossible to conduct.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 10:33:00 UTC

  • CRIME STATISTICS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MASCULINITY? –“…40% of white males i

    CRIME STATISTICS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MASCULINITY?

    –“…40% of white males in their early 20s having been arrested at least once and 49% of black males in their early 20s having been arrested at least once … obviously this is due to increasing criminalization of activities that should not be criminalized.”–

    (Peter Boettke )

    MASCULINE OFFENSES

    It’s pretty obvious that if you take drugs, alcohol, traffic, ‘fighting’, and ‘regulatory violations’ because of they’re just too poor to comply, that between the ages of 17 and 25, the chance that any given male violates at least one one of those prohibitions, suggests that the 40% number is reasonable.

    They don’t keep age data at Justice, (just juvenile vs adult) But given that the numbers are almost evenly distributed, we can make good guesses: drugs, alcohol and ‘consensual testosterone driven reproductive age nonsense’ mean that masculinity has been criminalized.

    Loosely speaking this means that under 5% of young males are affected annually, but cumulatively we end up with 40% of males affected.

    In other words “victimless crimes” in an effort to suppress masculine signaling account for most male arrests.

    ABOUT THE DATA

    The data is collected from individual county ARREST records, and the Justice department applies a little normalization for different terms, and differences in data collection. However, I believe that this is in fact ARREST not CONVICTION data. Those are the only two types of data we have. Because ‘crime’ data has no meaning, and no empirical test we can apply.

    Now, I can be wrong in how I interpret the sources of data given what Justice says, but to my knowledge (without making some phone calls from the other side of the planet) this is about as accurate as we can get.

    VICTIMLESS CRIME ISNT BROAD ENOUGH OF A CRITICISM

    And I think my analysis is more informative that the simple victimless crime argument. It is more accurately stated that these statistics represent the systematic suppression of voluntary, mutually consensual, masculine expression.

    (I do agree with the three strikes rule in general, and I am not sure that suppression of drunk driving is, at least in american, not justifiable using libertarian propertarian reasoning.)

    SUPPRESSION OF MASCULINITY AS THE MAJOR FOCUS OF THE STATE

    If anything these victimless crimes:

    (a) Marijuana offenses;

    (b) victimless driving offenses;

    (c) victimless regulatory conformance and fees;

    and most probably :

    (d) consensual ‘fighting’;

    constitute an unnecessary avenue for the state to expand and interfere in our lives.

    And it is through this organized suppression of masculine signals that the state has justified intrusion.

    HEARTBREAKING

    It is heartbreaking to sit in a court room and watch male after male permanently removed from the possibility of employment, losing work, losing pay, and criminalized for the accident of being poor, or institutionally forced into poverty for the celebration of youth, or the defense of what little honor poor males have. My most exasperating example being punishment for credit that they have been given as a means of entrapment, or having driving revoked and employment prohibited for an offense unrelated to crime. The most criminal is the subjugation of young males to permanent poverty by child support they cannot possibly pay and survive on. In an era of 3% unemployment and postwar miracle of underclass privilege that might have seemed to make sense, but in a world where 15%+ unemployment and 25-50% youth unemployment is the norm, and world competition for labor puts extraordinary pressure on the lower classes, it is no longer possible to expect young males to either break out of poverty, refrain from crime, or even retain even sustainable respect for society, its myths, traditions, norms and laws.

    I AM NOT SOFT ON CRIME

    Just the opposite. I’m hard on both crime, and hard on the state for prosecuting non-crimes.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 10:20:00 UTC