Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • WERE THE CONSERVATIVES RIGHT ALL ALONG? (interesting) We cannot, like mathematic

    WERE THE CONSERVATIVES RIGHT ALL ALONG?

    (interesting)

    We cannot, like mathematicians tried to do, define something into existence. We can define rules of deduction, but not define something into existence. Truth consists of correspondence and cause, not definition. Definitions are our choice. Truth is not. That is the entire purpose of ‘truth’ – that which we cannot choose.

    So, if instead of some artificial scheme, we understand that PROPERTY is nothing but what remains, after we suppress all possible DISCOUNTS, by every means possible. Then, does that mean that the conservatives were right all along?

    That, since discounts, as a spectrum, are suppressible by a spectrum of actions which include the organized threat of violence, ostracization, boycott, reduction of opportunity, and the consequential limits on consumption, then the conservatives, correctly value NORMATIVE CONFORMITY TO SUPPRESSION OF DISCOUNTS, and that the model of property articulated by rothbard, taken as it was from the low trust society he was familiar with,

    In effect, Rothbard’s ethics are an attempt to preserve ‘cheating’ as a viable means of profiting from others, whereas conservative, aristocratic, ‘high trust’ ethics are an effort to suppress ALL cheating. Rothbard masks this cheating by stating that competition will suppress such cheating. But empirically, and praxeologically, this is demonstrably and logically false. So what are we left with no possible conclusion that either he committed a significant error or, that Rothbard’s ethics are an attempt, intentionally, to preserve cheating: which is precisely what the left correctly argues – albeit in their amateurish terms.

    The formation of a government, which is a monopoly that suppresses violence and theft, and then by taxation, suppresses free riding on the government’s suppression of violence, then, as a consequence, because of its monopoly, only displaces free riding with rents.

    The formal question remains the same, which is that rule of law, or liberty, is a prohibition on discretionary compulsion, but is only possible by the prohibition of all discounts. And the only possible means of both suppressing discounts, and preventing the conversion of free riding into rents, is to rely on competition for the suppression of these discounts.

    That is, I think, the fundamental equilibrial analysis of political order.

    The sequence is:

    1) Suppression of discounts results in property rights.

    2) Property rights lead to the division of labor, and prosperity.

    3) Property (capital) and prosperity lead to greater opportunity for discounts.

    4) The cost of suppressing discounts increases demand for specialized suppression.

    5) The specialized suppressing discounts leads to free riding (fee avoidance)

    6) The specialized suppression of free riding (taxation) leads to opportunity for rent seeking.

    7) Opportunity for rent seeking leads to bureaucracy.

    8) Bureaucracy leads to subjugation and expropriation.

    9) Expropriation leads to circumvention (Religiosity, black markets, tax evasion, nullification, secession and revolt and revolution)

    10 (fragmentation)

    The only solution is rule of law: no state, merely laws, and judges who resolve disputes. Governments must be local and under direct democracy. Everything else provided competing firms.

    CHEERS

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 06:54:00 UTC

  • THE JOY OF MATH (rumination) My long term business partner Jim was a math guy. W

    THE JOY OF MATH

    (rumination)

    My long term business partner Jim was a math guy. Worked at JPL. That kind of thing. Loves numbers the way I love philosophy.

    Math is an endlessly fascinating puzzle. I prefer to solve problems instead of puzzles. In fact, because of a deliberate choice in college, I intentionally eschewed all puzzles as ‘character flaws’.

    The difference between puzzles and problems is whether the outcome causes material benefit or harm in real time. And that’s partly because you know that puzzles are solvable, and that problems often are not. So you know if you stick with a puzzle it can be solved. But with a problem, you are working against a clock that will run out, and you don’t know in advance that it can be solved.

    But that that doesn’t mean that I’m not easily seduced by puzzles. A video game, or a computer game, is a puzzle, not a problem. Puzzles are entertaining.

    Jim used to say that he couldn’t get too interested in math because it was just such an entertaining puzzle, but it didn’t produce anything. And in the end it wasn’t a good use of his time.

    It’s like crack. Puzzles really are like crack – addictive. And I’m getting that feeling again, working on this rather strange little problem of philosophy. Math is the nerd’s equivalent of world of warcraft, and it may be the ultimate game of world of warcraft – how do we create deductions of all possible relations? It’s fascinating. Is it possible to create a description of all possible relations (a proof)? I don’t see why not. There may not be a route from every position in every field to every other position in every other field; but their might be, and I can’t understand, even if circuitously how their couldn’t be. I mean, maths is just an enormous truth table.

    And intuitively I would much rather solve a puzzle. The reason being that all the information needed to solve the puzzle is present. I don’t have to go out and perform empirical tests to guarantee what I sense and what I record are causally related. In math the study of pure relations, independent of time, and under formalism, independent of correspondence and context, I don’t have to concern myself with the cost of tests, the passage of time, or contextual constraints on relations OTHER than whether I can construct a proof (deduction) for those relations.

    But it’s incredibly interesting. And just like suppressing the desire to play videogames, I feel like I have to suppress my desire to play with math. Not because it’s unimportant, but because in the division of labor, my particular craft is not pure relations, but those actions which result in the possible and preferable cooperation between individuals and groups in increasingly great numbers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-06 08:43:00 UTC

  • DRIVING FATALITIES AS AN INDEX OF TRUST (more on notoriously bad russian and ukr

    DRIVING FATALITIES AS AN INDEX OF TRUST

    (more on notoriously bad russian and ukrainian drivers)

    British drivers, after swedish drivers, are some of the best drivers in the world. Because they follow the rules. And rules and costs keep people off the road.

    American’s are not such good drivers. They are about average. America is big (like russia) and cars are a necessity, and rules and costs encourage people to be the road. Russian size, rules and cost likewise encourage people to be on the road.

    However, data is data is data. Russians and Ukrainians are disproportionately bad drivers.

    Russians (and ukrainians) do not adhere to ‘unnecessary rules’. Something which other authors have called ‘rules of low probability’. This is common the further east you go.

    My suspicion is that it is a trust measure. High trust societies are more aware of, cooperative with, forgiving of, and tolerant of minor errors on the part of their fellows.

    Reasons For Russian Driving Statistics

    (a) excessive cultural machismo (which I personally love)

    (b) lower observance of (probabilistic) rules,

    (c) lower attention to the road – phones etc

    (d) lots and lots of alcohol use

    (e) Poorer quality roads, signage, and design.

    (f) lower quality vehicles (less forgiving vehicles)

    In the muslim countries we have less observance of rules, higher speeds and machismo, and … very low IQ’s.

    Native American indians are interestingly terrible drivers, at nearly three times the black/white/hispanic fatalities. Theory is that this is alcohol driven. No way to know. Good spatial perception, but low IQ. But, gIven the disparities in IQ between whites, blacks and hispanics, and the high availability, and high use of vehicles, it’s pretty clear that driving is not an IQ problem. It appears that higher IQ countries are able to develop high trust more easily.

    The question is why is eastern (byzantine) europe (and russia) a low trust culture – lower than southern europe, and nearly as low trust as in islamic countries, if not as low trust as tribal countries in Africa.

    BAD DRIVING IS A LOW-TRUST PROBLEM

    That’s pretty interesting. We can measure social trust by driving fatalities, rather than surveys. But interestingly enough, surveys correlate driving fatalities (mostly).

    What I find most interesting here, is that while they disregard the rules and assume all other drivers are likely idiots or drunkards, they are as easily helpful to people in duress as americans.

    I like people here better. Period. in my view, they pay more attention to each other than to rules. Americans (And most western europeans) signal with their adherence to rules.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-06 05:21:00 UTC

  • RESPECTING THE PERSON OR THE IDEAS OR CONFLATING THE TWO (interesting) (toleranc

    RESPECTING THE PERSON OR THE IDEAS OR CONFLATING THE TWO

    (interesting) (tolerance as tax evasion)

    Do you separate respect for the person from respect for their ideas or do you make the solipsistic error of conflating a persons beliefs which they can change with their physical body which they cannot?

    One can say:

    i) that we coexist peacefully,

    ii) that we compete peacefully,

    iii) that we cooperate on different ends peacefully,

    iv) that we cooperate on the same ends peacefully.

    If someone possesses a catastrophic error, and you wish to cooperate with them, what is the impact of letting them hold on to silly ideas?

    Well, they can have whatever silly idea they want as long as it doesn’t affect your ability to cooperate on ends together.

    It is possible to possess ideas, values, beliefs, traditions, myths, metaphysical value judgments that are not merely differences in tastes, but which actively PREVENT cooperation on certain types of ends and means.

    If your culture denies reality, provides no means of correction of knowledge, provides no means of correction of individual thought, and at the same time, we know we must use science to understand that which we cannot perceive and sense directly, and such that

    TEACHING COOPERATION ON MEANS IF NOT ENDS

    In solipsistic argument, respect is for the purpose of raising children who do not yet have the ability to cooperate in the world. At some point we must become adults, or be the wards, subjects and victims of adults forever. One becomes an adult at the very point where one abandons solipsistic argument (the one you’re making probably) and distinguishes between the meaningless errors of children which they may grow out of, and the meaningful errors of adults that they may not grow out of.

    Tolerance in children is necessary for pedagogy. Tolerance in adults is only logically necessary for tastes, but not for truths. If you do not correct the errors in thinking of yourself and your fellow citizens then you are a conspirator in the conspiracy of ignorance, and a threat to society – and to man. Just as you are a threat to a society and to man if you fail to enforce and adhere to manners, ethics, and morals.

    TOLERANCE AS “FREE RIDING, CHEATING AND STEALING”

    If you do not enforce and adhere to manners (ethics of signals), ethics (participatory ethics), and morals (ethics of externalities) then you are not paying the behavioral ‘tax’ for living in a society – you are a tax cheater so to speak in the normative system of costs. if you are less ABLE to pay normative taxes, that is the same as if you are less ABLE to pay real taxes – in both cases these are statements of your willingness and ability.

    In other words, if you let adults around you believe that which is economically dangerous to the polity, then you are just trying to save yourself the cost of paying for the normative infrastructure, just like any other tax cheat is trying to save himself the cost of paying for physical infrastructure.

    You can say that you are not competent (productive enough) to pay that normative tax, but if that is so, then you of course, like any other person who evades taxes, no right to speak about norms.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-05 07:14:00 UTC

  • THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IS THE SUBJECTIVE VALUE OF THE DI

    THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IS THE SUBJECTIVE VALUE OF THE DIFFERENT OUTPUTS.

    (expanded and edited)

    It has nothing to do with method.

    The difference between physical science and engineering, as between mathematics and computer science, is simply the UTILITARIAN VALUE we attach to either:

    (a) the product of the test;

    OR

    (b) the extension of deductive power that results from the test.

    The purpose of engineering is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe.

    The purpose of computer science is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe. The purpose of physical science is to satisfy human wants given the demonstrated physical properties of the universe.

    That, in the last case, of physical sciences, as in the case of mathematics, the ‘human wants’ are largely the desire to know the additional properties of something,and the outputs of the tests are but a byproduct, is not materially different from engineering where the outputs of the tests (production) are what is desired, while the advancement in our theories is but a byproduct.

    That in computer science, biological research, or engineering, we place equal or higher value on the production of our tests, than we do on the advancement of our general theories, is a statement about the relative value of the various outputs, not statement about any difference in method.

    This can be restated as “the products of our tests in some fields finance further expansion of knowledge, and in other fields the products of our tests do not produce intermediate products that finance our further expansion of our theories.”

    That is the only difference.

    That is the answer you know. Everything else is nonsense.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-03 12:47:00 UTC

  • On the Renting of Persons Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism)

    On the Renting of Persons

    Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism) is based on the juxtaposition of consent to coercion. Autocracy and slavery were supposedly based on coercion whereas today’s political democracy and economic “employment system” are based on consent to voluntary contracts. This paper retrieves an almost forgotten dark side of contractarian thought that based autocracy and slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. To answer these “best case” arguments for slavery and autocracy, the democratic and antislavery movements forged arguments not simply in favor of consent but arguments that voluntary contracts to legally alienate aspects of personhood were invalid “even with consent”—which made the underlying rights inherently inalienable. Once understood, those arguments have the perhaps “unintended consequence” of ruling out today’s self-rental contract, the employer employee contract.

    Also see, On Property Theory,

    http://www.ellerman.org/on-property-theory/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 17:11:00 UTC

  • ON POPPER’S POSITION VS ACTION AND INSTRUMENTATION (reposted from cr page for ar

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 13:08:00 UTC

  • Is nearly all of philosophy then, outside of logic, an artful construct for the

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-01 15:58:00 UTC

  • HAPPINESS, INCOME, AND TAXES Daniel Kahneman states that above $60k, happiness d

    HAPPINESS, INCOME, AND TAXES

    Daniel Kahneman states that above $60k, happiness does not increase with wealth. And that pretty much reflects the other observations that almost all spending above about 70K is signaling. That’s it. Bigger more expensive homes, bigger more expensive cars, personal rather than state investments, and access to more cushy work environments.

    Now, unlike foolish equalitarians, I understand that signaling is terribly necessary, because without it, we can’t really function. After all, wealth and signals are a test, and it turns out that given how hard they are to obtain, they’re a pretty good test.

    Recent analysis says that not 47%, but 70% Pay Zero Net Taxes. Once it s 80%, then the Pareto principle will be again proved as well. The economy will consist almost entirely of abstract property that is held by the 20% who know how to use it, and the 80% will provide little other than consumption, and status to the upper 20%. Who will then use the artifice of state the capture and protect their positions – like always.

    I don’t like this kind of world. 🙁 But that’s just how it is. I am not sure I understand a world without families, where the vast majority of the population is manorialized into white collar serf labor managed through laws, credit and taxes at threat of deprivation of consumption. I mean, how is that any better than agrarian serfdom other than we have fuller bellies and lonelier lives? Does that mean that serfdom is our necessary and desired state? What happens when all simple desires are easily sated?

    I think that such a society cannot compete with a paternalistic society, and strong families, whether they be absolute nuclear families or traditional. Families create calculability and aggregates destroy it. Just like prices. Without families we cannot calculate anything because no category exists in common other than the individual, and the individual is a meaningless category.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-31 06:54:00 UTC

  • ON STATING POPPER SCIENTIFICALLY: AS ACTION Popper, like most Jewish philosopher

    ON STATING POPPER SCIENTIFICALLY: AS ACTION

    Popper, like most Jewish philosophers, is overly fascinated by words, and under fascinated by actions. I haven’t quite figured out the cultural fascination with pseudoscience in that community, but I’ll leave that to others who hypothesize that the Talmudic discipline of memorizing meaningless nonsense

    Popper tries to give us categories of thinking without solving the problem of acting. We do not require additional modes of platonic thought, whether Popperian (verbal), Platonic (imaginary), or Religious (Supernatural). We have a mode of thought: action, which we call ‘science’: demonstrated correspondence with reality.

    As such, theories are recipes for actions that produce outcomes. These sets of ACTIONS (recipes) help us IMAGINE what are IMAGINARY causes, relations and properties , that we might further attempt to reduce to actions by theory and test.

    This categorization as actions (operations) prohibits platonic ideas from clouding discourse, and divides theories into imaginary recipes that we must test and falsify and those which we have tested the outcome, (reproduced) and falsified (tested the internal statements).

    I would clarify the Popper quote above saying INSTEAD that:

    “Theories are recipes consisting of actions that we duplicate by the use of instrumentation to determine correspondence between imagination and reality. Those forms of instrumentation that test correspondence are:

    0) narrative (sequences in time)

    1) logic (words),

    2) numbers (counts),

    3) measures (relations)

    3) math (ratios),

    4) physics (causes),

    5) economics (cooperation)

    6) praxeology (rational incentives and actions).”

    Each additional recipe reduces to analogy to experience, the external world which we cannot sense, perceive, count, measure, determine the causes of, and act upon without such instrumentation. As such each recipe extends our perception.

    Unfortunately, these recipes are socially constructed organically in a network of dependent assumptions both conscious, unconscious and metaphysical, almost entirely dependent upon the forms of instrumentation used to extend perception and calculation. And we must reassemble entire networks of objects, causes, relations and properties, when we improve our instruments. This is why we construct and destruct paradigms.

    And the fantasy that we hold ‘beliefs’ is verbal and arbitrary, when what we hold are ‘incentives’, investments and opportunities that are not arbitrary or easily disposed of. This difference between verbal and platonic ‘belief’ and praxeological incentives in objective reality is another influential factor in failing to grasp the ‘stickiness’ of paradigms, being even greater than the stickiness of prices, contracts, careers, and Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade.

    Also unfortunately, given that learning stresses individuals, and that such paradigmatic shifts impose high costs on adherents, all people, in all walks of life, from professors to ordinary laborers, fight paradigmatic change whenever possible since it will of necessity reduce the value of their current paradigmatic mastery. People Will Not Change Ever by Means of Argument. EVER on any sufficient investment that they have made, whether material or intellectual. This applies in every walk of life from the moral to the philosophical to the political, to the scientific, and entrepreneurial. Although the entrepreneurial leaves them less choice.

    This is why science only advances with the death of prior paradigmatic advocates. Just as our political theory and institutions will only advance upon the death (none too soon) of the boomer generation.

    But, that does not eliminate the fact, that our knowledge does increase and our correspondence with reality increases along with it, and we adapt our actions more closely to a more expansive reality.

    At some point, the MARGINAL INDIFFERENCE of further knowledge (recipes) means that no further benefit can be gained from any available action, and as such, it is possible to CHOOSE BETWEEN THEORIES. Meaning that at any given point the number of available theories open to exploitation given instrumentation available, and the marginal difference in value, DOES give us reasons to choose between theories. Which is precisely why we are apparently, so good at choosing them. And the errors we do make, (mysticism in the 20th century in science and philosophy) can be prevented by adhering to scientific discipline: expression in operational language: the language of science. Of RECIPES for actions that with any given set of instrumentation, allow us to test the correspondence of our imaginations with reality, and without which we cannot test or even conceive of such a reality as exists.

    I think this description of actions, is more accurate than the verbal and allegorical description of the imaginary that Popper gives us.

    There is a very clear relationship between our inability to introspect upon our own mental processes, and imagination, platonism, and spiritualism. And this relationship tends to force us in philosophy to reduce all philosophical statements to an infinitely recursive discourse on norms. Introspection and intuition are cheap. Reason is more expensive, and instrumentalism is vastly more expensive. However, science: cataloguing sequences of actions using instrumentation that limits the distortion between our imagination and objective reality by extending our ability to sense, perceive, remember, and calculate, is, as in all sciences, a method for the prevention of error.

    Popper himself did not solve this problem. He just solved enough of it to tell us how to solve it for him.

    The distinction may appear subtle, but it is not. Mathematical platonism, which we falsely use as the gold standard for reason, has infected pretty much all of analytic philosophy, and I’m not sure it hasn’t infected physics. And my argument, like Hayek’s is that the 20th century was an age of mysticism because of the return to platonic analogy and loss of an emphasis on action.

    (I know I tend to aggravate you with these comments, but there is a method to my strategy. And I appreciate your ideas even if my thoughts annoy you. 🙂 )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-30 10:18:00 UTC