Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • MATRILINEALITY IN BONOBOS IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY AREN’T INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO

    MATRILINEALITY IN BONOBOS IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY AREN’T INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO HAVE PROPERTY – BUT

    The goal of Feminism is to restore female control over society by sexual exchange rather than property rights. And to do so by eliminating property rights. (Which in feminist terms means ‘sharing equal responsibility for children’.) And to eliminate property rights through Incremental socialism. Using majority rule where they have the numbers.

    (Dear ladies, no need to read this and get mad at me. I’m for equal rights. But not for female privilege, or equal outcome. )

    Maternal societies are statistically insignificant, tend to be outcasts from larger more successful societies, have very small populations, and are dirt poor.

    Pacifist, sedentary, earth worshipping, matrilineal agrarianism was natural to western europeans – and so was small-size, short life spans, and low birth weights.

    Innovative, mobile, expansionist, sun-worshipping, pastoralist paternalism was the INNOVATION that made regular access to meat, Reason, Science, technology and the CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL possible.

    Women don’t concentrate capital. They favor the uniform tyranny of equalitarianism. They want the economy to be based upon sex and affection, not productivity. That’s why “equality” is the cause of poverty. The incentives are for sex not for production.

    The depth of where this argument goes will demonstrate why evolution tested both models and the masculine model survived the test.

    The Fact is, that the intellectual reformation currently in progress is demonstrating in every discipline that both postmodern and feminist dogma consists of ideological argument unsupported by the the data.

    Period.

    People choose prosperity (freedom to choose to consume) in all circumstances. That is the test of ‘happiness’. Not survey data. Not subjective judgement. If it relies upon survey data, or subjective interpretation rather than demonstrated preference then it is not science. It’s propaganda.

    We have to forgive Jill Hamilton, who writes otherwise titillating chick-pop articles that cross into male interest because she is not an academic or public intellectual. She must find material that catches eyeballs. Thats her job, and as readers its the job we want her to do.

    But as an eyeball catcher, one must be somewhat cautious, if not infinitely skeptical of academic propaganda.

    Jill could have positioned this book as questionable but fun to consider, without personally committing to support of it or its ideas. And in doing so both caught eyeballs and preserved her journalistic credibility.

    It’s not understood by journalists (who aren’t generally from the top of the class by the way) that the number of academic papers and books that survive scrutiny is minuscule, and almost all of them – at least with regard to the big questions – are produced by a handful of intellectuals at our most prestigious universities.

    The current exception is probably Jonathan Haidt who, from Virginia has reformed most of our understanding of political morality. But assuming he continues he’ll end up teaching at the top ten at some point.

    But we must keep in mind that the entire feminist and progressive programs were based on work by women like Jane Goodall and her followers who told us how nice primates were in nature. When in fact, that entire generation’s work in the study of nature and of anthropology was universally false. Chimps are brutal raping predatory murderers. In fact, the only animal that shares our understanding of intentionality, or our social structure, is the domestic dog.

    Feminism, liberalism and postmodernism are simply the names we have given to communism and socialism now that those two programs have failed in both theory and practice.

    ========

    TO: CURT DOOLITTLE

    FROM: Afiq Syamim Salleh

    “Chimps are brutal raping predatory murderers”

    Wait..you miss on bonobos,it’s a matriarch,very promiscuous,less violent than chimps and the closest DNA related to humans.We’re heading for that future(possible).I’m sure feminist are very happy if humans are more like bonobos.

    =========

    TO: AFIQ SYAMIM SALLEH

    FROM : CURT DOOLITTLE

    Good point. But bonobos don’t have, and aren’t capable of, establishing property and a division of labor.

    It’s property and the division of labor that creates both prosperity and Paternalism by removing reproductive control from the female exchange of sex and affection under hunting and gathering, to the exchange of property for the purpose of coordinating production, and forcing reproduction to be based upon productivity and innovation.

    Most feminist academics know this, as well as did the Marxists, since Engels wrote about it in the 19th century.

    It’s not that females are in control that makes Bonobos maternalistic, it’s that they lack the intelligence and ability to coordinate their actions in a division of knowledge and labor.

    Cooperation among apes is unique to man. Period. The idea of apes helping one another is…. impossible. Absurd.

    Yet it is possible for dogs.

    Just to make feminists frustrated now and then with their fantasies, I tend to remind them that while there are no female jack the rippers, the most fruitful serial killer was indeed female. And while you once and awhile get a Curie, you’ll never get a female Newton.

    Maternalism is regression to primitivism. Paternalism was an evolution. An evolution made possible by the development of property.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-10 19:35:00 UTC

  • MATRILINEALITY IN BONOBOS IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY AREN’T INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO

    MATRILINEALITY IN BONOBOS IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY AREN’T INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO HAVE PROPERTY – WHICH IS WHY FEMINISM IS A SOCIALIST STRATEGY: THE ELIMINATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.

    The goal is to restore female control over society by sexual exchange rather than property rights. By eliminating property rights. (Which in feminist terms means ‘sharing equal responsibility for children’.)

    (Dear ladies, no need to read this and get mad at me. I’m for equal rights. But not for female privilege. Or equal outcome. )

    Maternal societies are statistically insignificant, tend to be outcasts from larger more successful societies, have very small populations, and are dirt poor.

    Pacifist, sedentary, earth worshipping, agrarian matrilineality was natural to western europeans – and so was small-size, short life spans, and low birth weights.

    Innovative, mobile, expansionist, sun-worshipping, pastoralist paternalism was the INNOVATION that made regular access to meat, Reason, Science, technology and the CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL possible.

    Women don’t concentrate capital. They favor the uniform tyranny of equalitarianism. They want the economy to be based upon sex and affection, not productivity. That’s why “equality” is the cause of poverty. The incentives are for sex not for production.

    The depth of where this argument goes will demonstrate why evolution tested both models and the masculine model survived the test.

    The Fact is, that the intellectual reformation currently in progress is demonstrating in every discipline that both postmodern and feminist dogma consists of ideological argument unsupported by the the data.

    Period.

    People choose prosperity (freedom to choose to consume) in all circumstances. That is the test of ‘happiness’. Not survey data. Not subjective judgement. If it relies upon survey data, or subjective interpretation rather than demonstrated preference then it is not science. It’s propaganda.

    We have to forgive Jill Hamilton, who writes otherwise titillating chick-pop articles that cross into male interest because she is not an academic or public intellectual. She must find material that catches eyeballs. Thats her job, and as readers its the job we want her to do.

    But as an eyeball catcher, one must be somewhat cautious, if not infinitely skeptical of academic propaganda.

    Jill could have positioned this book as questionable but fun to consider, without personally committing to support of it or its ideas. And in doing so both caught eyeballs and preserved her journalistic credibility.

    It’s not understood by journalists (who aren’t generally from the top of the class by the way) that the number of academic papers and books that survive scrutiny is minuscule, and almost all of them – at least with regard to the big questions – are produced by a handful of intellectuals at our most prestigious universities.

    The current exception is probably Jonathan Haidt who, from Virginia has reformed most of our understanding of political morality. But assuming he continues he’ll end up teaching at the top ten at some point.

    But we must keep in mind that the entire feminist and progressive programs were based on work by women like Jane Goodall and her followers who told us how nice primates were in nature. When in fact, that entire generation’s work in the study of nature and of anthropology was universally false. Chimps are brutal raping predatory murderers. In fact, the only animal that shares our understanding of intentionality, or our social structure, is the domestic dog.

    Feminism, liberalism and postmodernism are simply the names we have given to communism and socialism now that those two programs have failed in both theory and practice.

    ========

    TO: CURT DOOLITTLE

    FROM: Afiq Syamim Salleh

    “Chimps are brutal raping predatory murderers”

    Wait..you miss on bonobos,it’s a matriarch,very promiscuous,less violent than chimps and the closest DNA related to humans.We’re heading for that future(possible).I’m sure feminist are very happy if humans are more like bonobos.

    =========

    TO: AFIQ SYAMIM SALLEH

    FROM : CURT DOOLITTLE

    Good point. But bonobos don’t have, and aren’t capable of, establishing property and a division of labor.

    It’s property and the division of labor that creates both prosperity and Paternalism by removing reproductive control from the female exchange of sex and affection under hunting and gathering, to the exchange of property for the purpose of coordinating production, and forcing reproduction to be based upon productivity and innovation.

    Most feminist academics know this, as well as did the Marxists, since Engels wrote about it in the 19th century.

    It’s not that females are in control that makes Bonobos maternalistic, it’s that they lack the intelligence and ability to coordinate their actions in a division of knowledge and labor.

    Cooperation among apes is unique to man. Period. The idea of apes helping one another is…. impossible. Absurd.

    Yet it is possible for dogs.

    Just to make feminists frustrated now and then with their fantasies, I tend to remind them that while there are no female jack the rippers, the most fruitful serial killer was indeed female. And while you once and awhile get a Curie, you’ll never get a female Newton.

    Maternalism is regression to primitivism. Paternalism was an evolution. An evolution made possible by the development of property.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-10 14:13:00 UTC

  • IS SPAIN (AND THE REST OF THE WORLD) CORRUPT? – THE EVIDENCE This is a fairly ho

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2009/03/why_is_spain_so_corruptWHY IS SPAIN (AND THE REST OF THE WORLD) CORRUPT? – THE EVIDENCE

    This is a fairly hot topic in political economy. But I think Norberg is correct, and the critic Giné that argues that it’s structural, is himself, falling for the mistake that he himself cautions against.

    From what we can tell, corruption is the NORM in the world. Universalism is unique to northern Europe. It is present ONLY in germanic countries with universal militia participation, the nuclear family, individual property rights, extensive outbreeding, and prohibitions on cousin marriage.

    The last being the problem with most of the world. Small homogenous countries that are highly interrelated because of a prohibition on cousin marriage, and who have universal private property rights, where the nuclear family is the unit of reproductive and economic production, lack corruption – and those that are diverse, pluralistic, and inbred treat family, clan, and tribe as the unit of economic and reproductive production.

    It’s pretty simple economics and incentives when you understand what’s going on.

    Now you won’t like it if you carry the logic through much farther. Because it explains a bit more about birth rate problems. Single motherhood and extensive participation of women in the work force is only possible for two or three generations. The Romans couldn’t change it and neither can we. Competitive reproduction punishes folly.

    The fact is that spain has corruption in government, and structural corruption in government, because of its historical values. These values are called ‘ catholic’ and catholic countries share it. But it’s not because they’re catholic. It’s because these countries REMAINED catholic, because they remained with with strong, paternal extended family structures, and the authoritarianism and extended familism that .

    Cultures develop formal institutions to INSTITUTIONALIZE their informal institutions. States mirror moral codes. And moral codes mirror family structures. And family structures mirror the reproductive strategy that mirrors the necessary structure of economic production. (If you can follow that entire chain of events.)

    This is expressly counter to the democratic equalitarian, egalitarian, universalist, postmodern mythos that democratic states run on and obtain their legitimacy from.

    So, The Spanish may be corrupt. But the fact is, that there will always be SPANISH people. We can’t say the same for northern Europeans. There aren’t enough european countries bast the 12% mark, where subcultures under democracy seek political power and divisiveness that they could not obtain under monarchy, which denies people access to disruptive political power.

    See Edward Banfield’s “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society”. Which started this discussion many years ago. See _Trust_ by Fukuyama who has tried to popularize the problem. See Emmanuel Todd’s _Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems_ . See Macfarlane: The Origins of English Individualism

    Also of related interest:

    Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    Huntington: Culture Matters

    Acemoglu: Why Nations Fail

    Fukuyama: The Origins Of Political Order

    But a word of caution, is that this topic is a third rail. And if you pursue it you’ll be demonized for it. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-09 08:45:00 UTC

  • The Necessity, Virtue And Morality Of Organized Violence

    THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE I (we) may not be able to coerce you into accepting freedom – individual monopoly of control over property obtained by voluntary exchange production or homesteading – as a superior form of cooperation to all other forms of cooperation. But you may not coerce me (us) into abandoning freedom as our preferred, committed, required, demanded and threatened form of cooperation. THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY IS VIOLENCE The source of property is the use of violence to create, obtain, and protect it. Only those who performed militial service created private property. Only those who performed militial service obtained private property. Only those who perform militial service will keep private property. A militia is a voluntary alliance of property owners whose common interest is the preservation of private property rights. A militia is not the same as an army, any more than freedom is the same as liberty. You create freedom by using violence. You request or desire liberty from someone else. The purpose of a libertarian government is to create private property through the organized application of violence to create it. And libertarian pacifists and moralists are in fact the reason we are losing it. VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE. Violence is a virtue not a vice. If all rights are property rights. If property defines morality, then violence to create property is the first moral action upon which all other morality rests. We should encourage the mastery of violence in all men at all times, and the exercise of violence by all men at all times, in the defense of property rights, the highest form of morality that a man can display. Because by acts of violence to preserve property he pays the highest contribution to morality possible. Defense of property does not require words. It requires actions. FREEDOM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH MILITIA The only free people are, and must be, a people whose government is a militia, and whose resolution of disputes over property is decided by judges using the single rule of private property as their criteria for adjudication. A militia is synonymous with enfranchisement. No one else has paid for his or her right of property. They merely free ride on the expenses of others. Therefore, political democracy is synonymous with militial participation. No other meaning is possible. All other attributions are acts of theft by fraud. Militial participation requires no more than the personal use of violence to protect property rights. The use of the militia is to create and preserve property rights. The use of judges is to resolve conflicts without violence. The use of democratic government is not to create laws, but to create physical commons. The use of public intellectuals, is to carry on the public debate over which commons we may choose to invest in, and which not. The use of ‘religion’ and literature is to teach us these necessary and immutable laws of human cooperation so that we never forget them – and by forgetting them lose our freedom. You cannot obtain the right of private property at a discount. It is an extremely costly right to possess. It is an extremely costly right to maintain. Those who attempt to gain freedom – property – at a discount, will obtain an inferior product to those who pay for a better one. And the only currency of freedom -property – is violence. Be armed. Be willing. Be vigilant. And Act. —– Curt Doolittle Kiev, 2013 “Putting violence back into liberty one sentence at a time.”

  • THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    I (we) may not be able to coerce you into accepting freedom – individual monopoly on property – as a superior form of cooperation to all other forms of cooperation. But you man not coerce me (us) into abandoning freedom as our preferred, committed, required, demanded and threatened form of cooperation.

    The source of property is the use of violence to protect it.

    Only those who performed militial service created private property.

    Only those who performed militial service obtained private property.

    Only those who perform militial service will keep private property.

    A militia is a voluntary alliance of property owners whose common interest is the preservation of private property rights. A militia is not the same as an army, any more than freedom is the same as liberty. You create freedom by using violence. You request or desire liberty from someone else.

    The purpose of a libertarian government is to create private property through the organized application of violence to create it. And libertarian pacifists and moralists are in fact the reason we are losing it.

    You cannot obtain the right of private property at a discount. It is an extremely costly right to possess. It is an extremely costly right to maintain.

    VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE. Violence is a virtue not a vice. If all rights are property rights. If property defines morality, then violence to create property is the first moral action upon which all other morality rests.

    We should encourage the mastery of violence in all men at all times, and the exercise of violence by all men at all times, in the defense of property rights, the highest form of morality that a man can display.

    Because by acts of violence to preserve property he pays the highest contribution to morality possible.

    Defense of property does not require words. I requires actions.

    The only free people is and must be a people whose government is a militia, and whose resolution of disputes over property is decided by judges using the single rule of private property as their criteria for adjudication.

    The use of the militia is to create property rights. The use of judges is to resolve conflicts without violence. The use of government is not to create laws, but to create physical commons. The use of public intellectuals, is to carry on the public debate over which commons we may choose to invest in, and which not. The use of ‘religion’ and literature is to teach us these necessary and immutable laws of human cooperation so that we never forget them – and by forgetting them lose our freedom.

    Those who attempt to gain freedom – property – at a discount, will obtain an inferior product to those who pay for a better one. And the only currency of freedom -property – is violence.

    —–

    Curt Doolittle

    Kiev, 2013

    “Putting violence back into liberty one sentence at a time.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-07 05:34:00 UTC

  • IF IT’S THAT INEFFECTIVE, THEN WHY DO WE BET THE ECONOMY, AND OUR CIVILIZATION O

    IF IT’S THAT INEFFECTIVE, THEN WHY DO WE BET THE ECONOMY, AND OUR CIVILIZATION ON IT?

    (I’m not anti-math. I’m anti platonism. Which includes representing what corresponds to reality by necessity with that which correlates with reality. In particular the relationship between our economic data and the monopoly of the west on technology, while discovering a new continent.)

    “Abbott explains that effective mathematics provides compact, idealized representations of the inherently noisy physical world.”

    “Analytical mathematical expressions are a way making compact descriptions of our observations,” he told Phys.org. “As humans, we search for this ‘compression’ that math gives us because we have limited brain power. Maths is effective when it delivers simple, compact expressions that we can apply with regularity to many situations. It is ineffective when it fails to deliver that elegant compactness. It is that compactness that makes it useful/practical … if we can get that compression without sacrificing too much precision.

    “I argue that there are many more cases where math is ineffective (non-compact) than when it is effective (compact). Math only has the illusion of being effective when we focus on the successful examples. But our successful examples perhaps only apply to a tiny portion of all the possible questions we could ask about the universe.”

    Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mathematics-effective-world.html#jCp

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-05 16:43:00 UTC

  • AUTISM AND THINKING vs LEARNING AND EXPERIENCING I watched a video today about s

    AUTISM AND THINKING vs LEARNING AND EXPERIENCING

    I watched a video today about some young boy with autism who is an early entrant to college. His basic point is that learning isn’t the same as thinking. And if you’re motivated to think, then structured learning is really just an obstacle that gets in the way of your thinking.

    When I tell people “I learned everything on my own. School and university were just excuses to be around people, in a social environment. I didn’t learn anything in the classes, I learned everything from books.” They look at me with disbelief.

    But it’s true.

    I would go to the bookstore. Pick the classes with the books I liked. Read them. Vaguely listen in class. The ‘order’ of the classroom and the speech pattern of the teacher or professor is extremely relaxing, and until I got older and learned how to control it, the overstimulation in less organized environments was incredibly painful.

    Simple places like stores were really troublesome because, I sort of have this stress reaction when I overhear people talk about anything that is actually hurtful for them to believe. I feel like I have to save them. (Really.) So if I’m stressed I can’t go to a Costco for example. But if I bring a pair of headphones and book on tape about something that’s fairly logical then I can do it. Same way that other people use music for feedback. Music doesn’t do it for me. Only if I’m driving, and there aren’t other stimuli out there.

    I don’t really ‘work’ at anything in the tradition sense. If I just expose myself to information and my head does all the work for me. It’s like this big steam operated machine that just wants to work on problems as hard as it can or it’s annoyed and will just pick one at random. So I have to pick problems for it that are interesting. Work isn’t hard for me. It’s calming actually. But I can only handle one or two problems at a time.

    Now, it’s not a complicated concept to deal with really. If you shut down the sense of self, and shut down empathy, you still have this brain that wants chemical stimulation, but there are fewer ways of getting those chemical psychic rewards. So your brain sort of learns to specialize in the activities that give it reward. And practice makes perfect in almost everything. So you pretty rapidly get good at what you focus on: your sensory experiences in the case of normals, or gathering information in the case of people like me.

    Of course, the world is a different place now and medicine is farther along. Fifteen years ago they didn’t know what to do with me. “Curt, you have some strange obsessive focus, and we don’t have a name for it.” Even during my divorce in 08, my wife’s psychologist said ‘there is no such diagnosis’. Which, I found a really strange and meaningless thing to say, given that I got that diagnosis from one of the top three of four researchers in the field who had worked with me for years, and used me in experiments, and I was talking to some guy who counsels divorcees.

    Today a doctor takes ten minutes to say that I very mild ASD. Certain patterns are extremely fascinating and I cant let go of them. I can still jump in and out of my head, and still empathize with spoken emotions, and still read body language even if I have trouble with faces, subtle emotions, and my emotional vocabulary is smaller – and my humor more limited. I imagine for those Aspies who have it worse than I do, that they cannot reconnect with the world at all. At least for me, if I work at it, and practice, I can.

    I love people. They make no sense some of the time. Whey they are too illogical it makes me very anxious. Because I can’t save them – and they don’t want to be saved either. 🙂 But I just love them. I love human beings. All of them. (Pretty common attitude for Aspies really.)

    Funny thing I like to share, is that vey educated people often have very substantial errors in their thinking that astounds me. It’s actually emotionally safer to spend time either with engineers and other very logical people, or sort of lower middle class folk, that just talk about life experiences, than their more educated peers who make catastrophic errors on a minute by minute basis.

    I still run into people that are fascinated by my sort of talents (which you really have to experience in person apparently to grasp). But I tell them “Actually, it sucks to be me. Childhood was very difficult. Adulthood is only marginally easier. And I’m only happy because I figured it all out myself – even if too late in life. So I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

    You might want to live in a world that has us in it. We do amazing things really. But you don’t want to be one of us. We’re just a different kind of ant, a human specialization, that randomly shows up in the population and does a specific thing, so that the rest of humanity can go on without us.

    What I appreciate these days is the ability to talk about it without the pointed finger of leprosy. But I don’t. I just tell people that “eh… I’m a mild aspie. we are fascinated by shiny things.” And I laugh. Or I say “If I get too detailed with this topic its ok to tell me to shut up.” Or if someone asks me a question I say “do you really want to know, because I’ll tell you”. These are all devices that ask other people whether they want the aspie version of something or not. I just assume that they dont want it. And that works. ‘Cause otherwise you’re basically telling people that they’re stupid. (Really.) And then if you say you’re an aspie they kind of think it’s cute, and don’t get offended. You just can’t get too obsessed about the topic.

    Aspies are generally very nice. We seem to retain our childish charm longer, because really, we’re childish inside. Life has been a bit cruel and hard on me so that child has a more pragmatic instinct and the competitive part of me is a bit scary to others at times. But his joy at interacting with others is still easily excited.

    And the fact of the matter is, that if you are just nice to everyone you meet, don’t demand anything from them. And listen for and make use of, any opportunity to help them or compliment them, then in general, people will love you. You gotta give to get. And love is only as scarce as the time we have to give it.

    I smile a lot. I laugh a lot. And care about people. I try to be generous. And that’s about all of us really need from each other to make the world a wonderful place to live in. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 14:01:00 UTC

  • WE ARE NOT ‘BOOMERS’. I AM NOT A BOOMER. THE BOOMERS DESTROYED CIVILIZATION. WE

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_JonesNO WE ARE NOT ‘BOOMERS’. I AM NOT A BOOMER. THE BOOMERS DESTROYED CIVILIZATION. WE HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH THEM. AT ALL.

    Generations are not determined by dates, or head-counts, but by shared experiences – the perception of changes either within or beyond our control.

    People of my generation are members of the ‘JONES GENERATION’. We missed the sixties and were formed by the seventies: The fantasy of the excessiveness of the 60’s followed by our perception of “the great fall”: Gas Lines, unemployment, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, the Iran Hostage crisis, a cowardly president in blue jeans, doomsday movies and books, and a pervasive fear of the accelerating cold war, with technology as the only promise of redemption, and star wars as our mythological call to arms. My generation includes the tech giants that changed our world.

    I’d burn the boomers at the stake and alternately throw gasoline, salt. vinegar, and lemon juice on them if I could. So please don’t call me or my generation ‘boomers’.

    Because boomer doesn’t mean ‘population boom’. It means ‘destroyer of civilization.’

    As Charleton Heston famously said while looking at the remains of the statue of liberty: “Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!”

    —- NOTES —–

    “Generation Jones is a term coined by Jonathan Pontell to describe the cohort of people born between 1954 and 1965. Pontell defined Generation Jones as referring to the second half of the post–World War II baby boom. The term also includes first-wave Generation X.”

    “In his book, Pontell observes that this age group felt the bright promise and optimism shown to children in the 60s, only to have those hopes crushed by hard economic realities brought by recession, rising energy costs, high interest rates and tight employment when they came of age in the 70s. Hence the term “jonesin’” means to be yearning or even craving something and not yet finding fulfillment.”

    “They didn’t buy into or were too young to understand the Baby Boomer tantrums; yet they were a tad to old to join the Gen-Xers in the mosh pits.”

    “Between Woodstock and Lallapalooza….”

    “We are practical idealists…”

    “…craving…”

    “…forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part….”

    “…experiencing the fall and blaming them for it….”

    The name “Generation Jones” derives from ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ competition of our populous birth years.”

    “Yuppies, not hippies.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-31 06:32:00 UTC

  • THE IMMORALITY AND UN-NECESSITY OF MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM (I’m getting closer. F

    THE IMMORALITY AND UN-NECESSITY OF MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM

    (I’m getting closer. From a post elsewhere. And, yes. ‘unnecessity’ is a word. Really. I checked.) 🙂

    My argument, is that of mathematics can be stated operationally, and non-platonically, without negative externality, and that mathematicians have tragically produced the new mysticism in postmodernism for purely utilitarian and self interested reasons.

    Can we create a “standard of truth”? In other words, can two or more of the theories of truth be organized such that one is more narrowly constrained and more parsimonious than the other? I think that correspondence theory of truth is pretty much the accepted practice, while deflationary and formal theories are adaptations to the needs of particular problems. That And that pluralistic theory attempts to compensate for these differences.

    We can measure truth on two axis. The first is completeness of correspondence: it’s parsimony and explanatory power. And the second is the presence and severity of negative externalities. That means that a utilitarian standard of truth is a convenience and a necessary standard of truth is not. And it means that a necessary standard of truth that produces negative externalities is unavoidable and moral and a pragmatic standard of truth is both avoidable and immoral. Morality being a higher standard than disciplinary utility.

    If you read the background on intuitionist mathematics, then that’s enough. And I don’t have to repeat it here. I think that ‘defining truth’ independent of correspondence is a non sequitur, and is conveniently circular use of the term ‘truth’. Internal consistency is not equal to external correspondence. Nor is it immune from criticism. I think if you read, even just the wiki article on the different forms of truth, including the difference between Formal (linguistic) and Substantive (correspondence) theories of truth, then that’s enough, and I don’t need to repeat it here. I think it’s not difficult to grasp that the different theories of truth have different standards – certainly intuitionist has a higher standard than classical. I think it’s not difficult to grasp that math has a lower standard than science. I think that it’s not difficult to grasp that the standards in classical mathematics are utilitarian. And I think it’s not difficult to grasp that utilitarian actions, if they produce externalities, allow us to criticize that utility. And to demand change if necessary. For example: free speech is one thing, but shouting fire in a theater is another. And while justifying and spreading postmodernism, is less immediate, it is more consequential.

    I have not taken it on myself to play Wittgenstein’s game. I am not sure I am up to it. But I believe I can attack the mathematician’s justification of the logic of sets well enough to put the blame for postmodernism on the people within the discipline. And I can denounce their motives. I may be wrong. But I think I can do it. At least. I can do it well enough.

    MARGINAL INDIFFERENCE is the only criteria for performative truth that I know of that is universally applicable in all circumstances.

    This set of criteria satisfies the requirements of even the PLURALIST theory of truth. It allows us to use correspondence, marginal indifference, and externalities as the criteria of truth, without the need to resort to the ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ of platonism, and the external consequences of teaching generations of students a new theology that is dependent upon magic.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-29 15:14:00 UTC

  • A SHORT ESSAY ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO DISREGARD FEELINGS IN POLITICAL DISCOUR

    A SHORT ESSAY ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO DISREGARD FEELINGS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE.

    (Silencing the silly people)

    Political discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal dishonest affair that is conducted in the pursuit of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific.

    My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are.

    Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of.

    The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist.

    The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. 🙂

    So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation.

    If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.

    If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism.

    We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes.

    I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.

    http://artandperception.com/2006/11/surviving-as-an-artist.html

    http://faso.com/fineartviews/18528/how-to-survive-an-art-critique

    On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism

    Bibliographic references: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3271

    So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly.

    I have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.

    That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.

    We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-29 06:31:00 UTC