Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Definitions: Truth, Truthfulness, and Honesty

    [D]EFINITIONS OF TRUTH.TAUTOLOGICAL TRUTH: That testimony you give when you promising the equality of two statements using different terms: A circular definition, a statement of equality or a statement of identity. ANALYTIC TRUTH: The testimony you give promising the internal consistency of one or more statements used in the construction of a proof in an axiomatic(declarative) system. (a Logical Truth). IDEAL TRUTH: That testimony (description) you would give, if your knowledge (information) was complete, your language was sufficient, stated without error, cleansed of bias, and absent deceit, within the scope of precision limited to the context of the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possessed of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony. (Ideal Truth = Perfect Parsimony.) TRUTHFULNESS: that testimony (description) you give if your knowledge (information) is incomplete, your language is insufficient, you have performed due diligence in the elimination of error, imaginary content, wishful thinking, bias, and deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and which you warranty to be so; and the promise that another possessed of the knowledge, performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony. HONESTY: that testimony (description) you give with full knowledge that knowledge is incomplete, your language is insufficient, but you have not performed due diligence in the elimination of error and bias, but which you warranty is free of deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.Intuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, uncriticized, response to information that expresses a measure of existing biases (priors).Preference (rational expression) : a justification of one’s biases (wants). Opinion: (justificationism) – a justified uncritical statement given the limits of one’s knowledge about external questions.Position: (criticism) – a theoretical statement that survives one’s available criticisms about external questions.Demonstrated Preference: – Evidence of intuition, preference, opinion, and position as demonstrated by your actions, independent of your statements.A Hierarchy of Truths:

    1. True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship
    2. True enough for me to feel good about myself.
    3. True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.
    4. True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.
    5. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.
    6. True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.
    7. True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.
    8. Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

    TRUTH IS A WARRANTY OF DIFFERENT DEGREES.Source: (1) Curt Doolittle

  • Running with Hayekian Scissors

    PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION

    —Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies to more than just economic issues. It also applies to social issues.—- 

    RE: http://ow.ly/Ln3uF
    [W]hile, as I’ve written before, I agree with the general argument that women sense some things and men others (and progressives, libertarians and conservatives different things as well) I have a     more complete theory of the inter-temporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge and labor (and one that eliminates equality, and monopoly decision making), there is a minor error in the logic of the first paragraph, and that is that it is irrelevant that we understand others – it is only relevant that we conduct exchanges with them.

    Because their reaction to their senses are not accurate or ‘true’ in any meaningful sense other than as a reflection of the individual’s reproductive strategy – any more than any of the rest of our senses are all that accurate – they themselves are fragments.

    This single insight is the principle cause of why democracy does not work, and the market does. The market allows us to cooperate on multitudinous means even if on disparate ends, with our successes and failures informing both us and others.

    Whereas a monopoly government prevents us from learning anything of value, and the institutionalization of foolish policy by unexpriable law, and the accretion of bureaucratic self interests, prevents adaptation outside of catastrophic chains of failure.

    In fact, monopoly government (monopoly production of commons by majority rule) promotes failure because it is precisely failed policy that permits the greatest rent seeking for all involved.

    It is not that we should prohibit government (as Hayek warns) but that we should prohibit monopoly government. It is not that we should prevent taxation, it is that we should allocate our dividends from the commons we live in to the production of commons we prefer, and not to commons we do not.

    As, furthermore, so called ‘privilege’ is precious information. It is information that informs you whose behavior you should imitate in order to gain discounts on opportunity costs. Privilege is as necessary to the human information system as is status, property rights, rule of law, money and interest.

    Privilege, if it exists, is an inter-temporal store of value that informs others as to the behaviors that they should imitate in order to obtain a discount on opportunities. Manners and language are advertisements for one’s worthiness to engage in increasingly complex inter-temporal risks and returns.

    Those who accumulate such behaviors obtain opportunity at the lowest discounts. Those that fail to adapt, and ask others to ’empathize’ with them, are seeking discounts without bearing the cost of adaptation.

    In other words, they’re free riders participating in an act of fraud.

    –“I don’t see how we can maximize our own exchanges in a given society if we don’t understand anyone in said society.”–



    Of course.

    I think you are caught up on a bit of language, and overlooking the epistemological argument I am making about the difference between seeking to impose a monopoly by law and justifying it, and seeking to develop many voluntary contracts while preventing theft.

    We only learn the truth of anyone’s opinions by what they are willing to exchange. In other words, demonstrated preferences are truthful but articulated preferences are merely negotiating positions.

    Understanding is a means of negotiating, not a means of establishing a monopoly definition of ‘good’ or ‘right’.     Source: Skye Stewart – “Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies…

  • Running with Hayekian Scissors

    PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION

    —Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies to more than just economic issues. It also applies to social issues.—- 

    RE: http://ow.ly/Ln3uF
    [W]hile, as I’ve written before, I agree with the general argument that women sense some things and men others (and progressives, libertarians and conservatives different things as well) I have a     more complete theory of the inter-temporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge and labor (and one that eliminates equality, and monopoly decision making), there is a minor error in the logic of the first paragraph, and that is that it is irrelevant that we understand others – it is only relevant that we conduct exchanges with them.

    Because their reaction to their senses are not accurate or ‘true’ in any meaningful sense other than as a reflection of the individual’s reproductive strategy – any more than any of the rest of our senses are all that accurate – they themselves are fragments.

    This single insight is the principle cause of why democracy does not work, and the market does. The market allows us to cooperate on multitudinous means even if on disparate ends, with our successes and failures informing both us and others.

    Whereas a monopoly government prevents us from learning anything of value, and the institutionalization of foolish policy by unexpriable law, and the accretion of bureaucratic self interests, prevents adaptation outside of catastrophic chains of failure.

    In fact, monopoly government (monopoly production of commons by majority rule) promotes failure because it is precisely failed policy that permits the greatest rent seeking for all involved.

    It is not that we should prohibit government (as Hayek warns) but that we should prohibit monopoly government. It is not that we should prevent taxation, it is that we should allocate our dividends from the commons we live in to the production of commons we prefer, and not to commons we do not.

    As, furthermore, so called ‘privilege’ is precious information. It is information that informs you whose behavior you should imitate in order to gain discounts on opportunity costs. Privilege is as necessary to the human information system as is status, property rights, rule of law, money and interest.

    Privilege, if it exists, is an inter-temporal store of value that informs others as to the behaviors that they should imitate in order to obtain a discount on opportunities. Manners and language are advertisements for one’s worthiness to engage in increasingly complex inter-temporal risks and returns.

    Those who accumulate such behaviors obtain opportunity at the lowest discounts. Those that fail to adapt, and ask others to ’empathize’ with them, are seeking discounts without bearing the cost of adaptation.

    In other words, they’re free riders participating in an act of fraud.

    –“I don’t see how we can maximize our own exchanges in a given society if we don’t understand anyone in said society.”–



    Of course.

    I think you are caught up on a bit of language, and overlooking the epistemological argument I am making about the difference between seeking to impose a monopoly by law and justifying it, and seeking to develop many voluntary contracts while preventing theft.

    We only learn the truth of anyone’s opinions by what they are willing to exchange. In other words, demonstrated preferences are truthful but articulated preferences are merely negotiating positions.

    Understanding is a means of negotiating, not a means of establishing a monopoly definition of ‘good’ or ‘right’.     Source: Skye Stewart – “Hayek’s point about distributed knowledge applies…

  • EducationWP

    Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

  • EducationWP

    Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

  • Our Books

    Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

  • Our Books

    Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

  • Using Income as a Measure Is a Pseudoscientific Distraction

    [T]he question is better served by how we spend our time, what we consume, and what we worry about, than any measure of income. Income is a poor proxy for measuring inter-temporal changes in consumption, and is only a useful measure of temporal asymmetry. What is for example, the cost of not fearing the soviet union, the change in crime in Boston and new York?

    Conversely, what is the cost of increase in political friction due to immigration? What is the cost of the conflict over Obamacare? What is the cost of maintaining the post-war empire (probably neutral). What is the cost of outsourcing? What is the cost of failing to reform education? Income is the least important of these measures. And that is precisely why it’s the topic of conversation: because it is the least important but the most emotionally loaded topic. It is an elaborate pseudoscientific distraction for purely political purposes.

  • Using Income as a Measure Is a Pseudoscientific Distraction

    [T]he question is better served by how we spend our time, what we consume, and what we worry about, than any measure of income. Income is a poor proxy for measuring inter-temporal changes in consumption, and is only a useful measure of temporal asymmetry. What is for example, the cost of not fearing the soviet union, the change in crime in Boston and new York?

    Conversely, what is the cost of increase in political friction due to immigration? What is the cost of the conflict over Obamacare? What is the cost of maintaining the post-war empire (probably neutral). What is the cost of outsourcing? What is the cost of failing to reform education? Income is the least important of these measures. And that is precisely why it’s the topic of conversation: because it is the least important but the most emotionally loaded topic. It is an elaborate pseudoscientific distraction for purely political purposes.

  • Territorial, Institutional, Normative,  and Technological Competitive Value

    (profound) [I]’ve been arguing for two decades that we have had 500 years of ‘unusual’ as we spread the voluntary organization of production around the world (often by force), and conquered and exploited two new continents. And that what we see is the new normal. There aren’t enough asymmetries to exploit any longer to maintain the prior asymmetry of wealth.

    Or rather, normative asymmetries (institutions) are terribly productive and last for generations if maintained, territorial asymmetries are almost as productive, and can last for generations if trade routes are maintained, while technological asymmetries are decreasingly durable. Or as technologists tend to say: “technology is not a competitive advantage” because it is so easily neutralized. Conversely, territorial, trade route, and normative asymmetries produce for the long run. Hence my (and Taleb’s) concern about fragility. And my concern that the progressive fantasy of technology as savior, and norm as inhibitor is backwards.

    Source: Curt Doolittle