Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Did Liberalism, Socialism, Anarchism And Post-colonialism Fail?

    IT APPEARS to be in the process of failing, but for institutional reasons.  I dont know if i can get it across, but the simple analogy is a ponzi scheme. Although given any rate of growth, a ponzi scheme of this nature can be sustainable as long as there is an arithmetic connection between inputs and outputs. Libertarians argue that a conservative version of the singaporean model should be sustainable. Because by “saving” instead of issuing debt, the individual knows how to plan, and the debt issued for services matures before there is a claim on it.  And the money is productive in the economy in the meantime.  But government spending is constrained.

    https://www.quora.com/Did-liberalism-socialism-anarchism-and-post-colonialism-fail

  • Did Liberalism, Socialism, Anarchism And Post-colonialism Fail?

    IT APPEARS to be in the process of failing, but for institutional reasons.  I dont know if i can get it across, but the simple analogy is a ponzi scheme. Although given any rate of growth, a ponzi scheme of this nature can be sustainable as long as there is an arithmetic connection between inputs and outputs. Libertarians argue that a conservative version of the singaporean model should be sustainable. Because by “saving” instead of issuing debt, the individual knows how to plan, and the debt issued for services matures before there is a claim on it.  And the money is productive in the economy in the meantime.  But government spending is constrained.

    https://www.quora.com/Did-liberalism-socialism-anarchism-and-post-colonialism-fail

  • No. I don’t know anything. I just make arguments. Like any other intellectual ma

    No. I don’t know anything. I just make arguments. Like any other intellectual makes arguments. We don’t choose whether our arguments are true or not. We try to construct them as honestly as possible, if we are honest with ourselves, and then see wether, like so many experimental products, they survive in the market for criticism. I get a little frustrated with people who assume one moral bias or strategy is preferential to all. I ‘think’ I’m right. But I don’t know. I can just follow the only strategy that seems to work: prosecute a set of ideas until they succeed or fail. The minute you try to persuade an audience rather than test your ideas to see if they fail, you’ve stopped acting as a scientist and started acting as an advocate. It is probably possible to advocate what you think may be true. But the minute you claim you’re right, then, well, that’s not advocacy that’s politics.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-11 16:38:00 UTC

  • Capitalism is necessary. That does not mean it is sufficient. And sufficient doe

    Capitalism is necessary. That does not mean it is sufficient. And sufficient does not mean preferable. And preferences are not universal.

    My political argument is that human beings are generous to kin. And that states must be small enough to function as kin even if kinship is merely cultural.

    Redistribution without dicatorship requires multiple competing societies. Because in-group diversity of normative preference is a bad thing for any group. Because it causes people to restrict their domain of kinship trust.

    I am against a redistributive society wherin we are forced into conflict oner norms rather than voluntarily join a society with the norms we prefer.

    And a society i agree with i will sacrifice for. And kinship is the society we evolved to sacrifice for.

    The only value of large states is cultural, economic and military conquest of those who differ both in and out if its boundaries.

    Its Not complicated.

    Small is good.

    Family is good.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-07 11:34:00 UTC

  • As far as I know, current set theory is still in conflict with finitism but neit

    As far as I know, current set theory is still in conflict with finitism but neither argument is provable. We can only prove that finitism has no answer to set theory.

    As far as I know, infinity is not a measurement, and not rational concept – it is a purely platonic concept.

    As far as I know there is nothing that we can knowingly (scientifically) demonstrate is infinite – very large, unmeasurable, inestimable, but not infinite unless we discuss actions.

    As far as I understand, most of the problem with these discussion is metaphysical: confusing the platonic INSTRUMENTS, with physical MEASUREMENTS.

    For purpose of INSTRUMENTATION, (deduction) we (arguably, foolishly) rely on infinitudes of various kinds. But for purpose of measurement, we cannot actually perform any infinite measure because I cannot take an infinite measure, nor can I infinitely repeat a series of measures.

    That mathematical DEDUCTION uses the same symbols as arithmetic measurement is confusing. We must deduce many measurements because direct measurement is impractical. That is largely, the value of both geometry (fixed measurement) and calculus(relative measurement). But there still is a metaphysical difference between measurements (real) and deductions (unreal) despite the fact that mathematical deductions are much more trustworthy than linguistic deductions, because they are less open to variance, because numbers are, more uniquely identifiable, less loaded and more precisely ordered than linguistic statements.

    If infinite sets are not possible except platonically, then we are merely engaging yet again in another conversation about the number of angels that may dance on heads of pins. There is quite an argument going on that Cantor is playing a parlor game, and that between Cantor, Marx, Russell and Freud, is an unconscious conspiracy to replace religious mysticism with logical platonism. (I am one of the people who thinks this.)

    It is necessary for us to make practical use of infinitudes because in practice, in engineering, in physics, distance from any event reduces all effects to a relative constant. Therefore, in practice, while the .99999… does not equal 1 EVER, we can create no measurement that can distinguish between the two. So the platonic concept .9999…. is equal to the measurement 1. Even if the point on any line represented by .9999… never equals 1. EVER, unless we change the meaning of .999999… (Which is really what set theorists do.)

    However, one of the most convenient tricks in any discourse is to confuse the ideal, the platonic, practical, and the real. And unless you know which set of concepts are being used for which purpose its pretty easy to fall into the trap of confusing platonic idealism, with pragmatic platonism, with pragmatic instrumentalism, measurements, and objective reality in real time.

    I suspect my suspicions will be confirmed. And that these silly arguments to logical authority are little more than modern scripture.

    The only platonic test is articulating something in Operational Language open to observation.

    But at least I know why modern scripture is necessary: to preserve moral relativism. (Yes, that’s what I think)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-06 07:31:00 UTC

  • SETS AND NONSENSE : THE PERCEPTION OF INFINITE SEMANTICALLY MEANINGFUL SETS IS A

    SETS AND NONSENSE : THE PERCEPTION OF INFINITE SEMANTICALLY MEANINGFUL SETS IS A COGNITIVE BIAS

    I have been working with computers for a long time.

    Computers are very good with sets of things and teaching you how to work with them. Relational databases are even better at teaching you the algebra of sets than programming languages. Compilers are very good at teaching you about semantics.

    And trying to write games that have some semblance of intelligence not immediately deducible as trivial dumb patterns. Or writing software that can produce reasonably articulate legal arguments from limited data. Or trying to represent semantic clouds of related terms teaches you something very basic about language:

    That there are actually very few sentences that are not nonsense compared to the number of sentences that are sensible.

    If one accumulates knowledge from many different disciplines, it becomes rapidly apparent that the number of concepts shared by these domains is limited and that the perception of vast knowledge is an illusory artifact of disciplinary methodological loading – most of which is erroneous and caused by ignorance of these greater patterns, or various forms of social and normative loading, or the natural brevity that emerges in any population over time. Worse, no small part of current language consists of loading meant to signal social position or create priestly mysticism to preserve status cues.

    One of our cognitive biases is to assume when we discover something new,

    Mystical statements were not false if they achieved the purpose of getting non-kin to treat each other as kin.

    They may have been allegorical but they were not false. They produced the desired outcome of uniting disunited people by getting them to extend kin-trust to non-kin.

    The externality produced by that allegory was pretty dangerous it turned out. But until trade became pervasive, the need to extend trust in order to trade and operate a division of labor was insufficient to produce the level of trust that religion did.

    We did not become enlightened because we wanted to, but because trade required that we did. And morality could be enforced by trade and credit rather than religion which threatens ostracization and death, and law which threatens punishment. Instead the ability to consume, compete for status and mates or feel the pressure of degrading status made very granular control of moral behavior possible – for nearly everyone, at very low cost, and producing a virtuous cycle of declining prices.

    While we might create very vast and highly loaded languages, the fact of the matter, is that all language is allegory to experience. There is little or nothing that cannot be expressed with a thousand words. The primary challenge is that complexity using that limited vocabulary overwhelms short term memory. So loading using complex words. Like symbols or measurements, allows us to stuff ideas into short term memory and create faster “meaning” in each other’s minds, in the three second window of our processing cycle for those who are already familiar with the topic.

    In this sense, while we use complex words with heavy loading for brevity and status signaling, the concepts that we can convey require analogy to experience, and analogy to experience requires few words.

    Where am I going with this?

    The number if meaningful sentences is fairly small. The number if meaningful narratives has been known to be small for some time.

    The need to restate narratives in the current context is high.

    But the number of theories active at any time is quite small. With the illusion of large numbers a cognitive bias, and most theories merely justifications for preferences masquerading as theories.

    There just aren’t that many theories. And thats in no small part because we are very good at killing theories.

    We are super predators after all.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-04 11:02:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY IS LIKE SEX. IT’S ALWAYS GOOD. SOME SEX IS BETTER THAN OTHER SEX, BUT IF

    LIBERTY IS LIKE SEX. IT’S ALWAYS GOOD. SOME SEX IS BETTER THAN OTHER SEX, BUT IF ITS SEX IT’S GOOD. SAME GOES FOR LIBERTY.

    (cross posted)

    Hoppe’s argument is only accessible to X% of people. And that X% is very small. Molyneux’s argument is accessible to far more. Rand’s even more because its in novel form. Not everyone can climb all the way to ratio-scientific argument. And not everyone needs to. I’d argue that Molyneux tried and can’t. his book is … well, terrible. I can also argue as others have that there are plenty of holes in Hoppe’s criticism of others, if not holes in the brilliant solution he gave us. So anyone who advances liberty is good enough for me. If someone wants to argue that some statement is true or false then that’s a question for us to answer. And I’ll take all comers. And I’m pretty sure that there aren’t’ any I can’t defeat. But that’s different from saying that any argument in favor of liberty that also advances liberty (it isn’t so flawed that it produces negative results) is ‘good’.

    There are arguments against liberty. Arguments for liberty that cause people to reject liberty. Arguments for liberty that are weak or flawed that cause people to desire liberty. Arguments that are strong that cause people to desire liberty.

    And the natural differences in our intelligence and means of understanding require a diversity of arguments in favor of libertarianism, whether they are sentimental, analogical, moral, historical, empirical, and ratio-scientific. WIth the first item in that list requiring nothing but passion, and the last requiring mastery of multiple domains.

    Liberty is like sex. It’s always good. Some sex is better than other sex. But if its sex it’s good. Same goes for liberty.

    Voluntary exchange applying to sex as well. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-04 07:16:00 UTC

  • NEW MORAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE POST INDUSTRIAL ERA? What was the last moral princip

    NEW MORAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE POST INDUSTRIAL ERA?

    What was the last moral principle that humans discovered? Think about that for a bit. Because I have been. And, I think I understand the evolution of NECESSARY moral principles as well or better than anyone.

    And, while I’m not positive (because I haven’t read every word ever written in this world) I think I might have discovered the first new NECESSARY moral principle of the post-agrarian era.

    When I first wrote about it a few years ago, I didn’t think about it as novel. It was just a necessary constraint for suppressing fraud at scale. And I think it transitions an existing MORAL principle to an ETHICAL principle. (In the sense that Moral principles are those where your actions are entirely anonymous, and ethical actions are where your actions are not anonymous but you possess asymmetric knowledge.) So the ethical constraint enforces the moral objective.

    We tend to view norms as sacrosanct. But while instinctual morality remains constant (at least within kin) descriptive morality (morality in practice) varies with the structure of the reproductive unit and the structure of the means of production. Our ‘savage’ ancestors would not practice our moral codes nor we theirs. Mostly because the ‘momentum’ of production that we call ‘scarcity-productivity’ is so much higher now that we can afford to take risks that they couldn’t.

    We are’t so much morally superior by choice as we are superior by advent of technologies of cooperation and production. And those material advantages allow us to treat increasing numbers of people as kin – by raising our standard of violence in pursuit of calories. to the point now where we rarely need violence for material matters, and most violence occurs over mates or status – which in practice may be the same thing.

    At this point in our development, we have forbidden all violence, theft and fraud, and we suppress it well, by forcing all competition into the market for goods and services. HOwever, our ORGANIZATIONS are terribly immoral both in private and public senses. The private are subject to competition so their immorality is just suppressed quickly, and they cannot calcify the way government does, into predatory bureaucracies and survive for long. Whereas the government can devolve in to predatory bureaucracy almost from the formation of a bureaucratic organization.

    To make matters worse, we can privatize almost everything that a government does and cure most of the problem. But we cannot privatize everything, because when we say ‘privatize’ we mean tat we o pen it to competition. But in any competition there are losers, and you cannot build the commons willingly if there is a chance that any given participant will ‘lose’. And that is why, whether my libertarian friends like it or not, some form of ‘government’ will always exist: to produce commons in lieu of competition (loss).

    As such, what can we do to prevent corruption in the commons? What is the one institutional, ethical principle that we could adhere to in order to prevent all the forms of theft of commons that occur in every bureaucracy?

    Humans engage in violence – largely for status and mate seeking reasons. Humans engage in Theft, largely for petty entertainment, or drug use. Humans engage in fraud for many reasons, but usually as a means of income. Humans engage in fraud by omission as a matter of course. And Humans free-ride whenever and wherever possible outside of ascetic protestantism. IN fact, that is what differentiates ascetic protestantism – the prohibition on free riding.

    Where there is an organization that they can seek rents, humans engage in rent seeking (‘limited monopoly’, ‘loyalty fees’, ‘charity’, privatization of gains,socialization of losses) whenever possible.

    Where they are In organizations, humans engage in interpersonal corruption, rent seeking, privatization of gains, and systemic corruption.

    Where they are in control of organizations they engage in systemic theft, systemic fraud, war and conquest.

    Humans have an ethical portfolio with just one, one-note song we call competition in the free market. But they have a symphony of immoral options available to them. So it’s no surprise that when we give people incentives to act to steal, that they do so.

    We are fascinatingly creative creatures really.

    Curt Doolittle

    (c a l c u l a t i o n: maintaining causal relations by prohibiting pooling and laundering.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-02 03:12:00 UTC

  • REGARDING US STRATEGIC POLICY TOWARD CHINA “Japan has to cast off its cross of s

    REGARDING US STRATEGIC POLICY TOWARD CHINA

    “Japan has to cast off its cross of shame over having been defeated in the 1940’s and renew its national spirit.” – Eric Margolis

    (Well, that’s what I want Germany to do too. And thats why I want the USA out of Europe – to ensure that they do so.)

    “At stake is whether US will try to police a “Pax Americana” – a recipe for disaster – or partner with other nations” – Gorbachev

    (We will lose any war if we try to MAINTAIN the Pax Americana. And the resulting blood bath and power vacuum is terrifying. America must be able to project power long distances by non-naval means. our navy is a set of nice fat, slow moving ducks. American power in the world was obtained by inheriting the British Empire’s naval bases. American power is NAVAL, because we are far away from everything else. It is not possible use nuclear weapons. And if anyone does it’s both genocide and suicide. So the only thing the USA has going for it is Air Power and allies. And a Pax Americana does not give you allies when it’s under threat.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-29 07:44:00 UTC

  • THE DAMAGE OF WISHES Just reading through todays activity in economics and pieci

    THE DAMAGE OF WISHES

    Just reading through todays activity in economics and piecing together the not obvious fact that our paper of record forms public opinion but is that illusion differs substantially from BBC, Al Jazeera, Russian and Chinese sources more than those sources differ from one another.

    Cowen asks a question about Haiti, and the NYT bias is obvious. But the ideology of wishful thinking bears no resemblance to the reality if Haiti: we have only made it worse. Just like most of what we do makes everything worse.

    Ideological rag.

    The WSJ is the only domestic paper of record that has any correlation with reality. And even that is iffy.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-28 16:42:00 UTC