Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Who Is the Most Influential Living Philosopher?

    https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-most-influential-living-philosopher-1/answer/Curt-Doolittle?share=b44bec67&srid=u4Qv
    Interesting question. Good answers. Let’s look at how we can ask this question. 😉 Technical Innovation <-> Practical Utility <——> Popular Influence Successful Technical  Hard to argue that the Russel-Frege-Kripke chain didn’t provide answers but it’s also hard to argue that they weren’t wasting their time. Because Babbage-Cantor-Goedel-Turing produced superior methods and answers. Failed Technical The failure of Brouwer(Physics), Bridgman(mathematics), Mises (economics), Hayek(Law), and Popper(Philosophy) to understand that the ‘ideal’ disciplines had failed to include operations as a test of possibility, operational grammar to prevent pretense of knowledge, Influential and Contributory: Searle(cognition), Jonathan Haidt(morality), Daniel Kahneman(cognition), Nassim Taleb (probability and cognitive biases). Unfortunately we can’t list Popper(via negativa), Hayek(Social Science = Law), Keynes(Monetary Marxism), Turing, and Rawls who are demonstrably more influential but not living. Popular Influence But Otherwise Meaningless: Dennet et all. Categorical Construction:  Scientific <—————-> Ideal <—————–> Experiential Descriptive Causality Experiential Causality Scientific Categories Normative Categories Arbitrary Categories Operational Analytic Literary Conflationary Continental Aristotle Plato (many) Tends to Result In: Truth Utility Preference Markets, Regulation Command Nash Equality Pareto Equality Command Equality Natural Hierarchy Political Hierarchy Bureaucratic Hierarchy Classical Liberalism Social Democracy Socialism Rapid Adaptation Windfall Consumption Redirected Consumption Hyper Competitive Competitive in Windfalls Competitive when Behind I would make the following observations: 1) The continental (German) program has been a failed attempt, since the time of Kant (through Heidegger), to produce a secular, rational, version of Christianity. The French program (Rousseau through Derrida) has been a demonstrably successful program but a devastatingly destructive one. The Abrahamic program’s second revision (Marx, Freud, Boaz, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard, Strauss) has been catastrophic. And between the French Literary, Continental Rational, and Abrahamic Pseudoscientific movements, the attempt to restore the Aristotelian(scientific)/ Stoic(Mindfulness) / Roman(Law) / Heroic(Truth, Excellence, Beauty) program responsible for human progress in the ancient and modern world has been nearly defeated. 2) The analytic program was exhausted with Kripke, and in retrospect the analytic attempt to produce both formal logic of language, and a science of language will be considered a failure. For example, there is nothing in analytic philosophy that is not better provided by Turing. 3) The principle function of academic philosophy today appears consist of the self correction of existing errors prior to exhaustion of the philosophical program (termination of the discipline) in the same way that the analytic program exhausted itself. (If you list philosophers and their innovations this is what appears to be occurring. The discipline is exhausting itself as a dead end). 4) The principal influences on intellectual history are being provided by the sciences. In particular they are eliminating the last refuge of philosophy: the mind. And science is doing so via-negativa: through the incremental definition and measurement of cognitive biases (errors). 5) Science, if understood as an organized attempt to produce deflationary truthful (descriptive) speech, and the use of scientific categories (necessary and universal), will continue to displace the discipline of philosophy, and the use of philosophical categories, terminology and concepts. And (assuming I am correct), what remains of the discipline of philosophy will be reducible to the continuous refinements of the scientific method’s production of constant descriptive categories, terminology, and operational grammar. And the cross disciplinary adaptation of local categories into universal categories. 6) Science is less vulnerable to error , bias, suggestion and deceit, in no small part because the common problems of philosophy: suggestion, loading, framing, obscurantism, overloading, and the Fictionalisms (pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, and pseudo-mythology(theology)) are prohibited by the demand for Operational language, declared limits, and full accounting of consequences. It certainly appears that since the beginning of the 20th century we have been far busier eliminating errors of philosophy than philosophers have been busy discovering innovations. 7) Greek philosophy arose out of the common law of torts. Roman philosophy explicitly functioned on the common law of Torts. The Abrahamic Dark Age (conflating idealism, law, and religion) followed, but we were rescued by the reconstruction of north sea trade and the English common law of Torts (Bacon). And as far as I can determine, 8) As we have seen with continental and political philosophy, just as we saw with theology, and especially Abrahamic theology, the principle purpose of unscientific speech has been deception, propaganda, the propagation of ignorance, and the conduct of rule, and the expansion of warfare. With theologians and philosophers responsible for more deaths than generals and plagues. Between Zoroaster, Muhammed, and Marx, we have more deaths than all but the great diseases including malaria and the black plague. Philosophers and theologians have done more harm than good, largely functioning as a middle class opposition to the current form of rule. 9) Philosophical language then is a dead language, and perhaps an immoral one – and rationalism a dead technology. And they will be incrementally combined institutionally and normatively into theology, with Literary Philosophy(Plato and his heirs), merely representing it’s position on the spectrum of Aristotelian/Stoic/Roman/English Law (science), Confucian Reason, French Literary Idealism, Platonic Rational Idealism, Continental and Augustinian Fictionalism, and Abrahamic and Zoroastrian Fictionalism. 10) The use of non philosophical categories to construct *moral literature* in the French and Italian model will persist forever. Although largely as a means of resistance against the sciences, and the status social, economic, and political status quo. In this context we have to ask what we mean by Influential, or Great Philosophers, because: (a) Unless we are talking scientists who function as public intellectuals, philosophers, or Social Critics (practitioners of critique), or Moral Fictionalists (wishful thinkers), it really doesn’t appear that philosophy is a living or useful language or discipline. (b) it’s hard to argue there are any currently living and working rationalists of any substance. They are largely Moral Fictionalists. Let’s look at the list: Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins. The atheists. It’s worth noting that Dawkins was correct and Gould was wrong – about almost everything. (Surprisingly). Harris and Hitches practice critique but nothing else. Zizek practices Critique and has nothing to offer – and is honest about it. I mean, what solutions does Zizek provide? None. And he says so. Chomsky practices Critique, has nothing to offer – and is dishonest about it. He is an interesting example of how people with high intelligence and verbal acumen can construct elaborate deceptions. Between Chomsky and Paul Krugman, a half dozen people could spend their entire careers demonstrating their use of cherry picking, loading, framing, overloading with incommensurables, straw men, and heaping of undue praise. His insight into ‘universal grammar’ but categories of increasing complexity is largely correct and we can see that in brain structure today. However, he speaks about world affairs by constantly making the error (intentionally), that rational choice is scalable – just as did Marx. And he has no concept of economics whatsoever, and no political statement can be made any longer independently of economics – especially once we understand that the term economics has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the voluntary organization of individuals through the use of incentives provided by money. Hofstadter is a good example as any, but again, he is a public intellectual and a literary aesthete. Did he really provide any insight that was not visible in the literature of the time? So in closing, I would say, that: 1) There are no influential rationalists, because the program is complete and it’s been a dead end. The reasons for this would require I write a tome. 2) That there are many scientists that serve as public intellectuals, and this will continue. 3) There remain and always will be a market for moral literature. 4) That scientific philosophy, if completed, as ‘the discipline of due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, and deceit, will replace the discipline of philosophy. But that won’t stop people over invested in a dead frame of reference from attempting to practice it. Why? It’s cheap and science is expensive.
    May 17, 2018 10:31pm

  • Rule is a Moral Occupation

    —“Once one sees the MORALITY of ruling … the smoke starts to clear.”—Michael Churchill  We all slowly are working toward consensus on this very issue. Our men just need to exhaust all other possibilities before they will accept the truth. Rule is good. We must rule.

  • Rule is a Moral Occupation

    —“Once one sees the MORALITY of ruling … the smoke starts to clear.”—Michael Churchill  We all slowly are working toward consensus on this very issue. Our men just need to exhaust all other possibilities before they will accept the truth. Rule is good. We must rule.

  • Arrogance, Enemies, and Cult Accusations Are Just Success Markers

    @ Bernard Mitochondrie(… “you are a legend in some” … ) The more enemies a man has the more substantive his threat to them. Friends tell us little. Enemies tell us a great deal. The fact that people must counter-signal to defend their malinvestments from my arguments is simply evidence of their malinvestments, and nothing more. I attacked the libertards and ancaps as a means of marketing. Not because I wanted to change their malinvestments. But because I wanted to deny them the signals from those malinvestments. A cult of the law is a compliment for continuing western civilizations central competitive value. I can’t ask for higher praise or greater success. I’m arrogant so that I can (a) draw in and defeat pretentious sophists like you (which I did today), and (b) becasue it causes people to use emotion and more readily expose their incentives and mistakes, and (c) to counter the signal value of sophomoric arguments (like I’m doing to you), so that the male attempt to seek dominance signals at my expense is frustrated. In person, anyone who has met me will tell you I’m patient, kind, helpful, humorous (except in the face of intellectual dishonesty). I mean, you shot your wad and you’ve shown you’ve got nothing but sophisms, false premises and confusions. And worse, that you don’t understand at all what i”m talking about by asserting that I engage in justificationism rather than survival (falsificationism). I mean, in that sense you’re kinda ‘dumb’ because even the newbs tend to get that part figured out. Your vocabulary and structure of argument suggest you have intellectual capacity, but your values suggest you have low sexual social economic and political market value, and are trying to compensate by a means that does not seem to be working at any scale whatsoever.
    May 18, 2018 8:16pm

  • Arrogance, Enemies, and Cult Accusations Are Just Success Markers

    @ Bernard Mitochondrie(… “you are a legend in some” … ) The more enemies a man has the more substantive his threat to them. Friends tell us little. Enemies tell us a great deal. The fact that people must counter-signal to defend their malinvestments from my arguments is simply evidence of their malinvestments, and nothing more. I attacked the libertards and ancaps as a means of marketing. Not because I wanted to change their malinvestments. But because I wanted to deny them the signals from those malinvestments. A cult of the law is a compliment for continuing western civilizations central competitive value. I can’t ask for higher praise or greater success. I’m arrogant so that I can (a) draw in and defeat pretentious sophists like you (which I did today), and (b) becasue it causes people to use emotion and more readily expose their incentives and mistakes, and (c) to counter the signal value of sophomoric arguments (like I’m doing to you), so that the male attempt to seek dominance signals at my expense is frustrated. In person, anyone who has met me will tell you I’m patient, kind, helpful, humorous (except in the face of intellectual dishonesty). I mean, you shot your wad and you’ve shown you’ve got nothing but sophisms, false premises and confusions. And worse, that you don’t understand at all what i”m talking about by asserting that I engage in justificationism rather than survival (falsificationism). I mean, in that sense you’re kinda ‘dumb’ because even the newbs tend to get that part figured out. Your vocabulary and structure of argument suggest you have intellectual capacity, but your values suggest you have low sexual social economic and political market value, and are trying to compensate by a means that does not seem to be working at any scale whatsoever.
    May 18, 2018 8:16pm

  • Doolittle’s Law of Education

    1) Children’s potential is 80% genetics, and 20% early physical development, and nearly zero anything else. 2) You cannot improve on genetics – and all temporary gains measured will dissipate within one forgetting cycle (3 years). 3) You can harm children’s development through trauma and exposure to malincentives and bad behavior, but you cannot improve it beyond their genetic potential. 4) People are wealthier or poorer because they are more or less sexually, socially, economically, politically, and militarily valuable to others (“Genetic Market Value” – GMV ). 5) Peoples GMV is determined by physical appearance, personality traits (particularly industriousness and agreeableness), and intelligence. In general, all positive traits increase and decrease together, and intelligence is the proxy. People perform worse not because they are poor, they are poor because they perform worse, and they perform worse because of their genes. All else is just statistical outlier. 6) Human groups differ by rates and depths of sexual maturity, with slower developmental and depth rates yielding better results, and faster and deeper rates worse behavioral results. We are domesticated animals like all other domesticated animals, and human groups have varied in our degree of self-domestication (limiting depth and rate of sexual maturity). 7) When the USA was founded there was 1000 years of middle class genetics trapped by the dead capital in the church. Those middle class genetics existed because northern europeans practiced manorialism, aggressive hanging, suffered the plagues, and frequent wars. This caused the downward distribution of middle class genetics into the lower economic classes. By the time we reached 1900 that genetic capital had been redistributed, and the dead capital of the church redistributed. Beginning in 1964 the prohibition on underclass immigration was lifted, and we immigrated vast numbers of underclasses that were not static human capital. Instead, we have been spending increasing amounts of money trying to compensate for an increasingly poor stock of human capital. 8 ) A teacher is born not taught. Teaching is an art (talent) not a skill. All the evidence we have to date is that a teacher succeeds in the first six months or not, and no further improvement is made. Teaching is simple for the talented and beneficial to the taught. For the untalented each student is effectively punished by the experience. The truth is that teachers are largely from the bottom of the intellectual pool and this is the primary difference. Not pay: lack of intelligence, and lack of life experience outside the classroom. Tenure merely institutionalizes incompetence. 9) All we can do is help teachers perform better is teaching them project planning (curriculum development), like all other industries teach project planning. Project planning is a basic, necessary, human life skill. This is not a complicated skill. The problem for managing the project of education is the ‘art’ of teaching individual minds in a group, and a constantly rotating curriculum and the materials teachers need to teach it. The fact that budgets are not in the hands of teachers, and curricula are not marketed on the academic equivalent of amazon is the problem. 10) The fact that teachers do not ‘own’ the schools themselves is the origin of the problem, since there is absolutely zero evidence that the entire hierarchy of the school system provides any value. Education evolved as colleges (collections of professors) and that is the optimum model. The voucher system would redistribute purchasing power. Political control of education as a means of indoctrination would be eliminated. Market forces not ideology would provide the competitive education children need given their genetics and family circumstances. (or lack of family as is mostly the case of underperforming children). 11) Other than reading, writing, history, geography, basic sciences, mathematics, almost every other course is a waste of time with no results. The competitive advantage of western civilization is our law and our economics that favor entrepreneurship and innovation at all costs, and we do not teach money, checkbooks, financing, micro, macro economics basic statistics, and basic contracts when these are the skills most valuable to citizens. Worse we teach falsehoods about our government which was never designed and never should be converted to, a democracy. Democracies always fail. This educational content should be corrected. 12) After grade six it appears we would invest better in our children by reducing their school hours and putting them into the workplace and then bringing them into apprenticeship programs (as is common in Germany). The central problem is making use of labor so that labor produces sufficient multiples, that labor creates wealth rather than costs it. 13) Professors are often bad because the university is organized to market it’s top professors, but deliver its bottom professors and its graduate students. 14) Teaching professors are not rewarded, since publications are required. Yet there is no correlation between the quality of teaching and the quality of publication. 15) Universities stack large first and second year classes knowing that the students will fail out, or that the class material is worthless. This money is used to fund the bureaucracy. If we do the basic math, it should cost about 15K + Room and Board for a college education at the outside. Anything above this is extraction. 16) Worse, we have many fake degrees. If a field does not require calculation (math, logic, programming) then it is a craft, not a profession. Calculation determines the difference between a craft and a profession. The reason being that one can sense a craft directly, but cannot sense a profession directly – and must rely upon calculation. 17) …. (more later….) May 15, 2018 10:03am

  • Doolittle’s Law of Education

    1) Children’s potential is 80% genetics, and 20% early physical development, and nearly zero anything else. 2) You cannot improve on genetics – and all temporary gains measured will dissipate within one forgetting cycle (3 years). 3) You can harm children’s development through trauma and exposure to malincentives and bad behavior, but you cannot improve it beyond their genetic potential. 4) People are wealthier or poorer because they are more or less sexually, socially, economically, politically, and militarily valuable to others (“Genetic Market Value” – GMV ). 5) Peoples GMV is determined by physical appearance, personality traits (particularly industriousness and agreeableness), and intelligence. In general, all positive traits increase and decrease together, and intelligence is the proxy. People perform worse not because they are poor, they are poor because they perform worse, and they perform worse because of their genes. All else is just statistical outlier. 6) Human groups differ by rates and depths of sexual maturity, with slower developmental and depth rates yielding better results, and faster and deeper rates worse behavioral results. We are domesticated animals like all other domesticated animals, and human groups have varied in our degree of self-domestication (limiting depth and rate of sexual maturity). 7) When the USA was founded there was 1000 years of middle class genetics trapped by the dead capital in the church. Those middle class genetics existed because northern europeans practiced manorialism, aggressive hanging, suffered the plagues, and frequent wars. This caused the downward distribution of middle class genetics into the lower economic classes. By the time we reached 1900 that genetic capital had been redistributed, and the dead capital of the church redistributed. Beginning in 1964 the prohibition on underclass immigration was lifted, and we immigrated vast numbers of underclasses that were not static human capital. Instead, we have been spending increasing amounts of money trying to compensate for an increasingly poor stock of human capital. 8 ) A teacher is born not taught. Teaching is an art (talent) not a skill. All the evidence we have to date is that a teacher succeeds in the first six months or not, and no further improvement is made. Teaching is simple for the talented and beneficial to the taught. For the untalented each student is effectively punished by the experience. The truth is that teachers are largely from the bottom of the intellectual pool and this is the primary difference. Not pay: lack of intelligence, and lack of life experience outside the classroom. Tenure merely institutionalizes incompetence. 9) All we can do is help teachers perform better is teaching them project planning (curriculum development), like all other industries teach project planning. Project planning is a basic, necessary, human life skill. This is not a complicated skill. The problem for managing the project of education is the ‘art’ of teaching individual minds in a group, and a constantly rotating curriculum and the materials teachers need to teach it. The fact that budgets are not in the hands of teachers, and curricula are not marketed on the academic equivalent of amazon is the problem. 10) The fact that teachers do not ‘own’ the schools themselves is the origin of the problem, since there is absolutely zero evidence that the entire hierarchy of the school system provides any value. Education evolved as colleges (collections of professors) and that is the optimum model. The voucher system would redistribute purchasing power. Political control of education as a means of indoctrination would be eliminated. Market forces not ideology would provide the competitive education children need given their genetics and family circumstances. (or lack of family as is mostly the case of underperforming children). 11) Other than reading, writing, history, geography, basic sciences, mathematics, almost every other course is a waste of time with no results. The competitive advantage of western civilization is our law and our economics that favor entrepreneurship and innovation at all costs, and we do not teach money, checkbooks, financing, micro, macro economics basic statistics, and basic contracts when these are the skills most valuable to citizens. Worse we teach falsehoods about our government which was never designed and never should be converted to, a democracy. Democracies always fail. This educational content should be corrected. 12) After grade six it appears we would invest better in our children by reducing their school hours and putting them into the workplace and then bringing them into apprenticeship programs (as is common in Germany). The central problem is making use of labor so that labor produces sufficient multiples, that labor creates wealth rather than costs it. 13) Professors are often bad because the university is organized to market it’s top professors, but deliver its bottom professors and its graduate students. 14) Teaching professors are not rewarded, since publications are required. Yet there is no correlation between the quality of teaching and the quality of publication. 15) Universities stack large first and second year classes knowing that the students will fail out, or that the class material is worthless. This money is used to fund the bureaucracy. If we do the basic math, it should cost about 15K + Room and Board for a college education at the outside. Anything above this is extraction. 16) Worse, we have many fake degrees. If a field does not require calculation (math, logic, programming) then it is a craft, not a profession. Calculation determines the difference between a craft and a profession. The reason being that one can sense a craft directly, but cannot sense a profession directly – and must rely upon calculation. 17) …. (more later….) May 15, 2018 10:03am

  • Libertarianism Survives/exists by Miscategorizing Relations.

    by Luke Weinhagen The way it hit me was that libertarianism survives/exists by miscategorizing relations. Specifically, libertarians interpret commons(cooperation) as commons(conflict) and use property rights(IVP) to attempt to resolve that conflict. In doing so they justify libertarianism’s parasitism of the commons(that can only be generated via cooperation) as defense and that justification requires it not suppress any parasitism of the commons(cooperation) as this would self destruct the ideology. Libertarianism self destructed for me once I recognized this categorization error. (via Brandon Hayes)

  • Libertarianism Survives/exists by Miscategorizing Relations.

    by Luke Weinhagen The way it hit me was that libertarianism survives/exists by miscategorizing relations. Specifically, libertarians interpret commons(cooperation) as commons(conflict) and use property rights(IVP) to attempt to resolve that conflict. In doing so they justify libertarianism’s parasitism of the commons(that can only be generated via cooperation) as defense and that justification requires it not suppress any parasitism of the commons(cooperation) as this would self destruct the ideology. Libertarianism self destructed for me once I recognized this categorization error. (via Brandon Hayes)

  • Men Need To Speak To Men

    Men really need to speak to other men, without women in the room for the same reason women like to speak to women without men in the room. There are market value vulnerabilities that build trust between men but women abuse, and visa versa.