Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • (as a practicing philosopher) the study of philosophy does not teach you critica

    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2017/07/philosophy-and-standardized-test-scores-causation-or-correlation.htmlAFAIK, (as a practicing philosopher) the study of philosophy does not teach you critical thinking skills any better than do mathematics or the physical sciences. Certainly, any class in the philosophy of science, completing mathematics through calculus 1, and the first course in macro and micro economics, and an introductory course in contract law, and an economic history of mankind, will pretty much prepare you for the world with critical thinking skills in every relevant dimension of human life.

    What studying philosophy does seem to do, with painfully obvious regularity, is teach you skepticism against our intuitions and hubris by avoiding nearly all common mistakes that we humans are victim to, because of our evolutionary predispositions. I mean, if we look at history, we have a painfully limited number of philosophers worthy of study (aristotle, aurelius, machiavelli, smith/hume, Kant, Hayek and maybe Nietzsche. Historians and scientists and the works of literature are so far superior to the rest of the corpus (As Durant is so want to tell us). The rest are interesting only in so far that they have been comedies or disasters and almost always done more harm than good.

    When people ask me what to study, I show them my recommended reading list. It’s almost entirely constituted of the works of the sciences. I tell them I use the structure of philosophy in order to defeat those past errors on the same terms. But as far as I know, what I actually *do* is seek methods of measurement by which we eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful-thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, ficitonalism, and deceit – which are the landmines human evolution has left us with.

    Philosophy will increase wisdom: what NOT to do. The rest of the fields generally teach us what TO do to measure and act on the world around us.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 22:00:00 UTC

  • “We can celebrate what we love about America while acknowledging and attempting

    —“We can celebrate what we love about America while acknowledging and attempting to correct its errors. And if worst comes to worst, we still have the 2nd. That alone is worth almost all the other bullshit.”—Ely Harman

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 20:33:00 UTC

  • “Epistemology is our bitch now.”— Joel Davis

    —“Epistemology is our bitch now.”— Joel Davis

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 20:19:00 UTC

  • LEAVING A MARK ON REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY AS A DEFENSE FOR ALL TIME AGAINST THE IN

    LEAVING A MARK ON REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY AS A DEFENSE FOR ALL TIME AGAINST THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF LYING

    by Ely Harman

    —“Don’t forget the burning of actual people. That’s an important detail; lots and lots of people. And then the charred skulls will be piled into great pyramids and preserved as a warning to anyone who would be tempted to industrialize lying for 10,000 years.”— Ely Harman

    (awesome)

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 10:25:00 UTC

  • “WE JUST NEED A RELIGION AND WE ARE DONE ” by Joel Davis —“I’m just getting st

    “WE JUST NEED A RELIGION AND WE ARE DONE “

    by Joel Davis

    —“I’m just getting started. I have another piece on the relationship between religion, ritual, language, ethics and sociology that I’ve been formulating in the inspiration generated from my reading of Eric Gans’ work that I think has big potential when combined with Nietzschean aesthetics.

    We have a political ideology, an ethics, and now a philosophical school.

    We just need a religion and we’re done.”— Joel Davis

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 08:47:00 UTC

  • THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE. —“Curt Doolittle’s ‘Natural Law of Reciprocity’ operati

    THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE.

    —“Curt Doolittle’s ‘Natural Law of Reciprocity’ operationalizes Kant’s categorical imperative as a functional measurement of interpersonal relations.”— Joel Davis

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-04 08:42:00 UTC

  • by Steve Pender What other good can exist than that which expands the only known

    by Steve Pender

    What other good can exist than that which expands the only known form of life that has power to delay/counteract entropic forces? Only intelligent life seems to be aware that life even exists.

    Some policies can be tough (require more steps) to demonstrate their higher survival value, but most don’t require being a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist. Island morality (whatever extends life on a deserted island for the most people for the long-term) looks to be a useful micropropertarian guide to develop macropropertarian policy.

    Example: 80 IQ mother of 5 can’t afford to feed her babies but wants another baby

    Dysgenic left argument typically assumes that further expansion of intelligent life in the universe isn’t necessary, that we can feed endlessly using extant food. It takes for granted a level of food/resource stability/surplus that it doesn’t contribute to.

    Eugenic right wants symbiosis, mutually beneficial trade. What do we get for feeding someone who does not contribute to our global “island’s” resource surplus? A big nothing burger for ourselves.

    We can also point to traditions that increased the survival of the people who followed them, and at least have data points that show that an anticipated good has indeed been a past outcome for a disputed policy.

    We can’t point to any cultures that normalized children being sexualized at a very early age, or encouraged to be gay, or transgender, for instance, and showing positive results. We can’t point to *any* cultures that ever existed doing so, so on that policy, we have a whole world of cultures who were, in practice, uniformly against such policies, that continue to expand in the absence of that desired policy.

    We can’t point to any culture that disarmed the bulk of their population, and successfully expanded their *own* culture afterwards.

    Some policies have been “scientifically tested” and failed. Dysgenic leftists are therefore more like alchemists and conspiracy theorists who offer no evidence for their arguments.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-03 10:19:00 UTC

  • “One is constantly thrown back on this problem of persecution of the productive

    —“One is constantly thrown back on this problem of persecution of the productive minority. Been thinking about it all day. They always come after you. I read somewhere recently, maybe on your blog, maybe not, the argument that the elites love this persecution because it’s an engine of economic activity: The productive must constantly spend in order to protect themselves from the incursion of the hordes (mostly by moving but also by status signaling and private schools etc etc).”— Michael Churchill

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-02 20:20:00 UTC

  • “WHAT YOU SAY, WHAT PEOPLE HEAR, WHAT YOU MEAN.” by Ben Smith 1) When you say th

    “WHAT YOU SAY, WHAT PEOPLE HEAR, WHAT YOU MEAN.”

    by Ben Smith

    1) When you say this: “I’m all for highly redistributive nationalism.”

    2) What people hear is this: “I want to take from the rich and give to the poor.”

    3) What you mean is this: “I want to redistribute a lot, but there won’t be anything for free. Everything will be paid for, one way or another.”

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-02 13:27:00 UTC

  • (From elsewhere) We are in the midst of a civil war to end the postwar order, en

    (From elsewhere)

    We are in the midst of a civil war to end the postwar order, end the postmodern message, and restore the historical norm of a balance of power between nations and their core states.

    That civil war will transition to action sometime in the next 18 months. Or within 120 days of the next economic cycle. Certainly prior to the next election cycle.

    What the Academy, State, Media, Financial sector are doing, is fighting for their lives right now. And it doesn’t matter. It’s kabuki theatre. Momentum continues to build.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-07-01 17:17:00 UTC