Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • MOST ANNOYING AMERICAN TRAIT The least likely people on earth to day “I don’t kn

    MOST ANNOYING AMERICAN TRAIT

    The least likely people on earth to day “I don’t know enough about that to have an opinion.”

    We have the most confident, yet most ignorant populace in the developed world. A massive progressive-induced, Dunning Kreuger test, serving no other purpose than to give righteous inspiration to the ignorant to cast votes for that which they cannot comprehend.

    I mean, when you sort of sit back an think about it, at first it’s funny, then its tragic, then depressing, then frightening.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-04 14:19:00 UTC

  • The Most Annoying American Trait?

    [T]he least likely people on earth to say “I don’t know enough about that to have an opinion.” We have the most confident, yet most ignorant populace in the developed world. A massive progressive-induced, Dunning Kreuger test, serving no other purpose than to give righteous inspiration to the ignorant to cast votes for that which they cannot comprehend. I mean, when you sort of sit back an think about it, at first it’s funny, then its tragic, then depressing, then frightening.

  • The Most Annoying American Trait?

    [T]he least likely people on earth to say “I don’t know enough about that to have an opinion.” We have the most confident, yet most ignorant populace in the developed world. A massive progressive-induced, Dunning Kreuger test, serving no other purpose than to give righteous inspiration to the ignorant to cast votes for that which they cannot comprehend. I mean, when you sort of sit back an think about it, at first it’s funny, then its tragic, then depressing, then frightening.

  • AGAINST THE “CUB SCOUT” MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY You know, the military has peopl

    AGAINST THE “CUB SCOUT” MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY

    You know, the military has people who can be classified as warriors, slave labor, free riders, and ‘cub scouts’. And the guys that bother me most are the cub scouts. The pacifist military has attracted a layer of guys who want to play with big toys, Play with friends who also like to play with big toys, and administrators who want to buy and build big toys – but none of whom actually want to fight: to kill people and blow stuff up.

    The book we are working on, is for warriors. I’m going to get a lot of crap for it. But it’s what Ukraine needs: small groups of men that make the use of combined arms impossible.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-03 03:09:00 UTC

  • I SAID – “DIFFERENT RATES OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/why-teenagers-act-crazy.htmlLIKE I SAID – “DIFFERENT RATES OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT”

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-29 12:01:00 UTC

  • NEXT EINSTEIN? This enthusiastic fellow thinks (Einstein was somehow both rare a

    http://www.quora.com/Genius-and-Geniuses/How-long-before-we-have-another-Einstein/answer/David-Minott/comment/5201426?srid=u4Qv&share=1THE NEXT EINSTEIN?

    This enthusiastic fellow thinks (Einstein was somehow both rare and unique.)

    We have many people as smart or smarter than Einstein today. There is never a shortage of geniuses.

    To create a bach/mozart, aristotle/hume, maxwell/einstein requires three prior generations to attempt to solve a significant problem, so that the knowledge accumulated is sufficient for an individual to synthesize it. We have known this at least since Durant argued for it, and more recently and thoroughly by Murray.

    You may not know that Einstein’s chief role in relativity was not so much of innovator as it was communicator since the ideas had already been disussed by others. Just as the lightbulb, calculus, and the television had multiple inventors. We pick a hero to single out. But great inventions are the product of many people over many years.

    It apprars that I myself may have solved a century old problem in philisophy that is profoundly important for ethics, economics and politics. But I was only able to do so because of the accumulated effort of hundreds of people in the last century who did the vast majority of the work, while only failing to put the last few pieces together. Even my work was only possible because the internet dramatically teduced the time neede to conduct resrarch across multiple disciplines. And it still took me fifteen years.

    To flip it around, intellectual historians have noted, not infrequently, that Einstein was a very naive individual, and that it is a credit to our civilization that such a soul could survive in it and still contribute a great achievement.

    There is an organization dedicated to propagandizing Einstein’s mythos. His heroism is as much the result of their publicity efforts than his achievements.

    And as Bridgman noted, and fought his whole life for: the reason we did not discover relativity earlier (its discovery was delayed) was an intellectual error that invaded physics from mathematics, and had been in mathematics since at least the invention of geometry – cured by proof of construction: the scope of measures.

    A problem that remains with us today, and which is responsible for most pseudoscience – especially the pseudoscience remaining in our most respected sciences.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-29 04:17:00 UTC

  • THE CONSPIRACY OF GENETIC WHISPERS 1) A cacophony of genetic whispers. 2) Intuit

    THE CONSPIRACY OF GENETIC WHISPERS

    1) A cacophony of genetic whispers.

    2) Intuition as propagandist for genes.

    3) Consciousness as the victim of propaganda.

    4) Reason and will as advocate for consciousness.

    5) Communication as negotiation for our genes.

    6) Negotiation as opportunistic cooperation in support of our genes.

    You know, academia, religion, media and advertising work by framing, then overloading: by saturating your environment with messages designed to produce a behavioral end. If there is enough saturation in the environment it becomes almost impossible to ignore the stimuli. We have difficulty compartmentalizing environmental stimuli. (Although smarter people much less so than average and below average people – in fact, smarter people have a hard time sensing saturation, and merely take advantage of the circumstances.) So framing and overloading overwhelm our skepticism and reason – especially when we perceive it as advantageous to make use of the falsehood rather than to determine whether it is true or not.

    Libertarians are interesting because we are the most moral people – the people least likely to impose costs upon others. That morality is our genes whispering to us too.

    But like all other victims of overloading by genetic whispers, we fallaciously assume that it is rational for others to adopt our genetic strategy. It is not. It is rational for others to adopt THEIR genetic strategy.

    What we have right, is that all have equal chances of pursuing their genetic strategy without harming the genetic strategy of others, if we cooperate on means, even though we cannot cooperate on ends. This will suppress the least fit genes, and expand the better, if not most fit genes (excellence doesn’t really spread as much as ‘good’.) At present we are murdering (genocide) the better genes to fund the worst genes, in the greatest consumption of genetic capital in human history.

    This cannot continue. And if it does, it will turn out that our genes were wrong.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-26 03:32:00 UTC

  • MORAL INTUITION IS JUST YOUR GENES TALKING That’s it. You might be able to intui

    MORAL INTUITION IS JUST YOUR GENES TALKING

    That’s it. You might be able to intuit very simple common moral values, but your gender, social class, economic class, and family structure are reflections of your genes, genetic history, and are simple expressions of those genes.

    And your genes are competing with other genes – either with more numerous “worse” genes, or less numerous “better” genes, for higher status, better allies, and better mates. And as such we advocate if not outright demand adherence to our moral code in order to cooperate with others. We offer cooperation to those who benefit our genes, and deny it to those who compete with our genes.

    And what little reason we can muster, and struggle to put under the discipline of our will, is subject to the multitudinous whispers of those genes as they influence our intuition (subconscious), and our intuition influences our perception (consciousness), and our consciousness influences our reason.

    Our will is vastly outnumbered by an invisible hierarchy of secret police that conspires to serve our genes regardless of our reason and will.

    And so we cannot rely upon our moral intuition to determine what is best for anything other than ourselves. We require measures of everyone else’s moral intuitions – the voices of their genes.

    But even if we possess such data does that mean that there is some optimum moral code for all of us to adhere to? Not really. We are optimistic cooperators, and constant competitors.

    While we cannot agree upon ends, since that would mean the willing sacrifice of some of our genes for those of others, and result in dysgenic devolution, which cannot be cast as ‘good’, we can agree to cooperate on means, such that we do not constrain one another’s genes, nor assume we have the wisdom to choose which genes best suit human reality.

    PROPERTARIANISM IS CALCULABLE – THE LOGICAL ARTICULATION OF INTUITIONS TO RATIONAL FORM

    Propertarianism, the missing logic of cooperation, the missing logic of ethics, the missing logic of politics, allows us to discuss all moral systems in transparent, rational terms.

    Praxeology was a failure. But it doesn’t have to be. Propertarianism repairs praxeology.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-26 02:51:00 UTC

  • ANOTHER FLYNN EFFECT? (strange) I dunno. This is a bit weird. And I feel a bit s

    ANOTHER FLYNN EFFECT?

    (strange)

    I dunno. This is a bit weird. And I feel a bit strange saying it. But it makes sense.

    I think that if you work with Propertarianism enough, that it produces some sort of flynn-like effect that spills over into everything you think about. Just as physical sciences reduce the world to general rules and everyone seems to get smarter because of it, Propertarianism reduces the world of human experience to a few simple general rules, and I notice the difference in myself.

    Everything is easier to figure out. Everything. Everything seems to be ‘obvious’.

    Clarity. When you look at the chapter outline of the book, a little like Human Action, or maybe Hume’s work, just the outline itself is an argument – that makes sense.

    You wanna know something else weird? The field that was most under threat from accusations of pseudoscience, reformed more so than any other field, including Physics. Seriously. The only field to fully implement the scientific method in fully operational terms is experimental psychology.

    And I was wondering why experimental psychology surpassed economics and even is keeping ahead of cognitive science. Why?

    Operationalism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-25 06:15:00 UTC

  • DEHUMANIZING BUT INTELLECTUALLY LIBERATING – HUMANS ARE COOL. Once you understan

    DEHUMANIZING BUT INTELLECTUALLY LIBERATING – HUMANS ARE COOL.

    Once you understand that human existence is reducible to acquisitiveness, and that all emotions are merely chemical reactions to changes in state of our extant acquisitions, our anticipated acquisitions, and our potential acquisitions, then you readily adopt the habit of ignoring your intuitions in a search for meaning, and simply looking at all of human experience economically: as cooperation for the purpose of acquisition.

    What people think say, believe and justify becomes meaningless verbalism – negotiation both honest and deceptive, and nothing else. Everyone’s purpose is some form of acquisition. Even if it takes the form of acquiring time to relax that is not spent in material acquisition. Thinking of humans so mechanistically, with our emotions as mere reward-machines, is somehow dehumanizing. But on the other hand it’s intellectually liberating. The world is much more comprehensible.

    I tend to see our existence as a reasonably successful struggle against the dark forces of time and ignorance. And I celebrate our ability to miraculously cooperate in large numbers, despite the fact that we are all super predators entirely capable of simply killing and eating each other if we choose to.

    I don’t know what else in the universe is more amazing than that. And I don’t need the vastness of space, the mystery of physical science or some abstract mysticism to feel spiritually about it: Humans awe me. 🙂

    Humans are cool. 🙂

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-22 03:39:00 UTC