Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • Property In Everything: The Source Of Egalitarian Sentiment

    20RDP_CHIMP_SPAN-articleLarge-v2

    [T]he human moral sense is not so much egalitarian as that egalitarianism is the outcome of four competing instincts: the desire to constrain alphas, with the desire to be them, with the desire to breed them, with the desire to raise young who perpetuate our genes. We know that humans try to constrain alphas. We know that we had to do so in order to develop cooperation. It is possible that it’s the singular reason we developed cooperation – unlike our ape relatives. Once we suppress violence with the institution of property, alphas demonstrate their superiority with asset accumulation in all its forms. There is a vast difference from constraining an alpha from creating involuntary transfers because of a concentration of capital of some kind, and constraining alphas in order to improve one’s signaling potential. The first is to prevent theft. The second is an act of theft. The institution of property answers everything.

  • THE BEST WAY TO DISPROVE THE SUPERIORITY OF ANY IDEOLOGY IS TO SHOW THAT ALL IDE

    THE BEST WAY TO DISPROVE THE SUPERIORITY OF ANY IDEOLOGY IS TO SHOW THAT ALL IDEOLOGIES ARE NOTHING BUT REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES GIVEN VERBAL JUSTIFICATION IN AN ATTEMPT TO GAIN POLITICAL POWER TO DISTORT PROPERTY IN FAVOR OF FUNDING ONE GROUP’S REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGY AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.

    This means that the only ‘good’ ideology is one that produces the best biology.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-07 18:15:00 UTC

  • THE ONLY WAY TO KILL IDEOLOGY: IT”S REPRODUCTION SILLY To demonstrate that all i

    THE ONLY WAY TO KILL IDEOLOGY: IT”S REPRODUCTION SILLY

    To demonstrate that all ideologies are justifications for attempts to acquire power that supports one’s reproductive strategy.

    This is an intentionally loaded overstatement, perhaps, But it brings home the point that people vote by race, gender and class. They support their reproductive strategy.

    Well, there is more to it you say.

    Um. Not really. Not in the aggregate. Ideology is necessary only because of democracy. If instead, we had monarchies, and rigid property rights, then people would not have access to political power, and instead would be limited to economic power. And economic power can only be obtained through satisfying the wants of others – or by corporatism or alliance with the state.

    Monarchy denies people access to power. Democracy simply is communism by slower means.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-06 16:09:00 UTC

  • I LOVE STARTUP MODE Seriously. Why does anyone do anything other than start a bu

    I LOVE STARTUP MODE

    Seriously. Why does anyone do anything other than start a business? 🙂 Sure. It’s manic. It’s chaos. The future is uncertain. It’s terribly risky. But it’s also under your control. It is what you make it.

    I think this is actually business number nine, not number eight for me. I forgot one. The biggest mistake I made in the last decade (aside from divorcing my amazing wife) was in not leaving my last company when I first resigned in 2009. I could have done another business by now, and gotten it to maturity. And I would have been much happier in startup mode, than I was arguing with an investor who cost us half our revenues.

    Well, that said. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with friends and this amazing talent that I’ve been lucky enough to find.

    Enough celebration. Time for sleep. It was a long day. (Although I managed to get to the bakery for croissants this afternoon!)

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-04 17:21:00 UTC

  • STUPID STUFF: CELEB TRAIN WRECKS Why are celebrity train wrecks so fascinating?

    STUPID STUFF: CELEB TRAIN WRECKS

    Why are celebrity train wrecks so fascinating? I mean, Lohan, Sheen, on one end, Spears in the middle, and Moore and Stone on the other.

    Most of human existence is pretty transparent to me. Tediously obvious even. But the crazy stuff people do never ceases to amaze me, and I find it endlessly fascinating – even if I wish I didn’t. Even if I’m embarrassed that I do.

    But somehow I love to live in a world where we have all these entertaining characters who tests the limits. Not of criminality. Not of violence. But of some insanely uncontrollably misdirected passion.

    When I was younger I used to love to watch the Dead-Heads go to concerts. I have no interest in them. I dont want to know them. But they’re all happy and adorable in a completely ‘white’ kind of way. And I just loved living in a world with people like that in it. Where it’s perfectly OK to be peaceful counter-culture.

    It’s beautiful – in a sort of twisted way.

    But American civic culture has declined with the ascent of the government, the decline of the family, and the misplaced admiration for division-inducing multiculturalism. And so our countercultures, except for possibly the burning man phenomenon, are almost entirely forms of politica agitation.

    I wont’ get into why this state of affairs exists. It’s a depressing distraction. I’ll just appreciate that a few outrageous individuals can buck the prohibition on revelrous passions.

    Even if it’s just vicarious.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-29 16:35:00 UTC

  • QUESTION: ON IMPULSIVITY (TIME PREFERENCE) AND POPULATIONS What is the percentag

    QUESTION: ON IMPULSIVITY (TIME PREFERENCE) AND POPULATIONS

    What is the percentage of individuals with high time preference (high impulsivity) that will block the creation of norms, and therefore institutions, consisting of low time preference (low impulsivity)?

    I have been trying to get my arms around this problem for the past few years, and my travels lately, into a low trust, but low impulsivity society have helped me understand it a bit more clearly.

    Unless groups with low time preference have the right of exclusion (ostracization) then there is no defense against even ten percent of the population having a high time preference.

    I know that at something under ten percent, populations stop integrating and start seeking identity and political power. But at what point do populations of high time preference individuals, regardless of identity or power seeking (no elites to represent their interest) prevent the formation of low time preference norms and therefore low time preference institutions?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 13:06:00 UTC

  • I LOVE THESE PEOPLE Seriously. I want to just hug them at random. And I’d give i

    I LOVE THESE PEOPLE

    Seriously. I want to just hug them at random. And I’d give into impulse and do it if I thought I could get away with it.

    Now, sure, I’m not yet sensitized to the cacophony of signals. And sure, I tend to broadcast my own, which positively colors the reactions of others to me in this environment.

    But that said. It seems that a smile and consideration are more valuable currencies here. More like the small towns that some of us still remember growing up in.

    I’m working on a bit of theory here that I’m trying to convert into propertarian language. I can’t quite do it yet.

    But we know that there is a small and maximum diversity if race, religion and culture that allows normative excellences to develop before these same interpersonal “calculations’ must be diverted to accommodative compromises.

    One easily visible example is the loss of rhyme, poetic expression, alliteration, subtlety and allegory, especially literary allegory from american English And it has had and will continue to have extraordinary consequences for not only norms, but the structure of the physical mind, and for the unarticulated habitual metaphysics of the population.

    We have diverted extraordinary efforts to accommodate diversity for no other reason than to preserve the monolithic state. Yet that monolithic state exists entirely for the purpose of conducting warfare. First to conquer and profit from the continent. Second to protect that continent from European adventurism. And finally to protect the west after its suicide, from communism.

    Now these habits are norms, and these norms embodied in socialist myth and political institutions. And our pursuit of excellences is abandoned in favor of compromises. not just in our language. But in dysgenic breeding and outbreeding.

    One can lament a ones culture. We have been lamenting ours for a century now.

    But lamenting is romantic. Institutions grounded in norms are functional technologies.

    We lost mortar and cement for what, the better part of thousand years? We lost reason for approximately the same.

    We lost literacy for as long

    The first Greeks lost writing for six hundred years.

    The path of civilization through time is not linear. It includes cataclysmic boundaries.

    The most expensive technologies to develop in any civilization are norms.

    Yet we treat them as given.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-11 07:49:00 UTC

  • EX WIFE LEVIED THIS CRITICISM AGAINST ME DURING OUR DIVORCE WTF? Cute tactic as

    http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/02/1948550612461284.shortMY EX WIFE LEVIED THIS CRITICISM AGAINST ME DURING OUR DIVORCE

    WTF? Cute tactic as a means of trying to deny me access to my son as leverage to get more money. Well, how does that explain my extenuated rotund period? 🙂 Until I dated again, I certainly didn’t push fashion. Personally, if I didn’t have to raise money and sell ideas to other people, I’d wear jeans and untucked collared shirts half unbuttoned, with long hair and sneakers. I’d look like a rumpled professor. And I certainly would’t shave my chest any longer. That’s the inner me. OK? I think ‘adornment’ equates to having to sell s**t for a living. It’s the people that dont sell s**t for a living that dress up that always bother me. If selling s**t is sociopathic then we’re all in for an interesting world someday.

    In fact. WTF. Save teh dressup for the club scene.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-06 07:43:00 UTC

  • TEACHERS AREN”T SKILLED THEY ARE TALENTED There is no functional difference betw

    TEACHERS AREN”T SKILLED THEY ARE TALENTED

    There is no functional difference between a teacher with three months of training and one with twenty years of experience. In fact, it appears that we are better off with teachers who have three months of training, because they bring more passion to an industry that like entertainment, is dependent more on emotional devotion than wisdom.

    We would be far better off Rotating retirees through the educational system than continuing the masquerade that teaching gradeschool students is a profession.

    Whether you like this or not is not something that I can compensate for. It is simply a fact of life. Making a protected career for the bottom 16% of high school graduates out of what should be a social service conducted by those people who have demonstrated success in other careers, is simply nonsensical.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-06 06:33:00 UTC

  • THE MARKET FOR AFFECTION : RANDOM THOUGHTS Yes, ladies, you can manipulate us. Y

    THE MARKET FOR AFFECTION : RANDOM THOUGHTS

    Yes, ladies, you can manipulate us. Yes, we understand that you can manipulate us. Yes, we know when you are manipulating us. Yes, we pretend that we don’t know you are manipulating us. The fact is, we like it. It’s attention. And attention from women is almost always good (except nagging). It’s a mutually beneficial game if played well. Understand? Good. I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now lets get back to the game. OK?

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-04 04:09:00 UTC