Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • Rabbi Lapin, standing in my back yard, after dinner, said: “There are good peopl

    Rabbi Lapin, standing in my back yard, after dinner, said: “There are good people and bad people everywhere: good jews and bad jews, good christians and bad christians. It’s not whether they are jews or christians, but whether they are good people or bad people.”

    As in every conversation I have had with him, it affected me profoundly.

    There are a lot of bad people. I don’t worry about good people.

    One can judge a class by its members, but one cannot judge an individual by his class.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-28 02:26:00 UTC

  • POINCARÉ ON CANTOR’S MYSTICISM Poincaré rejected the later foundational work of

    POINCARÉ ON CANTOR’S MYSTICISM

    Poincaré rejected the later foundational work of Cantor, saying that

    —“There is no actual infinity, the Cantorians have forgotten that, and they have fallen into contradiction. It is true that Cantorism rendered services, but that was when it was applied to a real problem whose terms were clearly defined, and we could walk safely. Logisticians as Cantorians have forgotten. (Poincaré 1908: 212–213; 1913b: 484)”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-26 02:00:00 UTC

  • “Liberty will win because it is the most robust sort of authoritarianism.”— El

    —“Liberty will win because it is the most robust sort of authoritarianism.”—

    Eli on a roll today. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-25 15:09:00 UTC

  • ELI ON THE LEFT’S FAILURE TO PROVIDE CARE-TAKING FOR TRUTH —“If arguing with l

    ELI ON THE LEFT’S FAILURE TO PROVIDE CARE-TAKING FOR TRUTH

    —“If arguing with leftists often seems like banging your head against a brick wall it’s because (in many cases) *the truth simply doesn’t matter to them.*”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-25 04:51:00 UTC

  • not about the pursuit of truth? — one third of the participants admit to havin

    http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/07/23/scientific-misbehavior-in-economics/Its not about the pursuit of truth?

    — one third of the participants admit to having cherry-picked results —

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 11:21:00 UTC

  • PUNISHING THE LIAR ELITE —“The job of our elite is to identify lies and punish

    PUNISHING THE LIAR ELITE

    —“The job of our elite is to identify lies and punish liars. Unfortunately, they’ve joined in. Now we must punish our elites.”— Eli Harman

    If that isn’t a mission statement, I don’t know what is.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 03:14:00 UTC

  • Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers – Ti

    http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdfPolitical Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology

    Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers – Tilburg University

    —“A lack of political diversity in psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. The authors of this study surveyed a large number (combined N = 800) of social and personality psychologists and discovered several interesting facts. First, although only 6% described themselves as conservative “overall,” there was more diversity of political opinion on economic issues and foreign policy. Second, respondents significantly underestimated the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 14:43:00 UTC

  • Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically: 1) In a democra

    http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/why-philosophers-should-stay-out-of-politics/Bas:

    Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically:

    1) In a democracy, political debate has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with obtaining power by marketing, rhetoric, and ideology. Policy preferences are secondary to obtaining power to enact what must result in compromise policies.

    2) A philosopher’s only special function is to act as professional judge of reasoned arguments on logical or moral grounds. We can claim no other skill. Just as judges do NOT act on moral or logical grounds, but on legal grounds. (Law abides by a lower logical standard than philosophy.)

    3) If we determine the truth or falsehood of statements, arguments, and policy preferences, then we are performing as judges of reason.

    4) if we perform as advocates of policy then we are not acting as judges.

    5) Academia is corrupted by activism. This is the unfortunate consequence of competing for funds and attention.

    6) Since by necessity democracy imposes monopoly rule, models of government represent irreconcilable differences by which to make judgements: we must assume a particular good as a theory or a preference in the choice of political models to make judgements within. Now it is possible to make a judgement from each point of the ideological triangle, and that is perhaps the position we all should take in rendering our judgements. However if we are asked to choose one or the other it may be that the optimum solution to any problem is satisfied best by one model, and the next optimum solution to any problem satisfied best by another model.

    7) Therein rests the problem of philosophical neutrality under democracy: democracy imposes monopoly rule under which we cannot easily construct the best solution to any given problem using different forms of government.

    8) It may be possible to make use of all forms of government, but only under libertarian government is such institutional diversity possible. Why? because only fully atomic property rights allow for rational calculation of voluntary exchanges necessary for the construction of contractual government that provides the features of any form of government.

    As such is it is most logical to construct a libertarian government, but to advocate an administrative structure for any given policy problem best suitable to its execution.

    We can model the universe in mathematics because a number system consisting of individual units can represent any combination of units. We can model any political economy in libertarianism because individual property rights allow us the same logical freedom as unitary mathematics. The difference is that in math, we use an equal’s sine to test for truth, whereas in libertarianism we rely upon voluntary exchanges free of externalities.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 12:48:00 UTC

  • PRICELESS : AUTISM AS A PERSONALITY TYPE —“Regarding autism, I don’t consider

    PRICELESS : AUTISM AS A PERSONALITY TYPE

    —“Regarding autism, I don’t consider it a disorder, merely a personality type.”—Virgiliu Pop

    I guess then we have to give solipsism the same treatment? That’s OK. Overly emotional moms are just as valuable as overly analytical engineers. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 08:32:00 UTC

  • “In American politics, they say that the cover up is always worse than the crime

    —-“In American politics, they say that the cover up is always worse than the crime. Come clean and you will be just fine. Putin’s is a case of a criminal regime where the crime is so bad that the costs of cover up pale by comparison. Putin can only hope that the world will be distracted by another outrage, that he can stone wall any investigation, and that his apologists can stave off action by international criminal tribunals. If he fails, he is in deep trouble. It is up to his inner circle and the Russian people to figure out how to make sure he leaves the scene. After all, Vova has outstayed his welcome.”—–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-22 15:10:00 UTC