Curt Doolittle

Theme: Deception

  • VOICES IN IN YOUR FINGERTIPS To write strategically, you have to find a voice. I

    VOICES IN IN YOUR FINGERTIPS

    To write strategically, you have to find a voice.

    I tried the conciliatory voice (which in politics is foolhardy). The romantic voice. (Which I adore but is very hard to do in analytic language, and sometimes ruins the argument.) The antagonistic voice (which I’m good at but depresses me). The contrarian voice (which I still use now and then because it captures attention.) The ridicule voice (which doesn’t really suit me because ridicule requires lateral thinking that is really unavailable to me as an aspie – and I see ridicule, correctly, as dishonest). And finally settled on the scientific voice with a mix of tactically romantic, heroic and critical positioning.

    I’ve been writing long form since I was six years old. I still don’t think I’m a very good writer. Mixing the communicative, the romantic and the analytic is terribly hard, and I haven’t figured out how to do it. Hayek does it best of any modern thinker.

    So the trick is that I couldn’t have figured this all out in advance. The point of writing is to write. You can get better at it. But it takes more writing that’s just one word better than the last, than it does trying to write to an abstract model.

    One last thing that I can’t emphasize enough. Americans tend to believe in the nonsense of talent. Yes, smarter people are better at most everything, and less so people less good at nearly everything. But extraordinary practice narrows that gap significantly even if cannot narrow it completely. You may possess talent but anything worthwhile to others is obtained by marginally different skill and marginally different skill is obtained through practice and lots of it.

    To develop that level of skill, you must love what you do. I would rather write than do almost anything else except maybe drive roadsters on backroads in summer, sing Nirvana or something similar, make an aesthetically interesting dinner for ten, and enjoy good sex. And I”m not sure about the last three. 🙂 But writing used to give me headaches, and I used to struggle so hard with it. Until I understood that the typewriter was my enemy – I was afraid of mistakes. And my handwriting is all but unreadable even to me. Computers changed that for me.

    The point being that you have to find the tools that help you master your craft. I”m still amazed at the people who write books by hand -there are plenty of them really. But the old saw that an artist is only as good as his tools, applies to every single discipline.

    And the illusion that you’re looking for ways to express your talent is a dangerous idea.

    Instead:

    1) Work on something that is both rare and fascinates you. Pop nonsense just means you’re too ignorant to find something uncommon but still interesting.

    2) Master the subject matter through repetition and investigation and collection of every possible example and detail. Keep a database. I keep an enormous glossary of terms that I try to restate in propertarian language.

    3) Play by reorganizing those details into multiple types of organization. This is where you’ll come up with something creative.

    4) Find tools that help you overcome your weaknesses, not ‘express your talents’.

    5) Then go through and just try test yourself. Now if you’re a nuclear physicist then it’s expensive to run tests. The reason I like philosophy is that my only cost is food, water, and an internet connection. It’s cheap to run tests consisting of arguments.

    What I’ve found is that I am not so much a good writer: because good writing requires a lot of empathy for the reader. But I am good at figuring stuff out.

    And in politics, the problem we face is figuring stuff out so that we can win arguments and defeat the opposition.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 03:34:00 UTC

  • What Are Bleeding Heart Libertarians? How Do They Differ From Libertarians?

    The BHL’s rely on the classical liberal Psychological Arguments as justification for the moral sentiments of care-taking, and grab ideas from everyone else. Good marketing but no arguments as yet other than psychological (moral).

    The Cato Institute group relies more on a mix of historical, moral and legal arguments. But we can also classify them as a mix of Psychological school. Their blog tends to the Continental, even if their publications and policy recommendations remain Psychological.

    The Austrian leaning libertarians at George Mason University rely on economic arguments. There arguments tend to mix Empirical and Psychological. Their error is that they keep trying to find an optimum morality for a polity to believe in. Which is irrational for an economist in particular.

    The Misesians at Ludwig Von Mises Institute use the rationalism from continental jewish cosmopolitan arguments derived from the ethics of the ghetto during the jewish enlightenment. Unfortunately for liberty, their use of the internet was brilliant, and so the three other think tanks above (I’ll have to include myself in that group) are trying to restore liberty to the anglo empirical tradition, or the anglo psychological tradition. The reason being that Ghetto Ethics may be useful between states, but they are insufficient for the formation of a high trust polity. Unfortunately, the wealth of literature they produced sounds all well and good to some of us, but to conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) they sound completely immoral. And people like Walter Block constantly advocating the morality of things like blackmail, or the right of extortion, simply make the case for liberty worse.

    So I’ll argue that Vijay Krishnan’s positioning is OK in the sense that it’s true but insufficient to help the curious mind understand the moral content of these different philosophical traditions and the method in which they’re argumentatively structured. The better answer would be that these groups use parts of this spectrum of arguments:
    1. Sentimental (emotional intuition)
    2. Mythical (metaphor)
    3. Historical (analogy)
    4. Psychological (moral arguments = classical liberals)
    5. Rational ( continentals, ghetto cosompolitans, leftists of all stripes)
    6. Empirical (scientific and economic arguments – anglos)

    These groups rely on some combination of arguments, with only the last three combined as something bordering on scientific.

    Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Hoppe tried to reconcile their continental backgrounds with anglo-analytic arguments and economics. But they did not rely on science. Instead argued against science. But they didn’t have the evidence we have today.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-Bleeding-Heart-Libertarians-How-do-they-differ-from-Libertarians

  • What Are Bleeding Heart Libertarians? How Do They Differ From Libertarians?

    The BHL’s rely on the classical liberal Psychological Arguments as justification for the moral sentiments of care-taking, and grab ideas from everyone else. Good marketing but no arguments as yet other than psychological (moral).

    The Cato Institute group relies more on a mix of historical, moral and legal arguments. But we can also classify them as a mix of Psychological school. Their blog tends to the Continental, even if their publications and policy recommendations remain Psychological.

    The Austrian leaning libertarians at George Mason University rely on economic arguments. There arguments tend to mix Empirical and Psychological. Their error is that they keep trying to find an optimum morality for a polity to believe in. Which is irrational for an economist in particular.

    The Misesians at Ludwig Von Mises Institute use the rationalism from continental jewish cosmopolitan arguments derived from the ethics of the ghetto during the jewish enlightenment. Unfortunately for liberty, their use of the internet was brilliant, and so the three other think tanks above (I’ll have to include myself in that group) are trying to restore liberty to the anglo empirical tradition, or the anglo psychological tradition. The reason being that Ghetto Ethics may be useful between states, but they are insufficient for the formation of a high trust polity. Unfortunately, the wealth of literature they produced sounds all well and good to some of us, but to conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) they sound completely immoral. And people like Walter Block constantly advocating the morality of things like blackmail, or the right of extortion, simply make the case for liberty worse.

    So I’ll argue that Vijay Krishnan’s positioning is OK in the sense that it’s true but insufficient to help the curious mind understand the moral content of these different philosophical traditions and the method in which they’re argumentatively structured. The better answer would be that these groups use parts of this spectrum of arguments:
    1. Sentimental (emotional intuition)
    2. Mythical (metaphor)
    3. Historical (analogy)
    4. Psychological (moral arguments = classical liberals)
    5. Rational ( continentals, ghetto cosompolitans, leftists of all stripes)
    6. Empirical (scientific and economic arguments – anglos)

    These groups rely on some combination of arguments, with only the last three combined as something bordering on scientific.

    Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Hoppe tried to reconcile their continental backgrounds with anglo-analytic arguments and economics. But they did not rely on science. Instead argued against science. But they didn’t have the evidence we have today.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-Bleeding-Heart-Libertarians-How-do-they-differ-from-Libertarians

  • AS POSTMODERN ACADEMIC FORTUNE TELLING

    http://www.quora.com/Sociology/Is-sociology-leftist-propaganda-masquerading-as-science/answer/Jeff-Darcy/comment/3662088?srid=u4Qv&share=1SOCIOLOGY AS POSTMODERN ACADEMIC FORTUNE TELLING

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-10 12:36:00 UTC

  • CORRECTING POSTMODERN ACADEMIC MYSTICISM When some victim of postmodern indoctri

    CORRECTING POSTMODERN ACADEMIC MYSTICISM

    When some victim of postmodern indoctrination says, such and such people ‘believe’ such and such, they are engaging in deception, no different whatsoever, from those who say ‘god wills it’.

    Human “beliefs” are, universally, justifications – excuses. Under all justifications are some form of transfer of property. Or excuse for the failure of the individual to gain access to property because of an immoral social structure.

    Look for the cause: property, not the justifications. When you do, all human social interaction consists of acts of voluntary exchange.

    Where it doesn’t, it’s merely kin selection.

    Help stamp out Postmodern Mysticism in the social sciences.

    Refute a postmodern mystic at every opportunity.

    Its one of the most moral things you can do.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-10 11:24:00 UTC

  • know, at some point, I must create an equally powerful list. An to state those a

    http://disruptthenarrative.com/2013/01/08/45-communist-goals-by-dr-cleon-skousen-1958/I know, at some point, I must create an equally powerful list. An to state those as religious commandments if necessary. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-09 07:01:00 UTC

  • BOARD MEETING CORRUPTION I can’t tell you how many board meetings that I’ve been

    BOARD MEETING CORRUPTION

    I can’t tell you how many board meetings that I’ve been in that included a legal team that gave us advice on how to legally screw over shareholders.

    1) There is only one law, and that is property, in all its forms (internal consistency)

    2) There is only one moral code, the voluntary, fully informed, fully warrantied, transfer of property in all its forms. (external correspondence)

    If there is a conflict between those two statements then something in your argument is false.

    That’s about all there there is to understanding law and morality.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-07 12:41:00 UTC

  • THE VALUE OF ARGUING WITH THE TINFOIL HAT CROWD It is ABSOLUTELY valuable to arg

    THE VALUE OF ARGUING WITH THE TINFOIL HAT CROWD

    It is ABSOLUTELY valuable to argue with the Tinfoil Hat crowd, so that you can master the common rhetorical fallacies without relying on normative assumptions for defense. Normative assumptions are just another paradigmatic frame.

    As you move into more and more intellectual and academic debate, you realize that the only difference between the Yahoo-news-group idiots, the postmodern social science idiots, the scientistic idiots, and the public intellectual idiots is the density of the tinfoil. The nature of the individuals assumptions simply mature from:

    a) schizophrenic bias, to

    b) confirmation bias, to

    c) nihilistic bias, to

    d) pseudoscientific bias, to

    e) methodological bias, to

    f) paradigmatic bias.

    Almost no one gets to skeptical empiricism in the Popperian, and certainly not in the Poincaré models. You can end up like Paul Krugman and ignore the fact that what you’re deducing from your measurements about monetary policy is merely noise, when the military expansion of anglo rules of trade is the signal.

    You can end up like John Ralws and Sam Harris and confuse analogy with causality, then compounding your confusion by making the error of aggregation.

    The best defense I have made against these errors is to focus on defining and reconciling spectrums – the golden mean. You can make an assumptive line between two ideal types pretty easily – the least work path. But it’s much harder to make errors if you define the different spectrums and see how they intersect with one another. It is much harder to reconcile sets of definitions in ordered spectra with each other.

    And it is much easier with a rich language than an allegorical language. It is even easier in operational language.

    Or at least. As easy as it can be.

    WHICH IS WHY I”M ALWAYS WRITING LISTS (ordered sets).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-04 04:39:00 UTC

  • THIS IS WHAT GIVES CAPITALISTS A DIRTY NAME

    THIS IS WHAT GIVES CAPITALISTS A DIRTY NAME

    http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/31/a-look-at-nine-goldman-trades-that-lost-libya-1-billion-in-one-year/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 18:36:00 UTC

  • WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POST

    WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POSTMODERN LIE

    WHY IS TERRORISM USEFUL?

    1 – It’s inexpensive.

    2 – It only requires a small number of people.

    3 – It doesn’t require coordination of activity.

    4 – It gets a LOT of attention for very little effort.

    5 – It both influences policy and modifies public perception.

    6 – It encourages sympathizers and imitators by granting them a vehicle for self image, status, perception of power, and identity.

    7 – It illustrates the inherent weakness of the state and state actors (it dispels the illusion of control)

    8 – It creates intolerable political, public, and economic stress even if it causes little real damage to property.

    “TERRORISM IS THE BEST ADVERTISING STRATEGY, EVER.”

    Worse: And it’s fun. You have to grasp that it’s empowering. It’s exhilarating. Or you can’t understand the motivation for participating in it. Most of us walk through life feeling powerless. Radicals don’t.

    Two guys, one car, and random shooting almost did almost as much damage to the economy as the spring 2008 rise in oil prices. Terrorism is effectively employed by revolutionaries and reactionaries internally, and terrorists and state sponsored terrorists.

    PURVEYORS OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    – State Actors (War/Warriors/Soldiers)

    – State Sponsored Private Actors (state sponsored terrorists)

    – External (out-group) private actors (terrorists)

    – Internal (in-group) private actors (radicals, revolutionaries)

    THE USE OF POSTMODERN VERBAL OBSCURANTISM TO JUSTIFY THE CORPORATE STATE

    1) It’s an abuse of the terms “terrorist” or “terrorism” to apply them to internal actors, because it grants the assumption of legitimacy to the state, and the pejorative illegitimacy of the actor.

    I no case is an external (out group) actor a revolutionary. In no case is an in-group member a terrorist.

    2) the problem of stating in-group and out-group members only emerges under state corporatism and it’s advocacy of multiculturalism as a means of importing low cost labor to support aging social systems. Or in the USA where racial divisions have been a source of conflict since the founding of the government.

    The use of ‘terrorism’ for internal actors is another “postmodernism”: a linguistic contrivance to obscure the causal properties of a conflict, as the natural problems that arise when we attempt to launder causal properties from terms in order to … lie.

    Postmodern obscurantism – the effort to justify the multi-cultural state and the socialist program – is the reason for this false dilemma. There is no difficulty in defining terrorism, as we can see above. Instead, there is an obvious falsehood in the definition of a corporate democratic state: it is impossible for groups with different reproductive strategies, the associated signals and mythos, the associated allocations of property rights, and the different capabilities those groups possess in organizing and conducting production, to cooperate in political systems under majority rule, since by definition such a system imposes a monopoly set of definitions of property rights and obligations – when property rights allocations must reflect the reproductive strategies of the groups.

    As such, without the false assumption of the legitimacy of state corporatism, then the original definitions stand.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 14:04:00 UTC