Curt Doolittle

Theme: Education

  • Is It Good To Do A Ph.d. In Theoretical Computer Science (e.g. Complexity) If You Intend To Go To Work In The Industry?

    As far as we know, a PhD does not increase you earning capacity or your credibility and demonstrably harms it. The value of a PhD is either entirely personal (and expensive) or necessary as entry into the teaching field.  In practice a PhD is certification by a board of specialists that they can treat  you as a relative equal in the field – of teaching.

    Nearly all problems in computer science are not complicated, but instead, are bounded by hardware costs tolerable by the end consumer of the application (the imputed price).  Most innovation takes place in either adapting to new hardware capacity (software generations) or adapting to new hardware capability (user interface improvements). But the number of ‘problems’ we solve in computer science is still a manageable set, small enough to roughly refer to as design patterns.

    Furthermore the value of your earning capacity (working in the industry) is determined by your ability to learn and dispose of ideas, not by your expanding specialization in ideas. 

    (Personally, I would do it anyway. lol)

    https://www.quora.com/Is-it-good-to-do-a-Ph-D-in-theoretical-computer-science-e-g-complexity-if-you-intend-to-go-to-work-in-the-industry

  • The Mere Mortal’s Journey to Economic Literacy – A Short Reading LIst #Libertari

    The Mere Mortal’s Journey to Economic Literacy – A Short Reading LIst http://goo.gl/5HFi42 #Libertarian #classicalliberal

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-04 08:19:38 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/496208828975685632

  • THE MERE MORTAL’S JOURNEY TO ECONOMIC LITERACY 1) -The Single Idea- Economics in

    THE MERE MORTAL’S JOURNEY TO ECONOMIC LITERACY

    1) -The Single Idea-

    Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt : Economic thought, unlike Moral thought, asks us to think about equilibrating consequences, and opportunity costs. If you understand the “one lesson” of the broken window fallacy, then that teaches you economic thinking in a nutshell.

    2) –The Application of The Single Idea To The Civic Society–

    Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell : Basic Economics applies this single principle.

    3) –The Application of the Single Idea To Production Distribution and Trade–

    Principles of Micro Economics, by Greg Mankiw : Micro Economics textbooks deal with patterns of cooperation (business).

    4) –The Application of the Single Idea To Monetary, Fiscal, Industrial and Social Policy–

    Principles of Macro Economics, by Greg Mankiw : Macro economic textbooks deal with the impact of fiscal policy (government spending) and monetary policy (issuance of new money or credit) on the economy, in the government’s effort to keep us all busy. 🙂

    5) –The “Missing Link”: The Operations of the Financial System that connects political policy with production, distribution and trade.–

    Rothbard’s Mystery of Banking, and;

    Nial Ferguson’s History of Money

    The book that is missing between Micro and Macro, I do not think has yet been written, which is how the financial sector services the relationship between micro and macro. I think that book has not been written. In the meantime Rothbard’s Mystery of Banking, and Nial Ferguson’s History of Money, are the best and most accessible works. (Others might disagree). Rothbard was a terrible philosopher, but his works on money and banking are still the best I have found.

    6) –The Study Of Applications, Eddy’s And Flows-

    Most advanced (niche) applications of economics are useful for professionals, but not terribly meaningful for citizens.

    Personally, I don’t understand why we don’t get this stuff in high school.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-03 03:56:00 UTC

  • I am off in territory again where no one is following me, and I’m not doing a ve

    I am off in territory again where no one is following me, and I’m not doing a very good job of helping them either.

    I realize that part of my technique is not to put out the central theory, but just its components. And the reason is so that I can explore the components, rather than try to defend the central theory as if I’m selling a new kind of automobile.

    But I think I am at the point where without that central theory or suite of theories, that nothing makes any sense to anybody.

    I am after all, talking about property and law, and the various means of free riding / imposing costs. And using work from the philosophy of science to do it.

    And while under the physical sciences we do not yet know any first principle,and therefore no truth tests are possible, in law we do know the first principle, and that is the imposition of costs on others: the violation of property.

    So while in science the unknowns are at least theoretically permanent, in law they are not.

    Which is why we have a different problem to deal with.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-26 15:23:00 UTC

  • Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically: 1) In a democra

    http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/why-philosophers-should-stay-out-of-politics/Bas:

    Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically:

    1) In a democracy, political debate has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with obtaining power by marketing, rhetoric, and ideology. Policy preferences are secondary to obtaining power to enact what must result in compromise policies.

    2) A philosopher’s only special function is to act as professional judge of reasoned arguments on logical or moral grounds. We can claim no other skill. Just as judges do NOT act on moral or logical grounds, but on legal grounds. (Law abides by a lower logical standard than philosophy.)

    3) If we determine the truth or falsehood of statements, arguments, and policy preferences, then we are performing as judges of reason.

    4) if we perform as advocates of policy then we are not acting as judges.

    5) Academia is corrupted by activism. This is the unfortunate consequence of competing for funds and attention.

    6) Since by necessity democracy imposes monopoly rule, models of government represent irreconcilable differences by which to make judgements: we must assume a particular good as a theory or a preference in the choice of political models to make judgements within. Now it is possible to make a judgement from each point of the ideological triangle, and that is perhaps the position we all should take in rendering our judgements. However if we are asked to choose one or the other it may be that the optimum solution to any problem is satisfied best by one model, and the next optimum solution to any problem satisfied best by another model.

    7) Therein rests the problem of philosophical neutrality under democracy: democracy imposes monopoly rule under which we cannot easily construct the best solution to any given problem using different forms of government.

    8) It may be possible to make use of all forms of government, but only under libertarian government is such institutional diversity possible. Why? because only fully atomic property rights allow for rational calculation of voluntary exchanges necessary for the construction of contractual government that provides the features of any form of government.

    As such is it is most logical to construct a libertarian government, but to advocate an administrative structure for any given policy problem best suitable to its execution.

    We can model the universe in mathematics because a number system consisting of individual units can represent any combination of units. We can model any political economy in libertarianism because individual property rights allow us the same logical freedom as unitary mathematics. The difference is that in math, we use an equal’s sine to test for truth, whereas in libertarianism we rely upon voluntary exchanges free of externalities.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 12:48:00 UTC

  • Against Dysgenia, Does Not Imply Active Eugenia

    —“Surely you understand how individualists might view your little eugenics project as pretty unworkable, fucked and backwards, don’t you”— [I] don’t have a eugenics project, I make the argument that at some point in your chain of reasoning you must have a means of making judgements between one set of preferences and another, and that the progressive preference is dysgenic. To warn against dysgenia is very different from conducting eugenia. I do not see the political reason for redistributing from the middle class to the lower class if this constructs dysgenia that inhibits the formation of the high trust society which is necessary for the standard of living that allows for redistribution. In other words, i’m making an argument against a logical fallacy. This might seem to you as if I am making a sentimental argument,b ecause you argue largely sentimentally. But I don’t. I might actually be largely incapable of it. Most of my arguments are in the general vein of pointing out the fallacy of the libertarian and classical liberal, and progressive canons that do not account for the problem of trust, intelligence, and impulsivity in the construction of a polity capable of constant innovation necessary to stay ahead of both the genetic red queen, the malthusian red queen, and the technological red queen, and how those three red queens must be defeated in order to preserve economic prosperity that allows us to have whatever nonsensical social order we choose. I suspect that this argument is not obvious to you and most others, but that is my fundamental argument and the insight I am trying to incorporate into political science, political economy, economics, and philosophical ethics. -Cheers

  • Against Dysgenia, Does Not Imply Active Eugenia

    —“Surely you understand how individualists might view your little eugenics project as pretty unworkable, fucked and backwards, don’t you”— [I] don’t have a eugenics project, I make the argument that at some point in your chain of reasoning you must have a means of making judgements between one set of preferences and another, and that the progressive preference is dysgenic. To warn against dysgenia is very different from conducting eugenia. I do not see the political reason for redistributing from the middle class to the lower class if this constructs dysgenia that inhibits the formation of the high trust society which is necessary for the standard of living that allows for redistribution. In other words, i’m making an argument against a logical fallacy. This might seem to you as if I am making a sentimental argument,b ecause you argue largely sentimentally. But I don’t. I might actually be largely incapable of it. Most of my arguments are in the general vein of pointing out the fallacy of the libertarian and classical liberal, and progressive canons that do not account for the problem of trust, intelligence, and impulsivity in the construction of a polity capable of constant innovation necessary to stay ahead of both the genetic red queen, the malthusian red queen, and the technological red queen, and how those three red queens must be defeated in order to preserve economic prosperity that allows us to have whatever nonsensical social order we choose. I suspect that this argument is not obvious to you and most others, but that is my fundamental argument and the insight I am trying to incorporate into political science, political economy, economics, and philosophical ethics. -Cheers

  • FUTURE VIDEOS We are going to start making regular videos on: (a) The Evolution

    FUTURE VIDEOS

    We are going to start making regular videos on:

    (a) The Evolution of the High Trust Society (The Western Protestant Ethic)

    (b) Aristocratic Egalitarianism (Propertarian restatement of western ethics)

    (c) Propertarianism (Moral Realism/Logic of Cooperation)

    (d) Post Democratic Solutions to Political Institutions

    and, if anyone is crazy enough to want to follow the “hard stuff”

    (f) Instrumentalism, Operationalism and Intuitionism (Praxeology restated ‘correctly’)

    Unfortunately, I cannot pull a Monlyneux, and talk to the camera. I need an interview format to think and speak comfortably. So we’ll be doing these in interview format.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-07 06:42:00 UTC

  • "God's Three European Languages"

    GOD’S THREE EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND THE CHURCH RESORTS TO ONE [U]nfortunately Socrates’s criticism applies to all of academia. Or in the new vernacular, all members of the neoreactionary’s ‘Cathedral’ – the replacement of the church and academy with the state and academy under a bizarre form of numerical and technological heresy. I was thrilled at the church’s restoration of the exorcists today. When the church re-institutes the Templars or Hospitallers and we warriors have moral sanction to restore the church’s property, and the church as opponent to the state, we will rescue not only the church, but the west itself. But without that sanction the church will continue to decline, and the west with it. The problem being that the church needs a new knightly order, and to be in an position of desperation. [M]y current belief is that mysticism is more important to the church than philosophy. And the talents in the church more suitable to mysticism than philosophy. And the third world, not Europe, the church’s economic and intellectual interest. As such the church will not save Europe, and ceases to be a european institution other than ceremonially. The church created Europa and at present the church may be the only means of saving it. In Europe god speaks three languages: the science and history of warriors, the reason and allegory of protestants, and the mythology and passion of the catholics. The church no longer speaks the languages of god. And Europa is abandoned by her church because of it.

  • “God’s Three European Languages”

    GOD’S THREE EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND THE CHURCH RESORTS TO ONE [U]nfortunately Socrates’s criticism applies to all of academia. Or in the new vernacular, all members of the neoreactionary’s ‘Cathedral’ – the replacement of the church and academy with the state and academy under a bizarre form of numerical and technological heresy. I was thrilled at the church’s restoration of the exorcists today. When the church re-institutes the Templars or Hospitallers and we warriors have moral sanction to restore the church’s property, and the church as opponent to the state, we will rescue not only the church, but the west itself. But without that sanction the church will continue to decline, and the west with it. The problem being that the church needs a new knightly order, and to be in an position of desperation. [M]y current belief is that mysticism is more important to the church than philosophy. And the talents in the church more suitable to mysticism than philosophy. And the third world, not Europe, the church’s economic and intellectual interest. As such the church will not save Europe, and ceases to be a european institution other than ceremonially. The church created Europa and at present the church may be the only means of saving it. In Europe god speaks three languages: the science and history of warriors, the reason and allegory of protestants, and the mythology and passion of the catholics. The church no longer speaks the languages of god. And Europa is abandoned by her church because of it.