Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • The Popular Will: MURDER.

    –“…our civilization rests on the death of two persons: a philosopher (Socrates) and the Son of God (Jesus), both victims of the popular will.”– Madariaga

  • The Popular Will: MURDER.

    –“…our civilization rests on the death of two persons: a philosopher (Socrates) and the Son of God (Jesus), both victims of the popular will.”– Madariaga

  • SPINOZA: PHILOSOPHERS SHOULD HAVE A TRADE I’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas,

    SPINOZA: PHILOSOPHERS SHOULD HAVE A TRADE

    I’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas, but am very much a fan both his writing style and his work ethic.

    Spinoza earned his living as a lens-grinder. He wrote his extremely parsimonious book, taking most of his life, from a musty apartment. It’s what, 200 pages long? A brutally concise work of numbered and ordered sentences.

    The first statement that struck me was ‘endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people’. I’ve always viewed this as my curse. Which is why I work so hard at it. Because I’m aware of my frame of reference, and my near absence of conceptual empathy.

    The other influential thing that he said, can be roughly translated as “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue”. A sentiment I agree with. And have tried to imitate.

    I’ve always tried to earn enough money that I could research and write either part time or full time.

    I don’t like the idea of philosophers trying to earn money from their work. I don’t trust it at all. I can barely respect teaching as a way to pay for writing.

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb reflects this same sentiment when he says: “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.”

    And I practice philosophy the same way. I’m trying to find a solution to the problem of ethics. In particular, the problem of deception in ethics, politics, and economics.

    Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. Use the accumulated wisdom of centuries to solve a problem in the real world.

    Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-26 07:52:00 UTC

  • “Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct

    –“Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-25 02:42:00 UTC

  • “We’re the most powerful nation in the world and Russia is a gas station masquer

    —“We’re the most powerful nation in the world and Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”—

    Go John. lol

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 16:56:00 UTC

  • MORE ON PROMISES AND TRUTH –“Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say t

    MORE ON PROMISES AND TRUTH

    –“Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth. … When they aren’t overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn’t true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available “representation”, in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape. Maps aren’t true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.”–

    This is a wordy paragraph that simply states that better theories correspond to and explain reality, than less good theories. But theories can never be identical to reality, since they are always representations (I would call them ‘aggregates that exclude information’).

    I can promise you that I followed the scientific method, and that my theory is internally consistent, externally correspondent and falsifiable (and perhaps a few other things). If you agree that my theory is useful, internally consistent, externally correspondent, and falsifiable, (and perhaps a few other things) then you can say that I spoke the truth. You may, for sake of manners and brevity say that the theory is then true. But that is merely an abbreviation for the fact that the theory is true, and useful.

    As far as I know this is the limit of our ability without entering the fantasy world of platonism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 12:33:00 UTC

  • TRUTH VS PROMISE : SOME EXAMPLES —“It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I

    TRUTH VS PROMISE : SOME EXAMPLES

    —“It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. “—(Frege?)

    I disagree.

    “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as “I attest that I smell the scent of violets”or “I promise to you that I smell the scent of violets.” Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with your utterance.

    –“The snow is white, if and only if the snow is white”–

    The snow can’t ‘be’ anything. It cannot act, nor perceive the passage of time, which gives rise to the ability to determine changes in state.

    Instead the operationally correct statement is “I observe that the snow appears white in color. I promise that if you observe the snow, that you will also agree that it appears white in color. If both of us observe that it appears white in color, then we can agree that all observers of the snow will also observe that appears white in color.”

    Now, this is extremely burdensome language. That’s why we don’t use it. But it is a mistake to take an aggregate “the snow is white in color” and attribute the same logical meaning to it as “I observe that the snow appears to be white in color, and I promise that if you observe the snow that you will also agree that it appears white in color.”

    All aggregates launder (lose) information. That’s the problem with aggregates. It’s not only a problem when we create a category, or when we add numbers together to create a sum, or call the square root of two a ‘number’ when it is a function, but it’s also a problem when we summarize informationally dense statements for the sake of brevity.

    Operational language is burdensome. But it prevents the evolution of what appear to be complex problems, from that which is merely a byproduct of aggregation (laundering).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 12:20:00 UTC

  • “Reality doesn’t care about your arguments. But your arguments should probably t

    —“Reality doesn’t care about your arguments. But your arguments should probably take note of reality.”—

    Eli Harman

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-23 14:01:00 UTC

  • WORTH REPEATING : THE CHOICE OF ARISTOCRACY “Aristocracy is a choice we make, an

    WORTH REPEATING : THE CHOICE OF ARISTOCRACY

    “Aristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward.”

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-23 12:47:00 UTC

  • “Violence represents both a conclusive refutation of argumentation ethics and —

    —“Violence represents both a conclusive refutation of argumentation ethics and — quite often — a cheaper means of accomplishing the same ends.”— Eli Harman

    (Eli seems to frequently manage to reduce what takes me 750 words into twenty.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-23 09:44:00 UTC