Curt Doolittle

Form: Reply

  • How Do I Become Less Racist?

    I hate these fake questions. Can you please stop wasting our time with them?

    The answer is that everyone is racist as are you for asking this question.

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-less-racist

  • What Would Happen To The American Economy If The Rest Of The World Refused To Use Or Buy American Products?

    I think this is the wrong question.

    What would be the impact on the rest of the world if they lost the american market for their goods and services in retaliation for the banning of american market goods, information and services?

    American CAN survive (easily) as an Autarkic economy. It is not clear that americans would not be better OFF surviving Autarkically.

    The chinese could do so as well.

    The russians could do so.

    The question is only the amount of political upset each country would bear as it reorganized for Autarkic production and consumption.

    https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-to-the-American-economy-if-the-rest-of-the-world-refused-to-use-or-buy-American-products

  • Which Company’s Disappearance (sudden Halt Of Operations, Services, Etc.) Would Result In The Largest Impact, And What Would That Impact Be?

    THIS IS A GOOD QUESTION

    Um. I don’t think any particular company’s disappearance will have ANY material impact on the world. It’s true for example, that if we lost Google, the world would feel it rapidly and severely. Google simply supplies too many services and too many of them for free, and that would be a problem. But it’s possible to simply nationalize the service and restore it. For all intents and purposes google is now a piece of national infrastructure as important as the phone networks, and rail lines.

    If any large company that manages communications today went offline – the major carriers, the competitors would easily take over operations. If any oil company. The same. Pretty much all of them are not unique.

    I think if Microsoft disappeared overnight that would cause a lot of disruption to the world over a few years, but I think it would lead to innovation and profitability.

    I think if Apple disappeared it would trash the american stock market.

    I think that if one of the too-big-to-fail banks in the west caused a cascade failure of other too-big-to-fail banks, that would cause a catastrophe to the world, and this has been the subject of both fictional, political, economic, and even military analysis. At this point cutting a country out of the world banking system is very nearly as serious as nuclear warfare, which is what brought Russia under control in 2014.

    The biggest ‘companies’ of all are governments, and the collapse of a major G7 government would … well that would be very, very, bad.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-companys-disappearance-sudden-halt-of-operations-services-etc-would-result-in-the-largest-impact-and-what-would-that-impact-be

  • Will Future Economies Depend On Socialist Governments, As Technology Makes Human Labour Redundant?

    GOOD QUESTION, BUT YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE ANSWER

    1. socialism means central management of property and production. Socialism is dead. It cannot exist, ever, any more than communism or anarchism can exist – for obivous reasons, that I won’t go into here.
    2. Almost the entire world works on a mixed economy. A mixed economy means that private property, money, and prices are used to provide calculability, planning, and incentives for individuals, yet the proceeds of their unequal productivity are captured, and redistributed.
    3. The means of this redistribution varies from the investment in research, in industry, and infrastructure, to the subsidy of retirement, unemployment, general income, and the provision of health care and justice, military and defense.
    4. the uncomfortable truth is that the lower classes (dumber, more impulsive people, with lower industriousness) are far more costly than people who are intelligent, thoughtful, and industrious can compensate for, so the countries that are the most advanced and have the highest redistribution are those that have eliminated their underclasses through attrition during the middle and late middle and early modern ages. In other words, the best way to increase your wealth and unemployment is to force one or zero children to people who require redistribution.
    5. Moreover: There are limits to energy consumption available on the planet.
    6. Moreover: There are limits to productivity using energy available on the planet.
    7. Moreover: Humans are *extremely* expensive organisms.

    SO:

    THE OPTIMISTIC VERSION:
    We impose worldwide one or zero child policy on those people who cannot engage in fruitful employment and over about four generations raise the median ability of humanity about one standard deviation, eliminating most demand. Meanwhile we impose a law that says that any job that CAN be done by a human without repetitive stress injury, shall be done by a human. And that would solve most of the problems.

    THE STATUS QUO VERSION
    Since that would be untenable for the third world the vast majority of their populations being ‘surplus humans’, and impolitic for the first world, given that the state is empowered by women and the lower classes through voting I expect what will occur is no change, until the existing system of credit collapses (which should occur somewhere in the next generation if not this one.) And we will

    THE SCARY VERSION
    The vast importing of underclasses into the civilized world in order to attempt to compensate for the impossibility of maintaining these levels of redistribution in a world that is no longer economically and institutionally backward, nor pervasively superstitious and illiterate, will reverse 3500 years of reduction of the underclasses, and reduce all but say the japanese and Han chinese to worldwide malthusian poverty, since it is DIFFERENCES that make productivity possible.

    Regardless of what economists like to promote the carrying capacity of the planet looks as if the current standards of living cannot be extended to the full population extant.

    That’s my understanding of the choices.

    https://www.quora.com/Will-future-economies-depend-on-socialist-governments-as-technology-makes-human-labour-redundant

  • How Do I Become Less Racist?

    I hate these fake questions. Can you please stop wasting our time with them?

    The answer is that everyone is racist as are you for asking this question.

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-less-racist

  • What Would Happen To The American Economy If The Rest Of The World Refused To Use Or Buy American Products?

    I think this is the wrong question.

    What would be the impact on the rest of the world if they lost the american market for their goods and services in retaliation for the banning of american market goods, information and services?

    American CAN survive (easily) as an Autarkic economy. It is not clear that americans would not be better OFF surviving Autarkically.

    The chinese could do so as well.

    The russians could do so.

    The question is only the amount of political upset each country would bear as it reorganized for Autarkic production and consumption.

    https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-to-the-American-economy-if-the-rest-of-the-world-refused-to-use-or-buy-American-products

  • Which Company’s Disappearance (sudden Halt Of Operations, Services, Etc.) Would Result In The Largest Impact, And What Would That Impact Be?

    THIS IS A GOOD QUESTION

    Um. I don’t think any particular company’s disappearance will have ANY material impact on the world. It’s true for example, that if we lost Google, the world would feel it rapidly and severely. Google simply supplies too many services and too many of them for free, and that would be a problem. But it’s possible to simply nationalize the service and restore it. For all intents and purposes google is now a piece of national infrastructure as important as the phone networks, and rail lines.

    If any large company that manages communications today went offline – the major carriers, the competitors would easily take over operations. If any oil company. The same. Pretty much all of them are not unique.

    I think if Microsoft disappeared overnight that would cause a lot of disruption to the world over a few years, but I think it would lead to innovation and profitability.

    I think if Apple disappeared it would trash the american stock market.

    I think that if one of the too-big-to-fail banks in the west caused a cascade failure of other too-big-to-fail banks, that would cause a catastrophe to the world, and this has been the subject of both fictional, political, economic, and even military analysis. At this point cutting a country out of the world banking system is very nearly as serious as nuclear warfare, which is what brought Russia under control in 2014.

    The biggest ‘companies’ of all are governments, and the collapse of a major G7 government would … well that would be very, very, bad.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-companys-disappearance-sudden-halt-of-operations-services-etc-would-result-in-the-largest-impact-and-what-would-that-impact-be

  • Will Future Economies Depend On Socialist Governments, As Technology Makes Human Labour Redundant?

    GOOD QUESTION, BUT YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE ANSWER

    1. socialism means central management of property and production. Socialism is dead. It cannot exist, ever, any more than communism or anarchism can exist – for obivous reasons, that I won’t go into here.
    2. Almost the entire world works on a mixed economy. A mixed economy means that private property, money, and prices are used to provide calculability, planning, and incentives for individuals, yet the proceeds of their unequal productivity are captured, and redistributed.
    3. The means of this redistribution varies from the investment in research, in industry, and infrastructure, to the subsidy of retirement, unemployment, general income, and the provision of health care and justice, military and defense.
    4. the uncomfortable truth is that the lower classes (dumber, more impulsive people, with lower industriousness) are far more costly than people who are intelligent, thoughtful, and industrious can compensate for, so the countries that are the most advanced and have the highest redistribution are those that have eliminated their underclasses through attrition during the middle and late middle and early modern ages. In other words, the best way to increase your wealth and unemployment is to force one or zero children to people who require redistribution.
    5. Moreover: There are limits to energy consumption available on the planet.
    6. Moreover: There are limits to productivity using energy available on the planet.
    7. Moreover: Humans are *extremely* expensive organisms.

    SO:

    THE OPTIMISTIC VERSION:
    We impose worldwide one or zero child policy on those people who cannot engage in fruitful employment and over about four generations raise the median ability of humanity about one standard deviation, eliminating most demand. Meanwhile we impose a law that says that any job that CAN be done by a human without repetitive stress injury, shall be done by a human. And that would solve most of the problems.

    THE STATUS QUO VERSION
    Since that would be untenable for the third world the vast majority of their populations being ‘surplus humans’, and impolitic for the first world, given that the state is empowered by women and the lower classes through voting I expect what will occur is no change, until the existing system of credit collapses (which should occur somewhere in the next generation if not this one.) And we will

    THE SCARY VERSION
    The vast importing of underclasses into the civilized world in order to attempt to compensate for the impossibility of maintaining these levels of redistribution in a world that is no longer economically and institutionally backward, nor pervasively superstitious and illiterate, will reverse 3500 years of reduction of the underclasses, and reduce all but say the japanese and Han chinese to worldwide malthusian poverty, since it is DIFFERENCES that make productivity possible.

    Regardless of what economists like to promote the carrying capacity of the planet looks as if the current standards of living cannot be extended to the full population extant.

    That’s my understanding of the choices.

    https://www.quora.com/Will-future-economies-depend-on-socialist-governments-as-technology-makes-human-labour-redundant

  • Untitled

    https://www.quora.com/Do-highly-academically-accomplished-people-often-deliberately-make-themselves-non-open-because-too-much-openness-would-distract-them/answer/Curt-Doolittle?share=786b016d

    Source date (UTC): 2017-05-25 21:24:00 UTC

  • How Many Ethnic Groups Are There In The Whole World?

    I’ll give you the best answer I can, having spent some time on this question myself.

    1. Nation states and empires attempt to crush local identities, or deny them. (china and mongols the most obvious). Governments have incentives to be dishonest. All government data is suspect. Unfortunately the Academy is a co conspirator to government because it is cheaper to use government data than to conduct genetic and cultural research.
    2. During the time of nation states, most europeans lost their local identities, although our ‘tribes’ at last at the macro level are still ascertainable in many cases. Even today, despite the fact that northeastern, northern, central, and southern descendants in the united states all come from different regions and tribes, and still practice those cultural differences, the government suppresses those differences.
    3. So when we say ‘ethnicity’ are we saying nation state, or race, sub-race, tribe, and clan, using the identity with which they identify themselves? For example, the french speak french, but and parisians are culturally parisian, but the french countryside is identifiably germanic and has retained those cultural tendencies. American whites are primarily german, but speak english. Southern italians are ethnically greek, and northern ethnically german. They know this, but data just groups them together.
    4. For these politicized reasons, I tend to think the only honest means of judging ethnicity is genetic, cultural, and linguistic in that order, which is how people tend to describe themselves if they have an ethnic identity that is important to them. For those that it isn’t there is usually a reason to avoid it and choose some else less ‘truthful’.
    5. Using that method of categorization, As far as I know there are four major races(with austrailasians earning their own category), nine or so subraces (separating out the various indo europeans in particular), over 100 minor races and a vast number tribes and unmeasurable number of clans.
    6. But the truth is that genetics is going to solve this for us within the next few decades and governments will no longer be able to play their games with us.

    https://www.quora.com/How-many-ethnic-groups-are-there-in-the-whole-world