Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • The Virtue Of Critical Rationalism

    [T]he chief personal virtue that Critical Rationalism bestows upon you, is the understanding that you never know the ultimate truth, you merely know enough to take action given the knowledge at your disposal, and only by our failures do we learn more about the truth, than we knew before – confirmation may be efficient and rewarding but it does not increase our competitive ability against each other, or against the forces of universe itself.

  • The Virtue Of Critical Rationalism

    [T]he chief personal virtue that Critical Rationalism bestows upon you, is the understanding that you never know the ultimate truth, you merely know enough to take action given the knowledge at your disposal, and only by our failures do we learn more about the truth, than we knew before – confirmation may be efficient and rewarding but it does not increase our competitive ability against each other, or against the forces of universe itself.

  • FEED THE MACHINE / RIDE THE ELEPHANT lol. Yeah. I just feed the machine. If I do

    http://thebea.st/1j9f2zkCREATIVITY: FEED THE MACHINE / RIDE THE ELEPHANT

    lol. Yeah. I just feed the machine. If I don’t, it makes my life hell. Sort of like Vaal in that Star Trek episode The Apple.

    That ‘creative bit’ the article refers to, which I tend to think operates more like lucid dreaming, just doesn’t shut off unless I’m in social situations that are interesting. Or when, I try, very, very, very hard to step back and think purely objectively. And I can’t really sustain that level of effort very long.

    The trick I found, was to make sure that obsessive creative impulse has a problem to lucid dream about. Otherwise the constant noise will drive you into exhaustion trying to fight it. Usually I sort of identify a problem and then some X hours, days or even months later I know the answer when it just pops into my head, and then have to go figure out WHY I know it.

    I am very conscious of “Riding the Elephant”. What I think of as “me” is the rider. That machine is the elephant. I can beat it with a stick to steer it, but you know, it’s an elephant. It can do what it wants.

    You can train people to think creatively. We’ve known how to do it for over a century now. But you can’t train people to be uncontrollably obsessively creative. And I think a lot of us might actually prefer to be normal instead. ‘Cause a lot of the time it sucks.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-13 04:17:00 UTC

  • EUGENIC REPRODUCTION WAS A CONSEQUENCE NOT A PURPOSE (smart questions from Todd

    EUGENIC REPRODUCTION WAS A CONSEQUENCE NOT A PURPOSE

    (smart questions from Todd Myers)

    TODD:

    —“Presumably if you are working on an evolutionary model, morality would be evaluated on its ability to facilitate or hinder the likelihood that genes of those practicing it are passed on. “—

    CURT:

    I think that if universal moral rules necessary for cooperation are followed the result is eugenic. I think that eugenic reproduction (getting the best to reproduce more) is a necessary and higher good than dysgenic reproduction (what we are doing now). (Why do we pay less competent people to have more children instead of paying more competent people to have more children? In a world where children are not only unnecessary but undesirable, because of our success and promoting dysgenic reproduction.)

    TODD:

    —“Am I mistaken about the purpose of your project and its relation to sociobiological foundations?”—

    CURT

    Well, no, It’s not a purpose. I didn’t start out that way at all. It’s an interesting *consequence*. My purpose was to finish the classical liberal and anarchic program by creating a universal language of morality (ethical realism), the rules for constructing political systems (propertarianism), and to recommend ONE political system to perpetuate the historical uniqueness of western civilization as the world’s most innovative and adaptive peoples (aristocratic egalitarianism). So I just wanted to convert the european tradition into rational (and scientific) language. It wasn’t until very late that I understood that the northern european (aristocratic manorial) model was eugenic. But once I did understand, it became somewhat obvious why europe excelled for its reasons (facilitating reproduction of the best, while suppressing and underfeeding the rest) and asia for different reasons (killing a lot of trouble makers as often as possible,keeping the poor in slave conditions on the edge of starvation, and using wealth to feed the noble families who would work to study.) And conversely, why every other civilization did not.

    So, the ultimate moral question though as to whether something is good or not, must in the end return to ‘is it good for man?’ Eugenic reproduction, economic productivity without population growth, continuous increases in consumption (of energy) without population growth, continuous technological innovation without population growth, and our eventual loss of dependence upon the planet for our existence, are probably all ‘goods’, and everything else is cooperating on those tests there while not doing harm to one another.

    We have too much data now about the reproductive results and costs of ‘bad people’. It’s terrifying really. Then we have the problem of people who aren’t bad but are of so little use to others that they cannot find labor. It is these people who produce the most children. And that cannot remain in place for long.

    I hope this answered your question. It was a very smart one.

    Curt.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-11 04:03:00 UTC

  • MORAL BLINDNESS AND DEMONSTRATED SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE (interesting post)(reposted

    MORAL BLINDNESS AND DEMONSTRATED SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

    (interesting post)(reposted from comment)

    What I didn’t understand was that the left’s solipsism is non-cognitive, morally blind, inalterable, and very powerful. From the data conservatives understand the world most accurately. followed by moderate democrats who are just practical. libertarians understand the world less, but they use economics as a proxy for understanding which is kind of fascinating really now that I understand it. Progressives have very little grasp of the world, and very little of morality, but do not use economics as a proxy for understanding because they’re confident.

    The left is a genetic expression of the female need to care for a child and advocate for the child in the context of the tribe regardless of the rationality of doing so for the tribe, and regardless of the child’s merits. It’s why mothers of serial killers don’t believe their son’s are guilty, and progressives think that children are the product of the environment not their genes. A mother’s love at the political level. It is understandable in this context, but not rational or beneficial in this context.

    I don’t know the degree to which the ‘cathedral’ influences morality, but using postmodern language has certainly helped them with the educated classes who are LESS dependent on morality. So, in the educated classes, both of which are less moral than the less educated classes, of the two of them, only one (libertarians) uses a proxy for morality, and the other (progressives) have no proxy – no means of sensing objective morality, and no desire for one. Libertarians are outnumbered by progressives more than two to one.

    Libertarians have been distracted by ‘immoral libertarianism’ for thirty years. And unable to fulfill their role as the intellectual leadership of conservatives. So I’m illustrating the errors of immoral libertarianism, and libertarian moral blindness, so that liberty seekers can once again form the intellectual leadership of the much more numerous conservatives.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 00:04:00 UTC

  • FUZZIES: LIFE ADVICE I’ve always wanted to run companies. I couldn’t care less w

    http://news.distractify.com/people/mike-rowe-crushes-a-mans-hopes-for-finding-a-dream-job-and-i-agree-with-him-100/?v=1WARM FUZZIES: LIFE ADVICE

    I’ve always wanted to run companies. I couldn’t care less what company it is. As long as I can do it profitably, it’s vaguely interesting, and it’s not immoral (I don’t care if its legal or not, just moral or not), then I feel that I have built my little kingdom and have contributed to society.

    When I told my first future father in law this (he was from Westchester County) he was indignant that my plans weren’t more precise. I didn’t want to really argue with him. But it really bothered him.

    Do good at what you can do. Don’t look for perfection. It isn’t there.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-06 04:58:00 UTC

  • I don’t try to justify anything. I don’t have to. I might advocate what *I* want

    I don’t try to justify anything. I don’t have to. I might advocate what *I* want. I might help you advocate what *you* want, and help someone else with what *they* want – we have different needs.

    I am perfectly happy if the underclasses engage in mutual reinsurance (socialism). I just don’t want to pay for insurance that I don’t need or want – and which harms me. I am, by my abilities, my own insurance. There is no reason we must possess a monopoly under which we all rely upon the same means of insurance. I think very few of us would rely upon ourselves, and the majority rely upon insurance by others.

    But since I want liberty, to obtain liberty without the state, the only means we have of providing a rational means for the resolution of differences is property and property rights, under organically evolving “common” law, I just need to know what is required of the common law to construct a voluntary polity in the absence of the state.

    This is an empirical question. It’s not a moral one. I do not argue what people SHOULD want. Since what they ‘should’ want and what they ‘do’ want are almost always accurate reflections of their reproductive strategies. I argue instead that given what any group wants, here is how to achieve it under the common law, cooperatively rather than violently – as the state now does.

    That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t replace some sections of that common law with ‘rule-by-man’ institutions within your own group – rather than rule of law under the law. Within your group you’re welcome to. We liberty lovers won’t allow you to force us to participate with you in an ‘involuntary’ organization.

    We won’t allow you means that we will use violence to make sure that you cannot. We’re smarter. That’s the thing, you know.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-05 09:42:00 UTC

  • ILLNESS AND PRODUCTIVITY I’ve been sick since, what, the 27th? Maybe 26th? But d

    ILLNESS AND PRODUCTIVITY

    I’ve been sick since, what, the 27th? Maybe 26th? But damn. It’s been a productive period. I think it’s because the UK trip was so important for me.

    Want to thank a few people for seriously improving my thinking while in the UK:

    Don Finnegan and Andy Curzon. They have strategic intuitions I know how to give voice to. I would not have done this work as I have without something Don said to me a few years ago in Bodrum. I’m sure he didn’t know what impact it had on me. Andy confirmed it and gave me a brilliant strategic direction to work in last year.

    Want to again than Sean Gabb for helping me understand the current state of libertarian thought from his perspective.

    And of course Ayelam Valentine Agaliba for giving me homework assignments on how to improve my arguments. 🙂

    A apologize to Jan Lester who was kind enough to fit me in, but I somehow fouled communications and missed him. London is big and it takes longer to do everything, and I could not get my phone working reliably.

    Forever in your debt.

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-04 09:28:00 UTC

  • WHAT ARE THE TERMS UNDER WHICH ONE CHOOSES TO COOPERATE? –“Free men should neve

    WHAT ARE THE TERMS UNDER WHICH ONE CHOOSES TO COOPERATE?

    –“Free men should never regulate their conduct by the suggestions or dicta of others, for when they do so, they are no longer free. No man ought to obey any contract, written or implied, except he himself has given his personal and formal adherence thereto, when in a state of mental maturity and unrestrained liberty. It is only slaves that are born into contracts, signed and sealed by their progenitors. The free man is born free, lives free, and dies free. He is (even though living in an artificial civilization) above all laws, all constitutions, all theories of right and wrong. He supports and defends them of course, as long as they suit his own end, but if they don’t, then he annihilates them by the easiest and most direct method.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-04 03:38:00 UTC

  • CAUSE OF HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM: “SHARED INTENTIONALITY” (book recommendation) –“

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GG0C9WK/THE CAUSE OF HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM: “SHARED INTENTIONALITY”

    (book recommendation)

    –“Human thought, in Tomasello’s conception, is different from that of all other organisms because humans alone have the capacity to think about the thoughts of others, and do so collectively. Tomasello’s greatest strength is his insistence on relying on data to support his hypotheses, particularly the fascinating studies he summarizes comparing pre‐ linguistic children to our great ape relatives. (Publishers Weekly 2013-12-02)”–

    –“What is it that differentiates humans from other animals? It’s the question that keeps evolutionary anthropologists like Michael Tomasello up nights. But after 20-plus years wrestling with the thorny subject, he puts forward his ‘shared intentionality hypothesis,’ designed to account for how early humans learned to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborators. (New Scientist 2014-01-04)”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 03:25:00 UTC