Am I making it too complicated? If we have Peterson’s approach for via-positiva (Humanities and education) and mine for via-negativa(science and law), then are we done? I mean. Is it that simple? I mean. It’s that simple, isn’t it?
(Who suggested that this morning? Was it James? or Andy?)
I mean. it’s really that simple isn’t it?
Source date (UTC): 2017-08-09 08:41:00 UTC
DECLINE IN EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE BUT NOT IN AVERAGE IQ?
So if the population of people above 130 remains constant. And the population of people below 105 increases, but we eliminate a large portion of people below 90 who were previously subject to deprivation, and the conversion from discreet rules to general scientific rules generates an equally distributed gain of one standard deviation, we would see the Flynn effect AND see the decline response time effect, but preserve the rates of innovation at the top. Also we can see similar population shifts are replacements rather than devolution. So yes, the data is OPERATIONAL explainable.
That’s the explanation as I understand it.
Source date (UTC): 2017-08-05 11:25:00 UTC
WHY IS PHILOSOPHY EVEN AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE?
One could argue that philosophy treat its publications as does mathematics, with prohibiting publications of work by those still in the process of getting an education.
Although papers in mathematics are far less embarrassing than papers in philosophy, history, and literature. I mean, I have no idea what submissions look like to you, but every time I go through a stack of publications I’m horrified by the quality of the work. Until philosophy follows physics and psychology into the use of operational language – which is what I work on – the discipline will continue to produce thirty one flavors – permutations – of expression of the same concepts producing little more than alternative decorations of the same furniture.
I mean, what philosophy of any substance has been produced in the past decade? I am not sure that since Kripke, anyone has said anything of substance. And Even Kripke is better explained by Turing and Godel.)
I fact, the only meaningful work of philosophy that I know of was produced in psychology by Haidt, who connected political behavior to moral intuitions to evolutionary biology and brain structures.
And so, why would anyone study something other than cognitive science, experimental psychology, artificial intelligence, economics, the common law, and voting patterns – other than to continue a century of what appears to be malinvestment in pseudo-scientific fantasy moral literature?
I mean, isn’t your article’s argument nothing more than one of creating a narrow monopoly for the purpose of rent seeking? That’s basic economics.
Source date (UTC): 2017-08-01 09:31:00 UTC
UNIVERSITY: A VERY DIFFERENT HYPOTHESIS THAT IS FAR MORE LIKELY OUTCOME
I would say that the American model of undergrad > grad > phd > prof is no longer any more necessary than are elected representative politicians and is probably on its way to being dead, and with it the upper unversity system. And just for the simple reason that access to information, to books, to research, to intellectuals, no longer requires the university system, and we are in the early stages of circumventing the university system, and drastically reducing demand for professors.
What I expect is that the top teaching professors will produce content and teach online, earning appropriately scaled incomes, and that this early market will turn into a competition that drives down prices until those that are the best TEACHERS of the material drive out competitors.
I suspect that just as private grade schools will exist for normative and physical defense of high investment children, or for remediation of those with behavior problems, the vast majority of students will combine working with a degree over longer periods, producing little or no debt, with the emphasis on starting the ‘degree’ process earlier and earlier – which will, as a consequence cause the necessary reformation of the junior high school, and high school experiences, which, along with the university undergraduate experience are the source of the lack of competitiveness of American students.
If it isn’t clear what that market analysis means, it’s that universities have created a demand for an overpriced underperforming good the externality of which has allowed the monopoly that exists in the form of the state-education system, to be insulated from market demands, and to produce generations of underperformers. The consequence of which has been national underperformance, increase in the demand for better disciplined, harder working, better educated immigrants.
The research function then will no longer be able to subsidize from the sale of non-performing indulgences, and be increasingly dependent upon research money. That research money will be provided outside of the university system, to groups that specialize in research.
And I suspect (and hope) this will eliminate the Cult of the Humanities, and the Social Pseudo-Sciences that has succeeded in replacing the Supernaturalism of the relatively moral church punished for its sale of indulgences during the reformation, with the drastically immoral Pseudo-Science that the postmodern academy is so happy to attempt to profit from – repeating the process of reformation once again.
The evidence is that very, very, few people who publish contribute to the discourse, and that the vast majority of ‘papers’ are valueless. And that the era of papers has largely ended, because only the book format allows sufficient illustration, application, and defense of any addition to the body of thought.
The evidence is that the german PhD system which requires you survive prosecution by professors (judges) in a ‘trial’ is superior to the american system.
The university’s sale of the diploma as an indulgence necessary to enter workforce-heaven will end as soon as accreditation is available online. And the second largest cost after house, and divorce, that we call ‘buying a college degree’ will be forever eliminated from our cost structures, and the original function of ‘colleges’ which was to pay professors independently for their work will return.
In other words, the accreditation (licensing) process creates an artificial monopoly that is easily ended by electronic means. And with it, the social indoctrination that is the primary function of the university.
So I’m not claiming that the university system aside from the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and law disciplines, is simply immoral and pseudoscientific – but that it cannot and will not survive market competition now that their partial monopoly is no longer necessary nor affordable. And that as always, the market will do its work on the University as it did to the Church.
Now, we can test this hypothesis easily if we require universities to carry the debt of students, and for that debt to be limited to ten years deducted as an equivalent of a payroll tax. If the universities are unwilling to do that it means that they are unwilling to warranty their products and services.
I will close with the fact that the most likely alternative solution to the physical sciences and the most likely solution to the social sciences, and by consequence the most likely solution to moral and conscious artificial intelligence, have been produced outside of the university system by those of us unwilling to forgo years of our productive lives and serve as labor to the specialization and paradigm anchoring of the postwar university system.
Markets always win.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2017-08-01 08:26:00 UTC
TODAY’S EXCERPT OF CHOICE
(from chapter “Reforming the Academy”)
—“It is in the nature of the incentives of Educators to strive to make men witty and cunning, rather than to strive to make them moral and wise. If in no small part, because they desire to be entertaining, desire to circumvent defense of their weak arguments, any challenge to which would undermine the students’ suspension of disbelief in their mastery of the subject.
And because those who are instead moral and wise, choose more ethical, moral, and profitable careers. Education is no less sacred a ritual than any other. But it is performed by the least sacred of means. Otherwise they would warranty their product as does every other profession other than the priesthood and the politician.”—
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-27 19:25:00 UTC
PANDERING IS FOR SHEEP – NOT MEN
The philosopher needs a theory
The intellectuals need arguments.
Generals need a strategy
The captains need a plan.
The soldiers who will fight need material incentives.
Silly people need excuses.
We can’t reason with silly people – they are weak.
If we must pander to the weak, they are not men.
We care for the sheep. We do not reason with them.
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-26 11:16:00 UTC
DEFLATION AND RECONSTRUCTION FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRANSCENDENCE
(esp: Joel Davis Herbert Vogelsang John Derbyshire Nick Heywood Russell Moore )
(this is the first meaningful and helpful conversation I have had in months and thank you very much for it. I hope you will stick with me for a bit as I work through it.)
1) Again, to repeat, so that we understand what I *need* to do, by choosing a series of concepts I am trying to deflate *and scientifically reconstruct* cooperation: our moral intuitions and the *value* of morality.
In other words I am converting from storry and intuition to algorithm and measurement. Just like all sciences have done. The difference is, that this one science has more impact on us than any other.
Which is why everyone fears it.
2) assumptions:
(a) prior to consciousness we needed only to acquire resources, stay alive, stay with our ‘kind’ for protection, ‘alerts’, and reproduction, and feel dominance or submission in order to obtain access to resources and reproduction.
(the reptilian brain phase) We developed the ability we call ‘sentience’.
(b) the consequence of consciousness (modeling and self reflection) is a need for mindfulness. mindfulness was provided in our developmental eras by band(pack) and tribal(herd) life, where problems were relatively simple and all persons well known, and our status and position well understood, and the relationship between cause and consequence within our perception. This mindfulness was possible within the ‘tipping point’ of 150 people, or the approximate maximum product of two people over four possible generations.
(the mammalian brain phase) We developed the ability to ‘wonder’. But we could perceive by observance and familiarity sufficiently to largely defend against ‘folly and deceit’.
(c) As cooperation, language, the scale of cooperation, differentiation, specialization, and causality increased we developed a need to direct our minds that evolved for the purpose of tribal mindfulness to something within our ability to calculate and reason. We created various techniques by which to provide ‘mindfulness’ in the absence of constant empirical feedback.
(The human-mammal brain phase) We developed the ability to tell stories. These stories provide ‘rough measures’ in modern terms so that group calculation was possible, and that fear of uncertainty was diminished, and that (worse) we could defend against ‘folly and deceit’.
(d) just as there was a higher method of reason than literary analogy in aristotelian reason, and just as aristotelian reason was ‘incomplete’, there is a possible higher method of *mindfulness* than Stoicism because stoicism was incomplete.
(the ‘complete’ human brain phase) We developed the ability to ‘magnify’, measure, and record, and thereby reduce the imperceptible to the perceptible and to create analogy to experience.
We are not yet fully human. Or at least, few of us are. But we have the potential to complete the transition from beast to human – and it is within our grasp.
While the mastery of fire and metal began our journey into transcendence, Aryans were the first peoples who attempted to fully transcend the beast and evolve into fully humans. And they did so by accidentally discovering deflationary truth. And then profiting from the transcendence (domestication) of the remaining human animals.
We profited from transforming rocks, then animals, then plants, then the human animal. And the evidence is clear, that it is the most profitable industry every invented by man.
3) So while I understand the need to hold onto animal spirits, it is clearly not true that we must, and the evidence is quite the opposite, that our function over the past six thousand years has been largely the eradication of animal spirits evolved during the mammalian and and the incremental replacement of them with measurement and calculation so that we provide extensions to our senses and reason sufficient to train our intuition, so that we are no longer dependent upon comforting falsehoods, and no longer vulnerable to ‘folly and deceit’.
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-26 09:56:00 UTC
COMPETITION VS STUDY
—“Because intense disagreement and subsequent argumentation generally results in me learning faster.”— Joel Davis
(The secret to basically everything. Competition in creases velocity and produces more accurate result than study.)
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-25 09:03:00 UTC
RESEARCH: PRIEST VS GLADIATOR
At one point I would have agreed with Adam Smith, because I believed research could be performed by slow individual contemplation of the written word, by the individual, at human scale – scientific research was therefore akin to scriptural study.
But like Popper, I have come to understand that once we passed the scale of research that was possible in achievable human time frames, achievable by individuals, and instead required a MARKET in which we contributed to research in parallel, I understood that one might say he has a theory and does NOT state it is true, but instead, asks for criticism, so that together with others in the market for truth, we contribute confirmation, criticism, and additional information, and together, iteratively improve the theory.
So smith argues as a priest, and I advocate arguing as a gladiator: I claim the top of the hill, and seek a man better than I to fell me. For I wish only to be led by better men. And the only test of superiority is defeat in a test that exists in the real world (operational language).
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-25 09:01:00 UTC
So in my perspective Religion is an anti market education system and taught cheaply to people who do not have market influences to shape their ethics, and Education as we understand it evolved to Transition people into market ethics so that they would succeed and understand market ethics (meritocracy), and how they differ from subsistence ethics (equality). And that this separation was rational given that it is very cheap to teach people by lying and allegory and equality, and it is more expensive to teach people by history and calculation, and meritocracy.
The problem being that none of us are subsistence farmers, and all of us live in the market and have no other choice any longer to return to the fields. The territorial value of the individually farmable earth was maximized long ago.
So as far as I understand it religion is just a cheap way to enslave people by teaching them sufficient information to survive as agrarians and pastoralists but not enough information, nor the right information, to survive in a market society where we cannot judge our actions by whether they are equal to that of others, but by whether they facilitate exchange with others to whom we are increasingly and eternally unequal.
Source date (UTC): 2017-07-24 06:34:00 UTC