When you defend your use of philosophical rationalism, your presupposition is the disproportionate value of the communication of meaning(learning), under which we obtain explanatory power and opportunity for persuasion and negotiation; whereas you discount or ignore the equal value of prosecution(prevention), under which we eliminate error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, pseudoscience, and deceit. It would be all well and good to speak only with ‘good manners’ of positive language, if all men were of manners, ethics, morals, humility, study, achievement, and intelligence. But the central problem of our age – since the industrial revolution – has not been the communication of meaning within the limits of human perception, but the elimination of error, bias, wishful thinking, overloading, pseudoscience, and deceit, now that our action and our institutions can reach beyond the manners and prosecution of the ill-mannered, at human scale. So you may wish to hold to the language of the primitive technologies of reason and meaning, just as others may wish to hold to the primitive technologies of theology and mysticism. But theology consists of little other than parable (analogy) for the purpose of discourse within the limits of pre-existing authority. And Rationalism consists of little other than a subset of reason for the purpose of discourse under the assumption of good intention and good character, independent of cost, and evidence, in order to obscure the cunning and deceit used to impose one’s will upon others by the pretense of truthfulness which is little more than selection bias. In other words, if you wish to speak truthfully, you can communicate by analogy, if and only if you equally criticize by correspondence (truth), such that both the properties necessary for communication but untrue under criticism, and the persuasions necessary for stating preference, but untrue under criticism, and the error, bias, and deceit that we frail humans rely upon in lieu of truthful argument that are untrue under criticism, are laundered and exposed. Men do not seek to preserve religious, moral, rational, pseudoscientific, and deceitful argument because they possess good manners, good ethics, good morals, good actions, and because we have good institutions. Men seek to preserve religious, moral, rational, pseudoscientific, and deceitful argument for the simple reason that they want what they want, by whatever argumentative means is available, and by one cunning argumentative deception or another, they hope to escape blame for their acts of fraud, under pretense of mannered, ethical, moral, and knowing argument. If you cannot speak in operational language, categorically consistent, empirically consistent, morally consistent, with scope consistency, then either you do not know how to, do not want to pay the costs of speaking truthfully, or if you spoke truthfully your fraud would be obvious. Religion and Philosophy have been disproportionately the source of deception, conflict, and war. Whereas law and science have been disproportionately the source of truth. If you cannot speak in the language of law and science, we can almost without exception assume that you are speaking in the league of fraud. And it is only after we pay the high cost of translating you use of the languages of fraud into the languages of law and science that we can determine whether you engage in fraud or engage in error, or engage in linguistic habit because you simply know no better. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.
Source: Original Site Post
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State Incentives
By Eli Harman The allegation is often made (by libertarian anarchists) that what states do is fundamentally incalculable, but that it is always negative sum. In other words, we cannot know the absolute value of any state or state policy, but we can be certain about its sign. Voluntary trades in the marketplace – as the argument goes – are always mutually beneficial (else they wouldn‘t occur) and positive sum. State policies differ in requiring coercion. If they did not require coercion, they could occur in the marketplace. But if they do, then someone is losing out, so there is no way to be sure they represent a net gain. Without the mechanism of voluntary exchange, the information transmitted by prices in a marketplace are absent and no calculation is possible. In all likelihood they represent a net loss, certainly a loss relative to the opportunity cost of the purely voluntary marketplace foregone. But it doesn’t seem that states ever would have become ubiquitous or persistent if this were true. Empirically, state-ridden peoples have proven competitive against stateless ones. If error and parasitism were the whole story, they would not be. States, after all, are in constant conflict and competition with one another and with alternatives (or at least they were at one time.) However, the argument is incomplete and therefore incorrect. We can reasonably expect voluntary, fully-informed, exchanges – free of externality – to be Pareto improvements. (They make someone better off and no one worse off.) But in the first place, market transactions don’t always live up to this standard, because they are not necessarily fully informed nor free of externality. And in the second place, some of the things states do might; because they are of the nature of voluntary exchanges. An individual exchanges the sum total of costs a state imposes (on them) for the sum total of benefits it offers (to them) every time they voluntarily choose not to move to the jurisdiction of another state. (And these exchanges can be made more precisely calculable by reducing the exit costs and increasing the number and variety of states on offer.) Furthermore, all states require the voluntary consent of at least enough individuals and groups to successfully compel the submission of the remainder. And the coalition that arises to perform this function arises by a process of reciprocal exchange (You want such and such a boon to participate in our coalition? Well we want this concession and that from you in exchange.) In brokering these exchanges, a Monarchy offers several advantages over a democratically elected government. A democracy will be inherently and irreparably susceptible to negative-sum corruption because of the problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. A policy which benefits 1,000 people $10,000 each may be politically profitable even if it costs a million people $100 each. The concentrated interest will be relatively less hampered by information costs and coordination problems. So it will be able to muster more votes and resources in defense of the policy than those harmed will be able to muster against it, though the harm be much greater. Nothing would stop anyone from proposing such a policy to a king. And a king could get away with implementing it. But a king, who owns his realm and title, as well as its capital value, would not benefit from doing so. The future revenue he could expect to derive from his realm and subjects would decline as a result. And so his incentive would be to veto such proposals. Furthermore, in a majority democracy, if your ruling coalition encompasses more than 51 percent of voters, it’s leaving rents on the table. If you’re getting, say, 70 percent of the vote, that simply means you’re delivering more value than you need to and failing to extract as much as you could. You could take a little more and give a little less without losing the election. So in a democracy, we can expect the ruling coalition at any given time to consist of about 51% of voters (and those the worst 51%) and that does indeed seem to be what we see. But conflict and compulsion, though inevitable and irresolvable under democracy, are costly and actually largely unnecessary. So we can expect a wise monarch to start building his coalition of supporters with the best and keep working his way down the list until the only people that remain in need of compulsion are those who have nothing to offer which is worth what they demand in exchange for voluntary cooperation: in short, people who probably should be coerced.
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State Incentives
By Eli Harman The allegation is often made (by libertarian anarchists) that what states do is fundamentally incalculable, but that it is always negative sum. In other words, we cannot know the absolute value of any state or state policy, but we can be certain about its sign. Voluntary trades in the marketplace – as the argument goes – are always mutually beneficial (else they wouldn‘t occur) and positive sum. State policies differ in requiring coercion. If they did not require coercion, they could occur in the marketplace. But if they do, then someone is losing out, so there is no way to be sure they represent a net gain. Without the mechanism of voluntary exchange, the information transmitted by prices in a marketplace are absent and no calculation is possible. In all likelihood they represent a net loss, certainly a loss relative to the opportunity cost of the purely voluntary marketplace foregone. But it doesn’t seem that states ever would have become ubiquitous or persistent if this were true. Empirically, state-ridden peoples have proven competitive against stateless ones. If error and parasitism were the whole story, they would not be. States, after all, are in constant conflict and competition with one another and with alternatives (or at least they were at one time.) However, the argument is incomplete and therefore incorrect. We can reasonably expect voluntary, fully-informed, exchanges – free of externality – to be Pareto improvements. (They make someone better off and no one worse off.) But in the first place, market transactions don’t always live up to this standard, because they are not necessarily fully informed nor free of externality. And in the second place, some of the things states do might; because they are of the nature of voluntary exchanges. An individual exchanges the sum total of costs a state imposes (on them) for the sum total of benefits it offers (to them) every time they voluntarily choose not to move to the jurisdiction of another state. (And these exchanges can be made more precisely calculable by reducing the exit costs and increasing the number and variety of states on offer.) Furthermore, all states require the voluntary consent of at least enough individuals and groups to successfully compel the submission of the remainder. And the coalition that arises to perform this function arises by a process of reciprocal exchange (You want such and such a boon to participate in our coalition? Well we want this concession and that from you in exchange.) In brokering these exchanges, a Monarchy offers several advantages over a democratically elected government. A democracy will be inherently and irreparably susceptible to negative-sum corruption because of the problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. A policy which benefits 1,000 people $10,000 each may be politically profitable even if it costs a million people $100 each. The concentrated interest will be relatively less hampered by information costs and coordination problems. So it will be able to muster more votes and resources in defense of the policy than those harmed will be able to muster against it, though the harm be much greater. Nothing would stop anyone from proposing such a policy to a king. And a king could get away with implementing it. But a king, who owns his realm and title, as well as its capital value, would not benefit from doing so. The future revenue he could expect to derive from his realm and subjects would decline as a result. And so his incentive would be to veto such proposals. Furthermore, in a majority democracy, if your ruling coalition encompasses more than 51 percent of voters, it’s leaving rents on the table. If you’re getting, say, 70 percent of the vote, that simply means you’re delivering more value than you need to and failing to extract as much as you could. You could take a little more and give a little less without losing the election. So in a democracy, we can expect the ruling coalition at any given time to consist of about 51% of voters (and those the worst 51%) and that does indeed seem to be what we see. But conflict and compulsion, though inevitable and irresolvable under democracy, are costly and actually largely unnecessary. So we can expect a wise monarch to start building his coalition of supporters with the best and keep working his way down the list until the only people that remain in need of compulsion are those who have nothing to offer which is worth what they demand in exchange for voluntary cooperation: in short, people who probably should be coerced.
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Q&a: What Do You Mean By The Disproportionate Value Of Cooperation?
No matter how hard 100 men work independently they can never achieve what that can cooperatively. And if they fight instead then the difference in assets between conflict and cooperation produces a measurement of the value of cooperation. Or to fall back on Adam smith. A division of labor between ten is not ten times the productivity of on man but ten thousand times the productivity of one man. Ergo, cooperation is so rewarding that it is not only impossible to survive without it but impossible to compete without it and foolish to exist without it.
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Q&a: What Do You Mean By The Disproportionate Value Of Cooperation?
No matter how hard 100 men work independently they can never achieve what that can cooperatively. And if they fight instead then the difference in assets between conflict and cooperation produces a measurement of the value of cooperation. Or to fall back on Adam smith. A division of labor between ten is not ten times the productivity of on man but ten thousand times the productivity of one man. Ergo, cooperation is so rewarding that it is not only impossible to survive without it but impossible to compete without it and foolish to exist without it.
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Eli Harman on Cooperation
Cooperation is rational in that it can be vastly preferable to non-cooperation or conflict. But it also requires altruism because most preferable of all is to defect while OTHERS cooperate with you. And foregoing that temptation (on behalf of others, more than yourself) is a price that one must pay in order to cooperate. Cooperation is self-enforcing among kin. And defection is self-defeating among kin. Kinship makes altruism reciprocal because genes which code for kinship altruism help other instances of themselves, and therefore spread and outcompete genes which code for, or don’t code against, defection against kin (which parasitize other instances of themselves.) Cooperation between non-kin is possible but it is more difficult and costly, it requires more technology: reputation, active enforcement, full accounting, quid pro quo, exchange, warranty, adjudication, punitive measures, etc… Cooperation between non-kin is therefore more technical than between kin and would best be left to specialists while most people live most of their lives, and do most of their business, among kin – to minimize costs and maximize benefits.
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Eli Harman on Cooperation
Cooperation is rational in that it can be vastly preferable to non-cooperation or conflict. But it also requires altruism because most preferable of all is to defect while OTHERS cooperate with you. And foregoing that temptation (on behalf of others, more than yourself) is a price that one must pay in order to cooperate. Cooperation is self-enforcing among kin. And defection is self-defeating among kin. Kinship makes altruism reciprocal because genes which code for kinship altruism help other instances of themselves, and therefore spread and outcompete genes which code for, or don’t code against, defection against kin (which parasitize other instances of themselves.) Cooperation between non-kin is possible but it is more difficult and costly, it requires more technology: reputation, active enforcement, full accounting, quid pro quo, exchange, warranty, adjudication, punitive measures, etc… Cooperation between non-kin is therefore more technical than between kin and would best be left to specialists while most people live most of their lives, and do most of their business, among kin – to minimize costs and maximize benefits.
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Script for Video on Morality
NEW VIDEO. PROPERTARIANISM: LECTURE : SOCIAL SCIENCE : MORALITY I tried to give an exhaustively thorough analysis of morality. Approximately 60 Minutes. You may need to watch it more than once (I would). But it should give you a complete language for discourse on morality. OUTLINE (SCRIPT): ————— MORALITY (video script outline) Today I’m going to discuss morality. PURPOSE – confusion over my position on morality. — positive moral ambitions (gossip/rally/ambition) — negative moral prohibitions (law/rule/prohibition) — anything not immoral is moral. — a philosopher’s, scientist’s and judge’s duty (and ability) is not to recommend shoulds but to discover, decide and enforce limits. It’s the artist’s, priest’s and public intellectuals duty to propose ‘goods’. — I can say how institutions CAN be formed. I can say what we CANNOT do. But I do not claim a preference or wisdom over what we should do. That is a question of the MARKET for future wants. We calculate this together. The artists, priests, and public intellectuals make these arguments, and the market for commons can decide them. — What I can say is that in the choice between the Aryan(aristocratic egalitarian) program of transcendence (heroism, innovation, and domestication), that a transcendent program (eugenic) is decidably superior top an experiential (dysgenic) program. And that we must retaliate against the experiential and dysgenic when it imposes costs upon the transcendent and eugenic by interference in the market for cooperation. THE CONTINUATION OF WESTERN POLYTHEISM: A MYTHOS FOR EACH CLASS. We all want a single replacement for monopoly christianity. The left does and the parasitic-state does in an attempt to create a monopoly of positive and utopian discretion rather than a monopoly of negative and empirical, natural law. But just as we evolve fastest and compete most successfully when we deconflate our institutions, it’s just as important that we deconflate our mythos. Why? Becuase each class uses a different argument structure. Parsimony (‘complete’ science) (truth) Operationalism (physical science) (physical and natural law) Empiricism (social science and statistics) (systems) Historicism (evidence) (existential examples) Rationalism (noncontradiction) (precise meaning) Theology (obedience) (social contract) (“religion”) Reason (clarity) (analogistic understanding) Morality (loyalty) (social contract) (“religion”) Approval or disapproval. (opinion) (cognition)(myths) Emotive expression (reaction) (pre-cognitive) (instincts) We argue by class structure. We need myths (methods of argument and narratives) that correspond to the needs of our classes. In the past we even had three languages in the anglo world: – Latin for the intellectuals – French for the ruling class – German for the working class. We’ve had: – science for the intellectual class – Law for the ruling class – Contract for the merchant class – Religion for the working class – And our ‘family’ (hearth) religion remains our pagan one. Today we have – Natural law from the martial class – Psuedoscience and democracy for the priestly class – Science for the upper middle class – Contractualism for the merchant classes – Chrsitian Religion for the working classes – State-Religion for the underclasses EVOLUTION (CAUSALITY) Most life forms evolved to suffer predation by high reproduction. Others to avoid predation, at the expense of lower reproduction. Others to avoid predation and protect investments in offspring. Others to avoid predation, protect offspring and protect territories. Others to avoid predation, protect offspring, protect territories, and protect kin. Others to … follow kin (imitate). Others to … empathize with the intentions of kin. Others to … late maturity, and the need to empathize with the young. Others to … offer to assist with the intentions of others of our kin. and at this point we can say we cooperate.And cooperation is so profoundly beneficial to survival, reproduction, and production, that it gave us dominion over ourselves, and much of the natural world. But upon our ability to cooperate we also retained our previous instincts to engage in parasitism and predation. So we could either engage in cooperation, or parasitism and predation upon one another. To defend against parasitism we evolved moral instincts and intuitions – we retaliate, even at very high cost to us, against those who engage in parasitism and predation. Because when we cooperate we obtain extremely high rewards for doing so. Unfortunately, in the short term, free-riding, parasitism, and predation are extremely beneficial strategies for some at the expense of others. Fortunately, we learn to retaliate against these impositions – or at least wait for an opportunity to retaliate when it’s possible for us to succeed. DEFINE MORALITY? Morality then consists in the incentive to cooperate (positive), the incentive to retaliate(negative), in order to preserve the incentive to cooperate at interpersonal, group, intergroup, and indirect scales, at any scale. And to prevent our conversion, depopulation, or conquest at any scale. We do not reason through morality so much as feel it as an impulse to assist and a fear of retaliation. And we tend to exterminate those who possess less of it (sociopaths), and we tend to ignore or limit the damage done by those who possess too much of it (females and the weak who are overly concerned with defending against retaliation). Moral actions then are those that impose no costs on those with whom you wish to avoid retaliation, and instead invest in the returns of cooperation, and conversely that you retaliate for the imposition of costs upon the results of others’ actions, to preserve the value of cooperation for all. THE PROBLEM OF SCALE As we cooperate in larger and larger numbers we need new means of providing incentives to cooperate INDIRECTLY, and incentives to prohibit INDIRECT parasitism. As cooperation increases into a division of labor, the division of labor decreases transparency (audibility) and increases anonymity, so we divide up the positive: the labor of production, of knowledge, of perception, of value, and of advocacy. But we also divide up the negatives: the policing of our local groups against parasitism and predation internally and externally. So, as we scale, instead of just individuals engaging in parasitism, groups and the leaders of groups engage in parasitism, and we merely transform the interpersonal problem of morality, into the inter-group problem of morality. At this point in our history we organized to resolve intergroup parasitism, by suppressing local parasitism, imposing standard laws across groups, and creating what we consider ‘rule’. Rule is a profitable enterprise, both for the ruling and the ruled. Rulers centralize parasitism and suppress local parasitism, and make markets possible. Rule is a business. An industry. And like any business or industry it can be conducted productively or destructively. Thankfully it is very hard to conduct it parasitically for long. Thus the incentive of rulers (with intergenerational ambitions) is to create domestication (productivity) rather than parasitism. As we scale further trade enforces universal COMMERCIAL conditions of exchange regardless of local rule. Thankfully commercial conditions of exchange reflect interpersonal conditions of exchange, so parasitism between people who trade tends to decrease. However, as a consequence, it is possible for the organizers of production to engage in parasitism and predation. And initially, the courts possessed the power to regulate these matters, but during the industrial revolution, the state intervened and took away from the ordinary people the ability to judge such conflict, and the state intervened to seek rents (fees), because in the end, the state became the insurer of last resort to whom commercial interests pleaded in the case of malfeasance. What we see today is the attempt to further exacerbate this order by creating a world government of extractions, rather than Natural Law, and world government as an insurer of last resort for such enforcements. Our only solution is to incrementally suppress the centralization of parasitism that occurs with each increase in scale, by converting from what is probably a necessary centralization in order to suppress parasitisms, then the division of those functions into competing services regulated by the demand for natural law. So this is the theory of the evolution of rule: the suppression of local parasitism and rents by the centralization of those rents, then the incremental suppression of those rents as they convert from fees for service to extractive parasitisms. Government differs from Rule, in that its function is the provision of commons. The fact that we conflate government (commons production) and rule (suppression of parasitism) is another example of how conflationary argument and conflationary institutions explain the difference between rapidly evolving polities (west) and stagnating or declining polities (middle east), and very resistant polities (far east). The only institutions I know of that are required for cooperation: Military, Judiciary, Treasury, Government And the only informal institutions I know of that are required for: Property Registry, Banking, Education, Hospital, Police, Emergency. And the only infrastructure institutions I know of that are required: Transportation, Communication, Power, Insurance(Water, Air, Land, information) And the only institutions I know of that are necessary for reproduction without parasitism are: Family of some form from traditional to absolute nuclear. DEFINE MORALITY Define Morality, Objectively. NATURAL LAW As Natural Law: the preservation of the value of the incentive for cooperation and the elimination of the incentive for predation. Notice how I consistently illustrate the requirement for limits. It’s by stating botht he positive and negative that we demonstrate limits. The asians unfortunately call this practice balance limited by harmony, and demanding duty, and stagnated because of it. The as westerners we call this practice limits, unbounded by heroism, and preserve innovation because of it. The muslims unfortunately sought submission under a fixed system of, and have declined because of it. FIRST RULE OF LAW Define Morality as the first condition of Law: The law of non-imposition against property in toto. The obligation to retaliate against imposition against property in toto. Articulated as an increasingly complex portfolio of property rights. Where a property right provides justification for retaliation against an aggressor without demand for corresponding punishment by the tribe. DECIDABLE LAW Define Morality as Decidable Law : The ability to decide differences in presumptions of harm or innocence regardless of opinion of the parties, regardless of the cultures the parties are from, regardless of the states the parties are from. THE NORMATIVE “MORAL” SPECTRUM. MORAL BY ANALOGY. Define Manners, Ethics, Morals,Strategies, Legislation. Manners: …. Ethics: … between people Morals: … anonymous Group Strategies: …. see my other talk with butch. Legislation: … punishment for exiting strategy. NORMATIVE PORTFOLIOS ARE MORAL WITHIN GROUP ONLY, AND EVEN SO MAY NOT BE EXCEPT WITHIN STRATEGY. And a strategy may or may not be moral, only (successful). Define Normative Portfolios reflecting group strategies” That these are contractual substitutes for morals, not objectively moral. (Islam is an immoral strategy of full parasitism. judaism is an immoral strategy of commons-parasitism. Aryanism is a moral strategy in so far as domestication is transcendent. Hinduism and buddhism and confusianism appear to be less effective, but largely moral strategies.) INEQUALITY OF MORAL PORTFOLIOS Conflicting normative portfolios are not ‘equal’. And not relative at all. Some are lower trust more parasitic strategies, and some are higher trust lower parasitic strategies. The more moral group is the one with the higher objectve suppression of parasitism – independent of group norms. The less moral group is the one with the lower objective suppression of parasitism – independent of group norms. MAN IS RATIONAL – CAPABLE OF MORAL OR IMMORAL Man is rational. He has moral and immoral intuitions (instincts). These intuitions (instincts) help him calculate costs. Man is neither moral or immoral, he is rational. He is immoral or moral when it is in his interests to be moral or immoral. It is just almost always in his interests to act morally, since we retaliate so overwhelmingly when man and woman are not. In most circumstances, if one is not relatively safe from retaliation, parasitism, or predation, he will almost always choose moral action because even the risk of retaliation is not worth the benefit he claims from immoral action. This is why informational transparency is so important – it dramatically eliminates our ability to preserve incentives for immoral action, by making public the opportunity to retaliate. And since many of us who possess any kind of property at all, any kind of sustenance at all, possess this same interest, we increasingly invent and evolve institutions that suppress parasitism, just as when we scale we evolve methods by which to conduct parasitism. But no matter how we scale our institutions, the principle remains the same: impose no costs upon that which others THE LIMITS OF MORALITY: THE EXTRA MORAL ACTIONS We can engage in actions where we deem cooperation impossible, dangerous, or undesirable. When we engage in these actions, we act amorally – outside the limits of morality, but only in so far as we do not expect retaliation for our actions. Its the measurement of retaliation that determines the limits of our actions, and the limits of retaliation alone. EXPANSION I consider it moral to domesticate a group with lower objective morality and ambitions(islam), and immoral to corrupt a group with higher objective morality and ambitions(eastern europeans). BEHAVIORAL PORTFOLIO – WE RETAIN AND EXPRESS ABILITIES AS NEEDED. (discuss how we express classes as needed to compete) (discuss how we express genes as needed to compete) (discuss how we express norms as neded to compete ) (discuss how we can express laws as needed to compete) (discuss how fast we can do each.) MAN’S COOPERATION IS BOUND BY PHYSICAL LAW AS WELL AS NATURAL LAW Nature can exchange freely available energy and transform state. By analogy we can take only freely available energy from one another by exchange.
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Script for Video on Morality
NEW VIDEO. PROPERTARIANISM: LECTURE : SOCIAL SCIENCE : MORALITY I tried to give an exhaustively thorough analysis of morality. Approximately 60 Minutes. You may need to watch it more than once (I would). But it should give you a complete language for discourse on morality. OUTLINE (SCRIPT): ————— MORALITY (video script outline) Today I’m going to discuss morality. PURPOSE – confusion over my position on morality. — positive moral ambitions (gossip/rally/ambition) — negative moral prohibitions (law/rule/prohibition) — anything not immoral is moral. — a philosopher’s, scientist’s and judge’s duty (and ability) is not to recommend shoulds but to discover, decide and enforce limits. It’s the artist’s, priest’s and public intellectuals duty to propose ‘goods’. — I can say how institutions CAN be formed. I can say what we CANNOT do. But I do not claim a preference or wisdom over what we should do. That is a question of the MARKET for future wants. We calculate this together. The artists, priests, and public intellectuals make these arguments, and the market for commons can decide them. — What I can say is that in the choice between the Aryan(aristocratic egalitarian) program of transcendence (heroism, innovation, and domestication), that a transcendent program (eugenic) is decidably superior top an experiential (dysgenic) program. And that we must retaliate against the experiential and dysgenic when it imposes costs upon the transcendent and eugenic by interference in the market for cooperation. THE CONTINUATION OF WESTERN POLYTHEISM: A MYTHOS FOR EACH CLASS. We all want a single replacement for monopoly christianity. The left does and the parasitic-state does in an attempt to create a monopoly of positive and utopian discretion rather than a monopoly of negative and empirical, natural law. But just as we evolve fastest and compete most successfully when we deconflate our institutions, it’s just as important that we deconflate our mythos. Why? Becuase each class uses a different argument structure. Parsimony (‘complete’ science) (truth) Operationalism (physical science) (physical and natural law) Empiricism (social science and statistics) (systems) Historicism (evidence) (existential examples) Rationalism (noncontradiction) (precise meaning) Theology (obedience) (social contract) (“religion”) Reason (clarity) (analogistic understanding) Morality (loyalty) (social contract) (“religion”) Approval or disapproval. (opinion) (cognition)(myths) Emotive expression (reaction) (pre-cognitive) (instincts) We argue by class structure. We need myths (methods of argument and narratives) that correspond to the needs of our classes. In the past we even had three languages in the anglo world: – Latin for the intellectuals – French for the ruling class – German for the working class. We’ve had: – science for the intellectual class – Law for the ruling class – Contract for the merchant class – Religion for the working class – And our ‘family’ (hearth) religion remains our pagan one. Today we have – Natural law from the martial class – Psuedoscience and democracy for the priestly class – Science for the upper middle class – Contractualism for the merchant classes – Chrsitian Religion for the working classes – State-Religion for the underclasses EVOLUTION (CAUSALITY) Most life forms evolved to suffer predation by high reproduction. Others to avoid predation, at the expense of lower reproduction. Others to avoid predation and protect investments in offspring. Others to avoid predation, protect offspring and protect territories. Others to avoid predation, protect offspring, protect territories, and protect kin. Others to … follow kin (imitate). Others to … empathize with the intentions of kin. Others to … late maturity, and the need to empathize with the young. Others to … offer to assist with the intentions of others of our kin. and at this point we can say we cooperate.And cooperation is so profoundly beneficial to survival, reproduction, and production, that it gave us dominion over ourselves, and much of the natural world. But upon our ability to cooperate we also retained our previous instincts to engage in parasitism and predation. So we could either engage in cooperation, or parasitism and predation upon one another. To defend against parasitism we evolved moral instincts and intuitions – we retaliate, even at very high cost to us, against those who engage in parasitism and predation. Because when we cooperate we obtain extremely high rewards for doing so. Unfortunately, in the short term, free-riding, parasitism, and predation are extremely beneficial strategies for some at the expense of others. Fortunately, we learn to retaliate against these impositions – or at least wait for an opportunity to retaliate when it’s possible for us to succeed. DEFINE MORALITY? Morality then consists in the incentive to cooperate (positive), the incentive to retaliate(negative), in order to preserve the incentive to cooperate at interpersonal, group, intergroup, and indirect scales, at any scale. And to prevent our conversion, depopulation, or conquest at any scale. We do not reason through morality so much as feel it as an impulse to assist and a fear of retaliation. And we tend to exterminate those who possess less of it (sociopaths), and we tend to ignore or limit the damage done by those who possess too much of it (females and the weak who are overly concerned with defending against retaliation). Moral actions then are those that impose no costs on those with whom you wish to avoid retaliation, and instead invest in the returns of cooperation, and conversely that you retaliate for the imposition of costs upon the results of others’ actions, to preserve the value of cooperation for all. THE PROBLEM OF SCALE As we cooperate in larger and larger numbers we need new means of providing incentives to cooperate INDIRECTLY, and incentives to prohibit INDIRECT parasitism. As cooperation increases into a division of labor, the division of labor decreases transparency (audibility) and increases anonymity, so we divide up the positive: the labor of production, of knowledge, of perception, of value, and of advocacy. But we also divide up the negatives: the policing of our local groups against parasitism and predation internally and externally. So, as we scale, instead of just individuals engaging in parasitism, groups and the leaders of groups engage in parasitism, and we merely transform the interpersonal problem of morality, into the inter-group problem of morality. At this point in our history we organized to resolve intergroup parasitism, by suppressing local parasitism, imposing standard laws across groups, and creating what we consider ‘rule’. Rule is a profitable enterprise, both for the ruling and the ruled. Rulers centralize parasitism and suppress local parasitism, and make markets possible. Rule is a business. An industry. And like any business or industry it can be conducted productively or destructively. Thankfully it is very hard to conduct it parasitically for long. Thus the incentive of rulers (with intergenerational ambitions) is to create domestication (productivity) rather than parasitism. As we scale further trade enforces universal COMMERCIAL conditions of exchange regardless of local rule. Thankfully commercial conditions of exchange reflect interpersonal conditions of exchange, so parasitism between people who trade tends to decrease. However, as a consequence, it is possible for the organizers of production to engage in parasitism and predation. And initially, the courts possessed the power to regulate these matters, but during the industrial revolution, the state intervened and took away from the ordinary people the ability to judge such conflict, and the state intervened to seek rents (fees), because in the end, the state became the insurer of last resort to whom commercial interests pleaded in the case of malfeasance. What we see today is the attempt to further exacerbate this order by creating a world government of extractions, rather than Natural Law, and world government as an insurer of last resort for such enforcements. Our only solution is to incrementally suppress the centralization of parasitism that occurs with each increase in scale, by converting from what is probably a necessary centralization in order to suppress parasitisms, then the division of those functions into competing services regulated by the demand for natural law. So this is the theory of the evolution of rule: the suppression of local parasitism and rents by the centralization of those rents, then the incremental suppression of those rents as they convert from fees for service to extractive parasitisms. Government differs from Rule, in that its function is the provision of commons. The fact that we conflate government (commons production) and rule (suppression of parasitism) is another example of how conflationary argument and conflationary institutions explain the difference between rapidly evolving polities (west) and stagnating or declining polities (middle east), and very resistant polities (far east). The only institutions I know of that are required for cooperation: Military, Judiciary, Treasury, Government And the only informal institutions I know of that are required for: Property Registry, Banking, Education, Hospital, Police, Emergency. And the only infrastructure institutions I know of that are required: Transportation, Communication, Power, Insurance(Water, Air, Land, information) And the only institutions I know of that are necessary for reproduction without parasitism are: Family of some form from traditional to absolute nuclear. DEFINE MORALITY Define Morality, Objectively. NATURAL LAW As Natural Law: the preservation of the value of the incentive for cooperation and the elimination of the incentive for predation. Notice how I consistently illustrate the requirement for limits. It’s by stating botht he positive and negative that we demonstrate limits. The asians unfortunately call this practice balance limited by harmony, and demanding duty, and stagnated because of it. The as westerners we call this practice limits, unbounded by heroism, and preserve innovation because of it. The muslims unfortunately sought submission under a fixed system of, and have declined because of it. FIRST RULE OF LAW Define Morality as the first condition of Law: The law of non-imposition against property in toto. The obligation to retaliate against imposition against property in toto. Articulated as an increasingly complex portfolio of property rights. Where a property right provides justification for retaliation against an aggressor without demand for corresponding punishment by the tribe. DECIDABLE LAW Define Morality as Decidable Law : The ability to decide differences in presumptions of harm or innocence regardless of opinion of the parties, regardless of the cultures the parties are from, regardless of the states the parties are from. THE NORMATIVE “MORAL” SPECTRUM. MORAL BY ANALOGY. Define Manners, Ethics, Morals,Strategies, Legislation. Manners: …. Ethics: … between people Morals: … anonymous Group Strategies: …. see my other talk with butch. Legislation: … punishment for exiting strategy. NORMATIVE PORTFOLIOS ARE MORAL WITHIN GROUP ONLY, AND EVEN SO MAY NOT BE EXCEPT WITHIN STRATEGY. And a strategy may or may not be moral, only (successful). Define Normative Portfolios reflecting group strategies” That these are contractual substitutes for morals, not objectively moral. (Islam is an immoral strategy of full parasitism. judaism is an immoral strategy of commons-parasitism. Aryanism is a moral strategy in so far as domestication is transcendent. Hinduism and buddhism and confusianism appear to be less effective, but largely moral strategies.) INEQUALITY OF MORAL PORTFOLIOS Conflicting normative portfolios are not ‘equal’. And not relative at all. Some are lower trust more parasitic strategies, and some are higher trust lower parasitic strategies. The more moral group is the one with the higher objectve suppression of parasitism – independent of group norms. The less moral group is the one with the lower objective suppression of parasitism – independent of group norms. MAN IS RATIONAL – CAPABLE OF MORAL OR IMMORAL Man is rational. He has moral and immoral intuitions (instincts). These intuitions (instincts) help him calculate costs. Man is neither moral or immoral, he is rational. He is immoral or moral when it is in his interests to be moral or immoral. It is just almost always in his interests to act morally, since we retaliate so overwhelmingly when man and woman are not. In most circumstances, if one is not relatively safe from retaliation, parasitism, or predation, he will almost always choose moral action because even the risk of retaliation is not worth the benefit he claims from immoral action. This is why informational transparency is so important – it dramatically eliminates our ability to preserve incentives for immoral action, by making public the opportunity to retaliate. And since many of us who possess any kind of property at all, any kind of sustenance at all, possess this same interest, we increasingly invent and evolve institutions that suppress parasitism, just as when we scale we evolve methods by which to conduct parasitism. But no matter how we scale our institutions, the principle remains the same: impose no costs upon that which others THE LIMITS OF MORALITY: THE EXTRA MORAL ACTIONS We can engage in actions where we deem cooperation impossible, dangerous, or undesirable. When we engage in these actions, we act amorally – outside the limits of morality, but only in so far as we do not expect retaliation for our actions. Its the measurement of retaliation that determines the limits of our actions, and the limits of retaliation alone. EXPANSION I consider it moral to domesticate a group with lower objective morality and ambitions(islam), and immoral to corrupt a group with higher objective morality and ambitions(eastern europeans). BEHAVIORAL PORTFOLIO – WE RETAIN AND EXPRESS ABILITIES AS NEEDED. (discuss how we express classes as needed to compete) (discuss how we express genes as needed to compete) (discuss how we express norms as neded to compete ) (discuss how we can express laws as needed to compete) (discuss how fast we can do each.) MAN’S COOPERATION IS BOUND BY PHYSICAL LAW AS WELL AS NATURAL LAW Nature can exchange freely available energy and transform state. By analogy we can take only freely available energy from one another by exchange.
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True Names
TRUE NAMES (notes to self for current line of thought) —“Any sufficiently true property of the universe appears to the trained eye as a model rather than reality.”—Jonathan Page Constancy and determinism and true names. True = True Name. True name is “invariant”. If we pass the tests of dimensional consistency that I suggest with the 6/7 model, then it is very hard to say we do not have a true name. We can test the dimensions of the universe with mathematics. We can test the dimensions of cooperation with various forms of reason. But I am not sure that either in mathematics, or in reason, that once we surpass a certain (small) number of dimensions, that we are in-fact talking about a property of the universe, or whether we have entered the realm of models alone. There is possibly no limit to the manifold RELATIONS that we can model using dimensions to track those relations. I mean, this is what I suggest is a superior method of constructing artificial intelligences for very, very, fast searches. I suspect this is the long term answer to post-human intelligences. I kind of doubt that anything could touch it. And in this sense, mathematical searching *WILL* surpass proceduralism. What I am unsure about is whether we are describing the universe then, or whether we are describing a model constrained by the properties of the universe.