Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Synonyms Across Disciplines: Free Riding, Involuntary Transfer, Discounting, Theft – But Morally It’s All Just ‘theft’

    [M]urder, violence, destruction, theft by physical appropriation, theft by fraud, theft by fraud using omission, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, conspiracy, invasion, conquest – all deprive others of that which they have acted to obtain an interest in, against their will. ie: theft – the taking of that which is not obtained by voluntary exchange or first-use. Humans reject, universally, and punish, universally, “theft”. But when we talk about ‘theft’, each discipline uses slightly different language

      [I] do not need to get into a semantic debate on normative terminology. I need only define my terms. “Free riding” is the broadest category I can use in the context of cooperation. While “involuntary transfer” is the broadest categorical term I can use in the context of moral philosophy. And “theft” is the broadest categorical term that I can use in the context of dispute resolution (law). However, whether talking about cooperation (free riding), morality (involuntary transfer), or dispute resolution (theft), the human action they all refer to, is that act which transfers that which one has acted to accumulate or acquire without his informed consent. Cheers

    • Libertarian Moral-spectrum Blindness

      [Y]ou can’t reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition any more than you can reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition. So, it’s pretty clear to me today, that libertarians are as morally blind (or in Haidt’s terms ‘tasteless’) as progressives are (albeit at a different part of the spectrum), and that the only conservatives can carry on a rational moral discussion – because only conservatives are not affected by large moral blind spots. The data says it. But I just experienced it first hand. And I hate what it means. It means that libertarians are just as irrational and impenetrable as progressives. That doesn’t mean that libertarians haven’t solved the problem of formal institutions. They have. (Hoppe has.) But it means that except as a sort of minority conducting intellectual experiments, libertarians are useless for the purpose of discussing political solutions. They’re by definition ‘immoral’. Or perhaps a form of moral color-blindness in which the majority of the spectrum is invisible to them. I’m a conservative libertarian. I place a premium on liberty and discount all the other moral values. That’s the definition of the moral intuitions of a libertarian. But that PERSONAL intuition and personal objective, is different from my understanding of POLITICS as a set of institutions that allow heterogeneous peoples to cooperate on means even if they possess competing ends. (Give the citizenry a circus and let their actions sort them out.) ANALOGY: 1) RED : PROGRESSIVISM – Sees only red. (Harm/Care : the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children.) 2) BLUE : CONSERVATISM – Sees red, blue and yellow (Harm/Care, Proportionality, Authority/Hierarchy/Duty, Loyalty, Purity/Sanctity, Liberty/Oppression) 3) GREEN : LIBERTARIANISM – Sees only green (Liberty/Oppression : ) – Libertarians are “Red/Blue color blind.” – Progressives are “Green/Blue color blind.” – Conservatives are not color blind at all. Just how it is. YOU CAN”T REASON WITH A LIBERTARIAN EITHER [Y]ou can’t actually reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition. It’s as irrational as trying to reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition. Both just justify their positions. You can reason to a conservative, or conservative libertarian, *EVEN IF* they rely on moral intuition. Because they aren’t morally blind to any part of the spectrum. And here I keep thinking (stupidly) that because I am not morally blind, even though I place a premium on liberty, and because I understand the RESULT of libertarian moral blindness: the reduction of all rights to property rights – that other libertarians will of course be as rational as I am. But that’s not true. I am literally talking to people who are for all intents and purposes, physically incapable of moral discourse, just as a color blind person is physically incapable of aesthetic discourse on colors that he cannot see. (Or the disability called “Ageusia” which prohibits taste.) THE INTELLECTUAL LIMIT [T]here is some point at which individuals abandon intuitionism (feelings) and resort to either rationalism (rules), or ratio-empirical science ( outcomes) for their epistemic judgements. The only libertarians that one can speak to rationally about morality are those that have abandoned intuitionism. And since it APPEARS to me that rationalism is just a form of justification, then further it appears that only those who adopt the ratio-scientific level of thought, abandon both intuition and justification, are capable of discourse. That means that we are very limited in the number those people who possess the capacity for rational discourse on ethics and politics. And that since only conservatives are not morally spectrum blind, that it is only conservatives who can rationally discuss these issues EVEN IF they are relegated only to intuition. THE TRIANGLE IS INVERTED Conservatives form the base of an inverted pyramid. Progressives and Libertarians are specialized variants of human. Progressives are ‘excessively female’ and libertarians ‘excessively male’. (I think some conservatives specialize in being ‘warriors’ but they’re indistinguishable because they have identical moral intuitions.) Where progressive, conservative and libertarian refer to moral intuitions. BUGS [T]he more I work on this problem the more I see humans of different moral persuasions just like specialized forms of ants. ‘Cause pretty much, that’s what we are.

    • Libertarian Moral-spectrum Blindness

      [Y]ou can’t reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition any more than you can reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition. So, it’s pretty clear to me today, that libertarians are as morally blind (or in Haidt’s terms ‘tasteless’) as progressives are (albeit at a different part of the spectrum), and that the only conservatives can carry on a rational moral discussion – because only conservatives are not affected by large moral blind spots. The data says it. But I just experienced it first hand. And I hate what it means. It means that libertarians are just as irrational and impenetrable as progressives. That doesn’t mean that libertarians haven’t solved the problem of formal institutions. They have. (Hoppe has.) But it means that except as a sort of minority conducting intellectual experiments, libertarians are useless for the purpose of discussing political solutions. They’re by definition ‘immoral’. Or perhaps a form of moral color-blindness in which the majority of the spectrum is invisible to them. I’m a conservative libertarian. I place a premium on liberty and discount all the other moral values. That’s the definition of the moral intuitions of a libertarian. But that PERSONAL intuition and personal objective, is different from my understanding of POLITICS as a set of institutions that allow heterogeneous peoples to cooperate on means even if they possess competing ends. (Give the citizenry a circus and let their actions sort them out.) ANALOGY: 1) RED : PROGRESSIVISM – Sees only red. (Harm/Care : the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children.) 2) BLUE : CONSERVATISM – Sees red, blue and yellow (Harm/Care, Proportionality, Authority/Hierarchy/Duty, Loyalty, Purity/Sanctity, Liberty/Oppression) 3) GREEN : LIBERTARIANISM – Sees only green (Liberty/Oppression : ) – Libertarians are “Red/Blue color blind.” – Progressives are “Green/Blue color blind.” – Conservatives are not color blind at all. Just how it is. YOU CAN”T REASON WITH A LIBERTARIAN EITHER [Y]ou can’t actually reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition. It’s as irrational as trying to reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition. Both just justify their positions. You can reason to a conservative, or conservative libertarian, *EVEN IF* they rely on moral intuition. Because they aren’t morally blind to any part of the spectrum. And here I keep thinking (stupidly) that because I am not morally blind, even though I place a premium on liberty, and because I understand the RESULT of libertarian moral blindness: the reduction of all rights to property rights – that other libertarians will of course be as rational as I am. But that’s not true. I am literally talking to people who are for all intents and purposes, physically incapable of moral discourse, just as a color blind person is physically incapable of aesthetic discourse on colors that he cannot see. (Or the disability called “Ageusia” which prohibits taste.) THE INTELLECTUAL LIMIT [T]here is some point at which individuals abandon intuitionism (feelings) and resort to either rationalism (rules), or ratio-empirical science ( outcomes) for their epistemic judgements. The only libertarians that one can speak to rationally about morality are those that have abandoned intuitionism. And since it APPEARS to me that rationalism is just a form of justification, then further it appears that only those who adopt the ratio-scientific level of thought, abandon both intuition and justification, are capable of discourse. That means that we are very limited in the number those people who possess the capacity for rational discourse on ethics and politics. And that since only conservatives are not morally spectrum blind, that it is only conservatives who can rationally discuss these issues EVEN IF they are relegated only to intuition. THE TRIANGLE IS INVERTED Conservatives form the base of an inverted pyramid. Progressives and Libertarians are specialized variants of human. Progressives are ‘excessively female’ and libertarians ‘excessively male’. (I think some conservatives specialize in being ‘warriors’ but they’re indistinguishable because they have identical moral intuitions.) Where progressive, conservative and libertarian refer to moral intuitions. BUGS [T]he more I work on this problem the more I see humans of different moral persuasions just like specialized forms of ants. ‘Cause pretty much, that’s what we are.

    • Unfortunately, Pseudoscientific Language Is Really Useful.

      [T]he question is whether “truth” in the context of Critical Rationalism is an analogy or not. I posit that it’s analogistic language just like nearly all uses of ‘truth’. The only action that can exist is attestation. And nothing can be said to be ‘true’ independent of someone’s cognition. I’m trying to eliminate pseudoscientific language. Because pseudoscientific language is unethical and immoral. It may be efficient. It may be useful. It may even in some cases be conceptually necessary. All disciplines rely upon such contrivances for the sake of brevity and ease. These contrivances my be utilitarian, but that is different from saying that they are ‘true’.

    • Unfortunately, Pseudoscientific Language Is Really Useful.

      [T]he question is whether “truth” in the context of Critical Rationalism is an analogy or not. I posit that it’s analogistic language just like nearly all uses of ‘truth’. The only action that can exist is attestation. And nothing can be said to be ‘true’ independent of someone’s cognition. I’m trying to eliminate pseudoscientific language. Because pseudoscientific language is unethical and immoral. It may be efficient. It may be useful. It may even in some cases be conceptually necessary. All disciplines rely upon such contrivances for the sake of brevity and ease. These contrivances my be utilitarian, but that is different from saying that they are ‘true’.

    • We Are Morally Blind, Limited In Our Perceptions And Memory, And Severely In Our Reason. The Last Thing We Should Do Is Construct Large Risk-prone Intentionally Managed States.

      [I] have to accept the evidence, but I do not like it. I would like very much to believe that we grasp the world as it is. And it appears that, at least with the help of instrumentalism (logic and science), we can grasp the physical world with a high degree of accuracy – at least, sufficiently to make use of it for our purposes. The cooperative world of human beings consists of inconstant relations, we desperately try to reduce to an ideal type, a stereotype, a single simple rule, a universal value. But it is more complex than the physical world that consists of constant relations. For that reason we may be limited to a logic of cooperation and every prohibited from a mathematics of cooperation – except at the highest levels. The data is conclusive: we are far more morally blind than I had expected. Our moral and ethical intuitions are genetically weighted but our moral biases evolve and are emergent – still invariant. Our metaphysical assumptions (assumptions about the way the world functions) are far more unconscious and unalterable than I’d expected. And very, very, very few of us are capable of working hard to modify those assumptions. (The process of which I am at this moment writing about.) [L]ibertarians can speak of morality in it’s logical language: economics. But that is partly because libertarians are both severely affected by moral blindness, less dependent upon others for information and decision making, and less vulnerable to deception. Libertarians not only are blind to morality, but discount it because it’s not useful to them. Our language, common protocol that it is, fools us into a sense of similarity. Progressives are interesting in that the world appears simple to them, and is simple to them computationally, because like any form single-variable calculation, it is in fact much simpler to reason with. But they are also the most morally blind demographic: progressives dysgenically and anti-socially apply their moral simplicity to all matters – like the mother of a serial killer who believes her son is merely misunderstood, and incapable of the crime. That analogy is all one needs to understand the moral blindness of progressives. Conservatives have the worst computational problem. They weigh all of the moral instincts about the same. Which means that they must contend with seven or more different weights and values that must be compared at any given time – something that the single-axis human capacity for reason cannot possibly manage, and abandons to the wind. So conservatives speak in moral language. Partly because it is simply too complicated to speak in any other. And largely because we have only recently understood these underlying intuitions. While Machiavelli, Hume, Pareto, Durkheim and others have attempted to derive the answers, only in the past twenty years with the help of science, anthropology and experimental psychology, have we been able to understand them. We humans speak to justify our genes. That is about all. The very last thing that we should try to engage in, is the politics of anything larger than an extended and homogenous family. The market – in this case, a market of communities (states) – is the only possible means of computing and calculating the future by scientific means.

    • We Are Morally Blind, Limited In Our Perceptions And Memory, And Severely In Our Reason. The Last Thing We Should Do Is Construct Large Risk-prone Intentionally Managed States.

      [I] have to accept the evidence, but I do not like it. I would like very much to believe that we grasp the world as it is. And it appears that, at least with the help of instrumentalism (logic and science), we can grasp the physical world with a high degree of accuracy – at least, sufficiently to make use of it for our purposes. The cooperative world of human beings consists of inconstant relations, we desperately try to reduce to an ideal type, a stereotype, a single simple rule, a universal value. But it is more complex than the physical world that consists of constant relations. For that reason we may be limited to a logic of cooperation and every prohibited from a mathematics of cooperation – except at the highest levels. The data is conclusive: we are far more morally blind than I had expected. Our moral and ethical intuitions are genetically weighted but our moral biases evolve and are emergent – still invariant. Our metaphysical assumptions (assumptions about the way the world functions) are far more unconscious and unalterable than I’d expected. And very, very, very few of us are capable of working hard to modify those assumptions. (The process of which I am at this moment writing about.) [L]ibertarians can speak of morality in it’s logical language: economics. But that is partly because libertarians are both severely affected by moral blindness, less dependent upon others for information and decision making, and less vulnerable to deception. Libertarians not only are blind to morality, but discount it because it’s not useful to them. Our language, common protocol that it is, fools us into a sense of similarity. Progressives are interesting in that the world appears simple to them, and is simple to them computationally, because like any form single-variable calculation, it is in fact much simpler to reason with. But they are also the most morally blind demographic: progressives dysgenically and anti-socially apply their moral simplicity to all matters – like the mother of a serial killer who believes her son is merely misunderstood, and incapable of the crime. That analogy is all one needs to understand the moral blindness of progressives. Conservatives have the worst computational problem. They weigh all of the moral instincts about the same. Which means that they must contend with seven or more different weights and values that must be compared at any given time – something that the single-axis human capacity for reason cannot possibly manage, and abandons to the wind. So conservatives speak in moral language. Partly because it is simply too complicated to speak in any other. And largely because we have only recently understood these underlying intuitions. While Machiavelli, Hume, Pareto, Durkheim and others have attempted to derive the answers, only in the past twenty years with the help of science, anthropology and experimental psychology, have we been able to understand them. We humans speak to justify our genes. That is about all. The very last thing that we should try to engage in, is the politics of anything larger than an extended and homogenous family. The market – in this case, a market of communities (states) – is the only possible means of computing and calculating the future by scientific means.

    • The Crime Of Statism : Conspiracy

      [I] disagree vehemently with Walter Block on ethics, but I agree with his proposition that Statism should be criminalized. Under Propertarianism it’s the crime of conspiracy. And can be brought to justice by any citizen against any other.

    • The Crime Of Statism : Conspiracy

      [I] disagree vehemently with Walter Block on ethics, but I agree with his proposition that Statism should be criminalized. Under Propertarianism it’s the crime of conspiracy. And can be brought to justice by any citizen against any other.

    • Transnational Insurgencies : "Save For Future Use"

      [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism, in which we obtain property rights in exchange with others, to whom we grant them, under the agreement that we will defend each other’s rights, can or cannot know boundaries. I cannot understand how it can consider boundaries. It should be just as easy for a dedicated minority of insurgents to influence western property rights as it has been for a dedicated minority of insurgents in other cultures to attempt to alter their allocations of property and property rights – albeit, they don’t use that conceptualization or terminology. Knights are just as important today as they were in the past. WE ARE COMING FOR YOU WASHINGTON D.C.