SWITZERLAND IS THE ONLY REMAINING EUROPEAN COUNTRY
(worth repeating)
Switzerland is the only country that evaded the post-Napoleonic statist phase, because they never had the need or opportunity to construct a bureaucracy capable of total war. As such Switzerland is the only surviving ‘European’ country.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-23 08:54:00 UTC
—“In his philosophy of writing history, Barzun emphasized the role of storytelling over the use of academic jargon and detached analysis. He concluded in From Dawn to Decadence that “history cannot be a science; it is the very opposite, in that its interest resides in the particulars.”—Jaques Barzun
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-21 00:56:00 UTC
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/national-wealth-and-iq/NATIONAL WEALTH AND IQ
We have lost three points due to immigration already. Two more points and there is no way that our norms and institutions can compensate for it.
Now, I usually put it this way: all verbal IQ over 106 provides the ability to express ideas and to repair machines. Below that people must learn by imitation. So the less of your population is below 106 (which is a sort of magic number) the better off you will be. The further below 106, the worse off that you would be.
Northern Europeans were about on par with the Ashkenazim in 1850. We have lost our comparative advantage, and we are about to lose our relative advantage.
Progressive idiocy aside: breeding matters. And good people don’t breed as much as not-so-good people.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-15 12:55:00 UTC
Saudi Arabia has the worst possible leadership other than anyone else in Saudia Arabia. The same for Asia. The people are not like us. They are not trying to parent the world into consumer capitalism, and state as insurer of last resort. They are pursuing their own cultural biases: they are an hierarchical, paternalistic, and authoritarian people, who do not seek compromise, but power to impose ideas.
Robert Kaplan.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-12 07:37:00 UTC
CONFUCIUS AND HIS ANALECTS – NO TRUTH TO BE FOUND
Translated into western language, and read by western minds, the Analects of Confucius sound similar to the writings Plato attributed to Socrates.
But this is an illusion. A less than careful reading reveals that the origin of the sacred texts is indeed speaking of virtue, of fidelity, but not truth.
But… what good is the true, if not good for the commons?
Truth breaks the bias of familialism and renders all men kin.
The truth evolved in the west because it is more valuable than conformity.
This is why in both eras where the martial middle-class was sufficiently able to seize power, that innovation could continue.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 06:42:00 UTC
RUNNING WITH CIVILIZATION’S SCISSORS
Western Politicians are like excited children running with scissors: they may have the best of intentions, but are still taking risks with dangerous weapons. Worse, they tend not to be very bright; and they don’t always have the best of intentions; and they don’t hurt themselves with the scissors they carry – they destroy western civilization’s rule of law, property rights, liberty, truth telling, the family, and the suppression of reproduction.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 01:19:00 UTC
http://wordpress.com/BOOKS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND MILITARY TECHNIQUE
—“There is a book to be written—but not by me—on the relationship between civilization and military technique. Why is it that the more civilized states in history tend to rely on infantry (Greece, Rome, the modern West) and the more barbaric cavalry?”— Coyle Neal
The books have been written.
– Van Creveld on The culture of war.
– Keegan on History of War.
– Gimbutas and Armstrong on origins.
– Malory on Indo Europeans
– Hansen as you’ve mentioned.
Each civilization evolved out of a combination of feast ritual and means of war. The west evolved debate, reason, science, common law, and the jury, (which democracy is an evolution of) because we invented truth telling, and required it of one another – all because of our battle tactics. And our battle tactics because we relied upon expensive technology, and voluntary participation (“enfranchisement”) Which in exchange we obtained what we call today ‘property rights’ and the reciprocal insurance of one another’s property.
However, the answer to your question is simple really: raiding, and retreat of the herdsman vs the problem of holding territory of the agrarian.
Low trust herdsman and a lack of property rights, medium trust agrarians and organized armies. High trust militias that are self financed and aristocratic.
Fukuyama is wrong – or at least incomplete.
He has correctly understood that the transition to bureaucracy requires the prior development of bureaucracy. But he does not grasp for some reason, that trust, truth, and jury are the reason that the west developed higher rates of adaptation than all others.
Why? Because a law can be constructed under common law, that suppresses an innovation in parasitism (free riding, theft, fraud, conspiracy) faster than in any other method of juridical evolution. And as such the time between innovation and suppression eliminates the opportunity for the systematic development of rents.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
— ARTICLE EN TOTO —
(link below)
Discourses on Livy: II.18-19
by Coyle Neal
II.18–19
There is a book to be written—but not by me—on the relationship between civilization and military technique. Why is it that the more civilized states in history tend to rely on infantry (Greece, Rome, the modern West) and the more barbaric cavalry? In merely asking the question I’ve exhausted my knowledge of the topic, but I can at least suggest The Art of War in the Middle Ages, Kenneth Clarke’s Civilization, and Victor Davis Hanson’s The Western Way of War as companion pieces for further reflection on the subject.
Machiavelli begins to give us something of an answer when he discusses Rome’s reliance on infantry as its primary military force. He notes that Rome always preferred to use infantry rather than cavalry (and certainly, we can add, rather than sea power). This prejudice remained to the very end of the empire when infantry had been, for better or worse, surpassed by cavalry technologically and logistically, and even to some extent through the end of the Byzantine Empire as well—though they were less dogmatic about the subject.
For Machiavelli, the ultimate evidence of the virtue of infantry over cavalry is not just that Rome preferred the former to the latter, but that Rome repeatedly won. Victory on the battlefield was for him the proof of superior Roman military power, and therefore superior virtue. Example after example from the time of Rome and from recent history (especially drawing on the Swiss) are used to demonstrate the virtue of those who rely on foot soldiers over horsemen. Though Machiavelli does not explicitly say so, he implies that the occasions when cavalry do win the victory are examples of failures of virtue on the part of infantry, not necessarily of superior virtue on the part of the victors.
But again, we have to ask: why is this the case? What makes infantry so much better than cavalry, either in terms of Machiavelli’s virtue or in civilization itself? Machiavelli gives a number of reasons:
A man on foot can go many places where a horse cannot go. He can be taught to observe order, and that he has to resume it if it is disturbed; it is difficult to make horses observe order, and impossible to reorder them when they are disturbed. Besides this, as in men, some horses are found that have little spirit and some that have very much; and often it happens that a spirited horse is ridden by a cowardly man, and a cowardly horse by a spirited one, and, in whichever mode this disparity occurs, from it arises uselessness and disorder. Ordered infantry can easily break horse, and only with difficulty be defeated by them. (II.18.2)
In other words, infantry is to be preferred because it relies more on virtue and less on fortune. Infantry, if well trained, will “observe order” while remaining flexible (going “many places where a horse cannot”). Men can be shaped and trained and formed into a military power which directly translates virtue into victory. Interestingly, many of Machiavelli’s examples are drawn from Roman losses, in which the infantry was defeated, and yet because of the strong discipline present in the Roman forces not all was lost—”Mark Antony,” for example, “virtuously saved himself” (II.18.3) despite having lost the battle in question.
By comparison, reliance on cavalry brings too much fortune into the equation. To be sure, horsemen need training and “order” too. There is virtue involved in creating a well-disciplined unit of this kind as well. But involving animals brings an inherently irrational element into play—horses can be “impossible to reorder… when they are disturbed” (II.18.2). Likewise, horses and riders each have their own spirits which can be cowardly or bold, and an army might end up with cowardly riders on bold horses or vice versa, all of which brings yet another uncontrollable element of fortune onto the battlefield. At the end of the day, whatever advantages cavalry bring to the table (and Machiavelli is clear that they do have a role to play in combat) are not offset by their disadvantages when they become the crux of the state’s war plans.
We can add the interesting tidbit as a corollary to Machiavelli’s examples of infantry losses as proofs of the virtue of those nations that societies which rely exclusively on cavalry do have a tendency to topple with a single military defeat. Hannibal could crush army after army of Roman soldiers, but one loss sent him packing for North Africa. (And yes, I’m being generous there and counting “elephants” as “cavalry.”) It is fairly remarkable how much of a beating ancient Rome, or modern America, could absorb on the battlefield without seriously disrupting its civilization. And while I might not go as far as to say it’s solely because of their reliance on infantry over and above other forms of combat, there might still be some kind of correlation there.
Having won the battle and established rule over new territories, what next? Once again, Machiavelli argues that if we’re not virtuous in the manner of Rome we should not expect any kind of lasting success. In fact, we should expect what little victory we’ve achieved to come undone and leave us in a worse position than that in which we started. The problem is that people “these days” either think times have changed so much that these Roman examples no longer apply, or think those examples were never true to begin with. But if only we would believe what we read in the histories, that well-ordered infantry can defeat whatever is thrown at it:
republics and princes would err less, would be stronger in opposing a thrust that might come against them, and would not put their hope in flight; and those who have in their hands a civil way of life would know better how to direct it, either by way of expanding it or by way of maintaining it. And they would believe that increasing the inhabitants of one’s city, getting partners and not subjects, sending colonies to guard countries that have been acquired, making capital out of booty, subduing the enemy with raids and battles and not with sieges, keeping the public rich and the private poor, and maintaining military exercises with the highest seriousness is the true way to make a republic great and to acquire empire. (II.19.1)
The Roman way of war is the key to everything that Machiavelli has been discussing up to this point. Any attempt on the part of a republic to grow without growing in this way is not only futile, but actively destructive to the republic itself. Even if the republic doesn’t wish to expand into an empire, it still must pursue this because “if it will not molest others, it will be molested” (II.19.1). While the German republics might be exceptions to this rule, that is rather the result of oddities of geography than universal truths about republics.
The republic that does wish to grow and develop must grow and develop its military at the same time, or else risk perishing:
For he very likely acquires empire without forces, and whoever acquires empire without forces will be fittingly ruined. Whoever impoverishes himself through wars cannot acquire forces, even should he be victorious, since he spends more than he obtains from his acquisitions. (II.19.2)
Rome itself ultimately fell victim to this process, when its borders finally expanded beyond what it could reasonably hope to rule. As a result, the bad influences of the nations it conquered, instead of being restrained and transformed into virtuous pursuits (as with the Roman conquests in Italy), gradually sapped the strength of Rome until it collapsed of its own corrupted weight. And if the Romans with all their virtue couldn’t save themselves, what hope do modern Americans have?
http://nomocracyinpolitics.com/2015/04/10/discourses-on-livy-ii-18-19/
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 07:44:00 UTC
—“What, if i may ask, is your criticism of Miller? it would be interesting to see if it holds water”— Ayelam Valentine Agaliba
(reposted for archival purposes)
[V]al,
I don’t disagree with Miller’s multiple “standards of justice”. I just would state it very differently, as necessities, demands, incentives, and evolutionary strategies. I mean, I say the same thing. I just say it very differently.) That said, standard of logical decidability in all matters is provided by one universal moral rule that is necessary – but we can build infinitely complex systems upon it. That one rule provides us with Decidability in law regardless of construction of social norms, and that single, necessary inescapable, universal logical test is very different from the contractual terms by which we construct social orders out of various exchanges, and inside of which we produce multiple standards of justice.
One thought: (A Criticism)
—“By mistakenly supposing that thinking intelligently is identical with
thinking logically, critical thinking textbooks almost invariably regard the purpose of argument to be a combination of justification and persuasion, authoritarian goals that critical rationalists, and other supporters of the open society, must shun. “— David Miller
(Abstract)
Well, his criticism is correct, in that our populace is being taught very bad (justificationary ideas). But then, he doesn’t solve the problem. Popper’s argument is much narrower than Miller intuits.
So, I think that this is not quite right. Instead:
(a) I must justify my actions in accordance with objective morality, local norms and laws. (I must show that I met terms of the contract for cooperation – thus if I err I am blameless and free of restitution.)
(b) I must warranty my testimony is truthful by critically prosecuting it.
(c) I must(can) Innovate (reason / Develop Theories) by any free associative principle possible.
I believe that is the correct hierarchy. Because it is a NECESSARY hierarchy. Just as these are necessary hierarchies:
(a) Tautology, Deduction, Induction, Abduction, Guessing, and Free associating.
(b) Teleological ethics, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, and intuitionistic ethics.
(c) Murder, violence, theft, fraud, omission, indirection, socialization, free riding, privatization, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy, conversion, invasion, conquest, and destruction.
(d) manners, ethics, morals, laws, constitutions, property.
(e) life, movement, memory, cost, property, cooperation, norms, property rights laws, government, state, empire.
So, I while I understand Miller’s assumption, he is making a mistake of ‘one-ness’ or ‘monopoly’ that is a byproduct of some rather structural errors implicit in the use of logic in the discipline of philosophy. Which, if were instead, express not as manipulation of sets (which is how he works if I remember correctly) , but as a sequence of possible actions (existentially possible categories of actions), then he might not make this mistake. I mean, it seems that falsification is a hammer, and everything appears to be a nail. But at some point this is nothing but framing (using concepts one has specialization in, rather than integrating those concepts into the greater whole.
And in this case, the greater whole, is the universal language of truth telling: science. And until insights obtained through logical analysis can be converted into truthful speech (scientific language) then it remains UNFALSIFIED. <– ***Which is my underlying argument.***
One of the things economics teaches you is to think about equilibrating processes that negate all our actions into the realm of marginal indifference, rather than seeking binary truth of states.
So I would argue that we should be taught the following:
1) Manners, ethics, and Morality under the Golden Rule, Silver Rule, and the one-rule of property and voluntary exchange. The miracle of cooperation. How we insure one another in a multitude of ways.
2) Truthfulness, Witness and Testimony (Operationalism and Existential Possibility) as well as how to spot errors in truthfulness, witness, and testimony.
3) Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric, Debate and Oratory (as we once were), including how to spot ignorance, error, bias, deception, and Loading-Framing-Overloading (“Suggestion that overwhelms reason”).
4) External Correspondence (empirical observation, analysis and testing) with a nod to Instrumentalism. And how to falsify external correspondence. What a pseudoscience is, and how to spot it.
5) How to use free association (what we call ‘creativity’) “Filling the shelves of your mind, and then ‘playing’. Which is a discipline if you work at it. (It’s my preferred discipline.)
6) arithmetic, accounting, finance, economics (in that order)
7) Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, and at least the ‘idea’ of calculus. But taught as the history of the development of these problems that people were solving, instead of as wrote. With far more emphasis on word problems.
8) Mind. Biology. Chemistry, Physics, (in that order)
And honestly, I think all philosophy is discardable except as an interesting inquiry into the intellectual history of the struggle to develop science: Truth telling.
I hope this puts my criticism of Miller in perspective.
Curt Doolittle
—“What, if i may ask, is your criticism of Miller? it would be interesting to see if it holds water”— Ayelam Valentine Agaliba
(reposted for archival purposes)
[V]al,
I don’t disagree with Miller’s multiple “standards of justice”. I just would state it very differently, as necessities, demands, incentives, and evolutionary strategies. I mean, I say the same thing. I just say it very differently.) That said, standard of logical decidability in all matters is provided by one universal moral rule that is necessary – but we can build infinitely complex systems upon it. That one rule provides us with Decidability in law regardless of construction of social norms, and that single, necessary inescapable, universal logical test is very different from the contractual terms by which we construct social orders out of various exchanges, and inside of which we produce multiple standards of justice.
One thought: (A Criticism)
—“By mistakenly supposing that thinking intelligently is identical with
thinking logically, critical thinking textbooks almost invariably regard the purpose of argument to be a combination of justification and persuasion, authoritarian goals that critical rationalists, and other supporters of the open society, must shun. “— David Miller
(Abstract)
Well, his criticism is correct, in that our populace is being taught very bad (justificationary ideas). But then, he doesn’t solve the problem. Popper’s argument is much narrower than Miller intuits.
So, I think that this is not quite right. Instead:
(a) I must justify my actions in accordance with objective morality, local norms and laws. (I must show that I met terms of the contract for cooperation – thus if I err I am blameless and free of restitution.)
(b) I must warranty my testimony is truthful by critically prosecuting it.
(c) I must(can) Innovate (reason / Develop Theories) by any free associative principle possible.
I believe that is the correct hierarchy. Because it is a NECESSARY hierarchy. Just as these are necessary hierarchies:
(a) Tautology, Deduction, Induction, Abduction, Guessing, and Free associating.
(b) Teleological ethics, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, and intuitionistic ethics.
(c) Murder, violence, theft, fraud, omission, indirection, socialization, free riding, privatization, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy, conversion, invasion, conquest, and destruction.
(d) manners, ethics, morals, laws, constitutions, property.
(e) life, movement, memory, cost, property, cooperation, norms, property rights laws, government, state, empire.
So, I while I understand Miller’s assumption, he is making a mistake of ‘one-ness’ or ‘monopoly’ that is a byproduct of some rather structural errors implicit in the use of logic in the discipline of philosophy. Which, if were instead, express not as manipulation of sets (which is how he works if I remember correctly) , but as a sequence of possible actions (existentially possible categories of actions), then he might not make this mistake. I mean, it seems that falsification is a hammer, and everything appears to be a nail. But at some point this is nothing but framing (using concepts one has specialization in, rather than integrating those concepts into the greater whole.
And in this case, the greater whole, is the universal language of truth telling: science. And until insights obtained through logical analysis can be converted into truthful speech (scientific language) then it remains UNFALSIFIED. <– ***Which is my underlying argument.***
One of the things economics teaches you is to think about equilibrating processes that negate all our actions into the realm of marginal indifference, rather than seeking binary truth of states.
So I would argue that we should be taught the following:
1) Manners, ethics, and Morality under the Golden Rule, Silver Rule, and the one-rule of property and voluntary exchange. The miracle of cooperation. How we insure one another in a multitude of ways.
2) Truthfulness, Witness and Testimony (Operationalism and Existential Possibility) as well as how to spot errors in truthfulness, witness, and testimony.
3) Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric, Debate and Oratory (as we once were), including how to spot ignorance, error, bias, deception, and Loading-Framing-Overloading (“Suggestion that overwhelms reason”).
4) External Correspondence (empirical observation, analysis and testing) with a nod to Instrumentalism. And how to falsify external correspondence. What a pseudoscience is, and how to spot it.
5) How to use free association (what we call ‘creativity’) “Filling the shelves of your mind, and then ‘playing’. Which is a discipline if you work at it. (It’s my preferred discipline.)
6) arithmetic, accounting, finance, economics (in that order)
7) Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, and at least the ‘idea’ of calculus. But taught as the history of the development of these problems that people were solving, instead of as wrote. With far more emphasis on word problems.
8) Mind. Biology. Chemistry, Physics, (in that order)
And honestly, I think all philosophy is discardable except as an interesting inquiry into the intellectual history of the struggle to develop science: Truth telling.
I hope this puts my criticism of Miller in perspective.
Curt Doolittle
[F]irst, both Pinker and Haidt are making the enlightenment error of equality of individuals, and of individualism instead of a population of man as a division of intertemporal knowledge and labor. (See my video on the subject.) We evolve first under this inter-temporal distribution of biases, and second under cultural adaptation, and third under everything else. Genders, distribution of gender bias, and the fact that genders are constructed from a female base, guarantee that.
Second, as far as I know, Pinker is making an argument against the evolution by multi-level selection of altruism. This is the purpose of his article. And I agree with him. And in Propertarianism I explain why.
Third, (if you read the comments it’s obvious) is that group and multi-level selection are pretty rigorous mathematically described facts. Pinker isn’t saying that it isn’t. He’s saying that we can’t fantasize that altruism developed because of group selection (I argue that aggression defeats altruism and is currently doing so – high trust westerners are not aggressive enough.)
Fourth, (if you read the comments) the argument is partly a problem of verbalism. And to some degree, pinker is playing too much psychologist and telling us not to think in fuzzy terms, and not so much that multi-level selection doesn’t occur. It’s that it doesn’t occur the way we think it has. Now, it is this point I disagree with since as far as I know, the very great differences between the competing populations is determined by a wide variation in the distribution of only four things: (1) intelligence, (2) aggression, (3) impulsivity, and (4) fear of unfamiliar people. And that list may be in fact reducible to two: impulsivity and intelligence. Just as a wide variety of behavior is reducible to the solipsistic(female bias) and autistic(male bias) spectrum. Great complexity arises from the interaction of only two or three spectra. Emotions are a great example: as far as I know, we have only three, and our rich range of emotional experience is produced by combinations of levels of those emotions. And as I have written extensively, all of these emotions can be explained as reactions to change in state of property-en-toto (reactions to acquisition or loss).
Fifth, and I think this isn’t terribly complicated: norms are sticky and group strategy is sticky, and populations breed to take advantage of status under norms. This is just a mathematically describable problem and as far as I know it’s pretty solid:
Sixth, as far as I know, Haidt’s correct identification of moral intuitions, holds under Propertarianism. So whatever Haidt’s justification for these traits, it is immaterial. In my first few propertarian arguments I made the point that MY CONTRIBUTION was to tie Haidt’s OBSERVATIONS and descriptions, to CAUSALITY. And that Propertarianism correctly describes that causality: acquisitiveness, and the utility of cooperation only in so far as it improved acquisition.
CLOSING
So the debate here is not concrete. Pinker is doing no more than making a cautionary argument against the development of altruism by selfish creatures, as anything other than yet another selfish act. And he is correct.
Everyone else is saying that cultural norms drive reproductive adaptation. And they are correct. And that multi-level selection is the product of cultural biases incorporated in genes.
So this whole argument is a lot of nonsense between geeks as to the effect of their as-yet-imprecise language on the non-scientific community. And it is not so much a debate about facts.
And furthermore, you have to look at these men as part of the REACTION to postmodern lies – they are all engaged in trying to overthrow the deceits of 150 years of postmodern reactionary thought. I am not sure that they have (As I have) joined The Dark
Enlightenment, in trying to overthrow not just the postmoderns and the pseudoscientists, but the enlightenment fallacy of equality and democracy. They are concerned about the consequences of language because they are well aware of the consequences of language.