Theme: Agency

  • Yes. We Domesticated Ourselves. We’re Just Another Animal.

    IT”S NOT LIKE I”M GONNA WIN A POPULARITY CONTEST FOR THIS LITTLE BIT OF TRUTH. You know, it’s not like if I walk around telling people ‘Well, we learned how to herd females, and domesticate one another so that we could cooperate more effectively, and that there isn’t any difference between now and then other than the complexity of the methods we use because rather than just genders and alphas we have entire classes and generations. We didn’t have to invent domestication of other animals. We’re the first animals we domesticated.

    So (a) that all our cognitive differences are just a division of perception (b) our differences in perception and value are just reflections of reproductive strategy (c) we herded women and had to, and domesticated ourselves then the rest of the world (d) the only question is whether we continue domestication (eugenics) or we revert to animals (dysgenics). The west invented the most profitable and fastest way of domesticating human beings: markets in everything (empirical civilization – meaning meritocracy), and cull the herd with winters, starvation, pestilence, war, and aggressive hanging of malcontents. Yeah. Well, you know the optimum is a market society where we just limit the unproductive to one child. Eventually, this takes care of itself. And I think that’s the compromise that’s just as … necessary… as the institution of monogamous marriage, and rule of law. No one wants to be forced into marriage no one wants to be forced to limit herself to a single child, no one wants to be forced to contribute to the maintenance of defense, and no one wants to be prosecuted by the law for the imposition of costs upon others. It’s not a matter of want. Sigh.
  • Public Speech As Risky Behavior

    WORDS AND IDEAS AS RISKY BEHAVIOR I understand. Some people want to experiment with physical risk, some with sexual risk, some with chemical risk, and some of us with verbal risk. In other words, we all want to obtain stimuli from exploring new sensations with the method of sensory acquisition that’s most rewarding for us. When you take physical risk of skydiving or surfing it’s likely that you’ll hurt only unless you get a rescue worker harmed trying to save you. When you experiment with sexual risk, you can spread disease, or interfere with relationships and families. When you take chemical risk you can hurt yourself, but you can also use machines and vehicles, or even words, that bring you and others to harm. When you experiment with words and ideas you can bring yourself to harm, you can speak and bring others to harm, and if you’re very good at it, and promote or publish it, you can cause the deaths of more people than anything other than the great plagues.

    We all want to ignore external costs to others. We all want to say our pursuits of stimulation are not harmful to others. But it’s always false. What’s counter-intuitive, is that the most dangerous things you can do to others is to promote damaging ideas. The only worse thing you can do is engineer contagious diseases.
  • Public Speech As Risky Behavior

    WORDS AND IDEAS AS RISKY BEHAVIOR I understand. Some people want to experiment with physical risk, some with sexual risk, some with chemical risk, and some of us with verbal risk. In other words, we all want to obtain stimuli from exploring new sensations with the method of sensory acquisition that’s most rewarding for us. When you take physical risk of skydiving or surfing it’s likely that you’ll hurt only unless you get a rescue worker harmed trying to save you. When you experiment with sexual risk, you can spread disease, or interfere with relationships and families. When you take chemical risk you can hurt yourself, but you can also use machines and vehicles, or even words, that bring you and others to harm. When you experiment with words and ideas you can bring yourself to harm, you can speak and bring others to harm, and if you’re very good at it, and promote or publish it, you can cause the deaths of more people than anything other than the great plagues.

    We all want to ignore external costs to others. We all want to say our pursuits of stimulation are not harmful to others. But it’s always false. What’s counter-intuitive, is that the most dangerous things you can do to others is to promote damaging ideas. The only worse thing you can do is engineer contagious diseases.
  • Training Generations To Select Good Mates

    —“Good genes are a just nurture expressed over a certain period time…given enough time with sufficient action being taken place the genes will change over time”— This is worth a bit of contemplation. If it is true that our behavior is 80% genes, and 10% in-utero, and 10% random growth in life, then it’s training generations for selection of mates.

  • Training Generations To Select Good Mates

    —“Good genes are a just nurture expressed over a certain period time…given enough time with sufficient action being taken place the genes will change over time”— This is worth a bit of contemplation. If it is true that our behavior is 80% genes, and 10% in-utero, and 10% random growth in life, then it’s training generations for selection of mates.

  • Knowledge vs Imagination

    —“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”— -Albert Einstein

    This isn’t quite right. It’s that knowledge is a form of consumption while imagination is a form of production.

  • Knowledge vs Imagination

    —“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”— -Albert Einstein

    This isn’t quite right. It’s that knowledge is a form of consumption while imagination is a form of production.

  • Selfishness and Information Processing

    Selfishness is necessary for the collective processing of information by individual perception (data), and interpersonal cooperation (falsification: true/false)… neural networks do not just exist in our minds, but between us. The difference is we are calculatively capable of processing (experiencing) the information we produce in the division of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, and advocacy. But we are unable to experience the information of the collective other than through observation of the group’s persistence in an environment of group competition within a hostile universe.

  • Selfishness and Information Processing

    Selfishness is necessary for the collective processing of information by individual perception (data), and interpersonal cooperation (falsification: true/false)… neural networks do not just exist in our minds, but between us. The difference is we are calculatively capable of processing (experiencing) the information we produce in the division of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, and advocacy. But we are unable to experience the information of the collective other than through observation of the group’s persistence in an environment of group competition within a hostile universe.

  • Of Course Women are Underrepresented in History – Because We Remeber Extremes, Not Regularities

    (read for some good useful arguments) Women were ineffective at leaving ‘extraordinary’ marks on history for a number of obvious reasons: 1 – Strength, athleticism, bravery, loyalty, and cunning provided marginal differences in groups that made possible disruptions in society. Consensus does not produce change, but regularity. 2 – All progress is achieved through either conquest, competition, or innovation (change in state); and innovation appears to be an almost exclusively masculine achievement – so much so that despite a century of seeking even a single woman we find none equal in theoretical innovation to men, and those women we do find produce empirical insights instead(ie:Ostrom). All innovation is produced at the limits of human abilities. Women dominate the middle and men dominate the extremes. 3 – Rearing five or six children in the pre-modern era is a full time 365 day a year occupation that has occupied them. Unfortunately, women desire attention, and feminists desire political power, so while the soldier and the craftsman grasp that they are as important to the whole as a group as the great man is as an individual; this does not suit the political interests of feminists to assist in overthrowing the aristocratic sovereign meritocratic social order, and restoring the primitivism of the rest of the world. We spent thousands of years producing the compromise of the nuclear family, and one-vote for one-family. This is the optimum compromise position under which neither gets what they most prefer, but most all get the best they can get. The sacrifice we pay for marriage and family is a sacrifice just as taxes, obeying norms and laws, and fighting war are sacrifices we pay for getting the best we can not the best we desire. 4 – The impolitic truth: women are demonstrably far less loyal to the group (willing to bear costs) than men even if they are far more concerned with harmony (social safety for themselves and their offspring). Throughout history women have been considered shallow, petty, duplicitous, traitorous, and impulsive. It was just as hard to domesticate women as it has been to domesticate men. And that domestication was achieved in large part through controlling reproduction (just as we do with animals) using the institution of monogamous marriage first, and the prohibition on cousin marriage later, and aggressively hanging malcontents last. Men evolved to capture and herd women. It was through cooperation and the development of property and family that we came to a compromise between the male ability and desire to herd women, and the female ability and desire to choose mates. Women have a smaller number of closer friends, men a larger number of looser friends. Women never stop trying to gain status among other women. Men seek only to maintain a ‘natural’ status so that they maintain value to the tribe. We have little value for ‘care, affection, and sex’. We have great value for changing the state of the physical world to that which we prefer. Women will cheat on the tribe just as men will cheat on a woman. THis behavior is not at all conscious. WOMEN IN THE FUTURE The current era is coming to a close, and will very likely be remembered in history as the second attempt at hyperconsumption. And that women in leadership positions is evidence of the failure of the men in that civilization, just as it was in the ancient world, just as it is in the modern, and just as it is in board rooms in the largest companies: the fact that women are in charge is merely evidence of the failure of men to create a consensus among men who create a competitive difference. Just as we cannot all be leaders, women do not bear quality children in large numbers, a civilization will die – from having no ‘host’ for its ideas. Men work at the extremes, and we dominate the extremes. Women work at regularities and dominate the regularities. We must teach extremes and incentivize extremes through narratives. We must teach regularities and incentivize regularities by demonstrations. Father extremes, mother regularities. The fact that our genes inspire us to do these things is not surprising. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine