Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • Avoiding a Disgrace

    Feb 11, 2020, 11:06 AM

    —“It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.” —Socrates

    (a reminder via John Papadopoulos)

  • The Financial Systems of The World Will Resist Us

    Feb 11, 2020, 11:11 AM

    —“Accounting for changes in genetic, institutional, cultural and normative capital would not go over well with Capital (the societal force) as it is currently conceived of. Japan is a good example of where they DO take the balance sheet into consideration.”—Michael Churchill

  • The Financial Systems of The World Will Resist Us

    Feb 11, 2020, 11:11 AM

    —“Accounting for changes in genetic, institutional, cultural and normative capital would not go over well with Capital (the societal force) as it is currently conceived of. Japan is a good example of where they DO take the balance sheet into consideration.”—Michael Churchill

  • Improving Parsimony of The Claim that All Theories Are Eventually Falsified

    Feb 11, 2020, 12:19 PM Better way of saying it. There is one most parsimonious paradigm (We call it science. Now I call it ‘P’ or ‘testimony’).

    —“All paradigms are eventually false. :)”—

    That’s demonstrably false. Instead, we increasingly identify limits that cause us to increase the parsimony of our theories. All scientific paradigms appear increase in parsimony. Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein all evolve to greater precision. Take Humors (disease) and Phlogiston theory (chemistry), Einstein’s static universe(cosmology), or the expanding earth (plate tectonics). They were false but they were progress in the right direction. Conversely there are three categories that always fail to increase in parsimony: 1) Magic -> Pseudoscience (action-physical) 2) Idealism -> Philosophy (verbal-rational) 3) Occult -> Theology (emotional-intuitionistic) So we have deflationary grammars of 1) Science, 2) Logic, and 3) Mathematics that all increase in parsimony. And we have inflationary grammars of 1) magic(physical), 2) idealism(verbal), and 3) the occult(emotional) that fail all tests of parsimony. Of course we also have the outright deceits too.

  • Improving Parsimony of The Claim that All Theories Are Eventually Falsified

    Feb 11, 2020, 12:19 PM Better way of saying it. There is one most parsimonious paradigm (We call it science. Now I call it ‘P’ or ‘testimony’).

    —“All paradigms are eventually false. :)”—

    That’s demonstrably false. Instead, we increasingly identify limits that cause us to increase the parsimony of our theories. All scientific paradigms appear increase in parsimony. Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein all evolve to greater precision. Take Humors (disease) and Phlogiston theory (chemistry), Einstein’s static universe(cosmology), or the expanding earth (plate tectonics). They were false but they were progress in the right direction. Conversely there are three categories that always fail to increase in parsimony: 1) Magic -> Pseudoscience (action-physical) 2) Idealism -> Philosophy (verbal-rational) 3) Occult -> Theology (emotional-intuitionistic) So we have deflationary grammars of 1) Science, 2) Logic, and 3) Mathematics that all increase in parsimony. And we have inflationary grammars of 1) magic(physical), 2) idealism(verbal), and 3) the occult(emotional) that fail all tests of parsimony. Of course we also have the outright deceits too.

  • Socrates on Declining Population

    Feb 11, 2020, 9:51 PM

    “It seems strange enough to me that a herdsman who lets his cattle decrease and go to the bad should not admit that he is a poor cowherd; but stranger still that a statesman when he causes the citizens to decrease and go to the bad, should feel no shame nor think himself a poor statesman.” – Socrates on declining population

  • Socrates on Declining Population

    Feb 11, 2020, 9:51 PM

    “It seems strange enough to me that a herdsman who lets his cattle decrease and go to the bad should not admit that he is a poor cowherd; but stranger still that a statesman when he causes the citizens to decrease and go to the bad, should feel no shame nor think himself a poor statesman.” – Socrates on declining population

  • Libertarians

    Mar 27, 2020, 11:38 AM

    —“Libertarians don’t do skin in the game – they play fantasy league football for ideology.”—Gary Knight

    (Gary always up-man’s everyone else. It’s a good thing.)

  • Libertarians

    Mar 27, 2020, 11:38 AM

    —“Libertarians don’t do skin in the game – they play fantasy league football for ideology.”—Gary Knight

    (Gary always up-man’s everyone else. It’s a good thing.)

  • Denial or Hope? 😉

    Mar 29, 2020, 11:08 AM

    —“It’s amazing how few people have really internalised what is coming in the next month. Especially in the US. Not the human damage or the economic damage that is coming.”– Iron Economist — “I’m pretty terrified but I think people many people are in a state of hopeful denial”-JayMan @JayMan471

    I’m not in hopeful denial. I’m just hopeful that the false promise of the 20th is over. The century of utopian pseudoscience, sophistry, and darwinian-denial is done. It may be an ‘expensive correction’. But it’s better than the alternatives.