Form: Question

  • How Many Of You Are Libertarian?

    You will be surprised by this, but, roughly speaking, a quarter of the population expresses surveyed preferences that are libertarian, a quarter conservative, a quarter liberal, and a quarter anti-libertarian.

    Power could be maintained in the USA with fiscally conservative, and slowly enacted socially liberal policies (which is what happens anyway, after a lot of distraction and infighting.)

    That this roughly reflects the gender distribution in the population, and a fairly even distribution between the genders, would actually make common sense. (It does). 

    What has altered the political landscape, and continues to, is the number of single women and single mothers in the voting pool has increased substantially since 1960.  At present, it’s arguable, that all other things being equal, single women and mothers decide elections. 

    That is one of the reasons that candidates now must be somewhat attractive. Because for single women, and single mothers, the attractiveness of a candidate is a meaningful reason for their vote. If a candidate is both attractive, and well spoken, and supports redistribution and equalitarianism – redistribution outside of the nuclear family, the vote is all but ensured.

    For most poeple who understand these demographic issues, it’s saddening, because american politics, and the politics of all democracies, are just form of  entertainment that is a vast waste of time and energy that is determined by a small number of axis of influence: the homogeneity (good) vs diversity (bad) in a population. The structure of the family unit from individual, to family, to extended family, clan and tribe.  The size of the population (big is bad, small is good.)   In other words, you will get a ‘Denmark’ if you have a small homogenous country of nuclear families, because in the nuclear family both genders have equal reproductive interests.

    I suspect that this is one of the most profound things you can learn – certainly on Quora.

    https://www.quora.com/How-many-of-you-are-libertarian

  • QUESTION (REALLY) ON TRUTH If I argue that truth is a spectrum with different st

    QUESTION (REALLY) ON TRUTH

    If I argue that truth is a spectrum with different standards, is this weaker than it is illustrative? In the sense that the erroneous conclusions that can be drawn are substantial vs incidental?

    Please understand before you jump on me too much that I think I understand the rules of science and the rules of human interaction pretty thoroughly. And I am trying to describe the difference between the two in propertarian language (as, well, what you would think of as a supply-demand curve).

    1) In order to state something is absolutely true, it must be a tautology, or perhaps better stated, an identity.

    (The Correspondance Theory or Identity Theory of Truth)

    2) In order to state something is scientifically true, the standard of truth is that one is describing causal relations that are free from error given the totality of scientific knowledge currently at our disposal. And given that so much scientific knowledge is correlative, this is a lower standard than identity.

    (The Correspondance theory of Truth)

    3) In order to conduct an exchange, the standard of truth is that I must not lie. Err is permissible, and it’s assumed that we err.

    (The Pragmatic Theory of Truth)

    4) An individual’s perception, (not statement) of truth is simply preference. We lie to ourselves as a matter of course. But the need to construct an intellectual compromise with our arational emotional framework, that allows us to act in order to suit our preferences is simply a functional necessity.

    (The cohesive theory of truth)

    5) Truth doesn’t exist, the only purpose of language is to obtain power, and the end justifies the means.

    (The postmodernist/gnostic, Relativistic “Consensus” Theory of Truth)

    Now, I keep shooting this full of (small) holes, but I can’t do any better. And I have to be able to say it in language that is at least vaguely comprehensible to non-specialists.

    Help? Kenneth Allen Hopf? Matt Dioguardi? Anyone?

    Thanks.

    Curt


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 07:41:00 UTC

  • Why is it that women in this country never refuse a request to dance, no matter

    Why is it that women in this country never refuse a request to dance, no matter how drunk or unattractive the man is?

    I mean if you tossed women around the dance floor like a rag doll in the states, if the bouncer let you live the patrons wouldn’t.

    Wth.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-06 18:08:00 UTC

  • WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND POSTMODERNISM? CHRISTIANS (conse

    WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND POSTMODERNISM?

    CHRISTIANS (conservatives) keep their hands out of your pockets, and demand you behave ethically and morally in public – AND POSTMODERNISTS (liberals) put their hands into your pockets and that is their only demand.

    That appears to be the only difference.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-06 09:36:00 UTC

  • CAN ANYONE EDIT MY LATIN? “Proprietas est scriptura nobilitate, violentia est os

    CAN ANYONE EDIT MY LATIN?

    “Proprietas est scriptura nobilitate, violentia est os atramentum”

    “Property is the scripture of nobility, and violence is its ink”

    It’s not right. “os” isn’t right I don’t think.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-31 11:15:00 UTC

  • Libertarianism: In A Stateless Society Based On Private Property Rights, How Would You Avoid Imprisonment By Another Individual Purchasing All The Property Surrounding Your Property?

    A stateless society based upon property rights is a broader definition than Rothbardian Libertarianism, which would argue that you must compete via price for access to your land.

    But that is a relatively silly thing to say given the logic at hand:

    The questoin is, if you have property and it’s capable of being locked, then how did you get there? Were  you stealing access already?   Did you sell your land to someone without thinking of preserving that access?  Or lastly, did someone buy your access somehow and now desire to charge you for it?

    The problem is, that this circumstance actually doesn’t arise, unless you were committing an act of theft or rent in the first place.  And if that is the case, then you have obtained access to your property at a discount and as such must now pay full price for access, and pay the cost of your discount.

    I am not really sure this is a libertarian argument. it’s pretty ancient common law. Generally speaking most societies allow free passage on land boundaries just to avoid this problem.

    The libertarian argument doesn’t make instinctual moral sense to people because it sounds like an involuntary transfer without added value or compensation.  But the truth is that the circumstance can’t really occur unless you were obtaining access at a discount in the first place.

    https://www.quora.com/Libertarianism-In-a-stateless-society-based-on-private-property-rights-how-would-you-avoid-imprisonment-by-another-individual-purchasing-all-the-property-surrounding-your-property

  • IS PROPERTARIANISM THE INTELLECTUAL CURE TO POSTMODERNISM? I am not sure yet. If

    IS PROPERTARIANISM THE INTELLECTUAL CURE TO POSTMODERNISM?

    I am not sure yet. If the enlightenment was completed (corrected) then could it posit a defense against postmodernism? If we recognaize that democracy is net ‘bad’ because we no longer are families with similar interests and reproductive strategies, then possibly yes. But we must have a solution to the problem of collective investment in commons.

    I am pretty sure I have solved this problem. I am not positive. But pretty sure.

    More from Hicks:

    “Tracing postmodernism’s roots back to Rousseau, Kant, and Marx explains how all of its elements came to be woven together. Yet identifying postmodernism’s roots and connecting them to contemporary bad consequences does not refute postmodernism. What is still needed is a refutation of those historical premises, and an identification and defense of the alternatives to them. The Enlightenment was based on premises opposite to those of postmodernism, but while the Enlightenment was able to create a magnificent world on the basis of those premises, it articulated and defended them only incompletely. That weakness is the sole source of postmodernism’s power against it. Completing the articulation and defense of those premises is therefore essential to maintaining the forward progress of the Enlightenment vision and shielding it against postmodern strategies.”

    Hicks, Stephen R. C. (2010-10-19). Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Kindle Locations 4640-4648). Ockham’s Razor Publishing / Scholargy. Kindle Edition.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-30 08:22:00 UTC

  • FEELINGS We all have feelings about norms. Often feelings about habits. Possibly

    FEELINGS

    We all have feelings about norms. Often feelings about habits. Possibly about processes. But can you have feelings about formula or calculations? Why?


    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-23 12:14:00 UTC

  • I’M SURE PROFESSIONAL ACADEMICS KNOW THIS BUT… Does anyone actually READ the p

    I’M SURE PROFESSIONAL ACADEMICS KNOW THIS BUT…

    Does anyone actually READ the papers and books that they cite?

    (Exasperated.)


    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-22 10:25:00 UTC

  • MUCH MEDICINE?

    http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-in-half/TOO MUCH MEDICINE?


    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-18 16:15:00 UTC