Curt Doolittle

Theme: Education

  • OPEN COURSEWARE OFFERINGS I have tried a few and unfortunately the quality varie

    http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/top-89-open-courseware-projects/TOP OPEN COURSEWARE OFFERINGS

    I have tried a few and unfortunately the quality varies from tragically incompetent to surprisingly good.

    When i was in college i chose courses based upon the books listed in the bookstore.

    As far as I can tell, a professor’s syllabus is his most important contribution.

    If he asks a daily thought question in a forum then responds to replies, thats pretty good.

    Mostly i have just met other interesting people.

    But there is no substitute for living at a university.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-10 05:52:00 UTC

  • your children. Give them attention. Teach them ethics and morals. Read to them a

    http://feedly.com/k/1p0d4kKLove your children. Give them attention. Teach them ethics and morals. Read to them a lot.

    All this aggressive education has zero long term impact.

    All that love and attention has just the opposite.

    You may not be able to give your kids more IQ but you can give them good character, and happy souls.

    And that’s more than enough.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-02 08:09:00 UTC

  • Aristocractic Government : A Conference and a Journal

    A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT [W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art. I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming. But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people. The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia. As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums. [S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.) However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies. However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies. Liberty in our lifetimes. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute The Philosophy of Aristocracy Kiev Ukraine

  • Aristocractic Government : A Conference and a Journal

    A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT [W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art. I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming. But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people. The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia. As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums. [S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.) However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies. However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies. Liberty in our lifetimes. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute The Philosophy of Aristocracy Kiev Ukraine

  • HIGH TIME PARENTING NOT HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING Strange watching people in oth

    HIGH TIME PARENTING NOT HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING

    Strange watching people in other countries raise children. I was definitely raised in the puritan protestant tradition to be an independent person as soon as possible.

    But you watch children in the states today and there is obviously something very wrong with them. Almost all of them. And then you come to a place with a traditional family like Ukraine, and watch the kids and … there isnt’ anything wrong with them. So what’s the difference?

    They aren’t constantly trying to get attention from parents who don’t want to give it to them.

    Now, it’s not high investment parenting. In fact, it’s kind of strange how LITTLE effort parents put into competitive child rearing. Instead, they just pay attention to them. A lot of attention. At home. WIth family.

    That must be what it is that Iove about this country. I think that’s it. Americans are all desperately seeking attention on their terms. Here, nobody is. They’re seeking experiences, and wealth, and opportunity. But they’re not desperate for attention. They aren’t ‘crazy’ like so many americans. They aren’t desperately trying to find meaning in political movements, in environmental movements, in different kinds of spiritualism as a means of filling that hole in their souls.

    Is it that simple?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-21 04:34:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ. The data is pretty good y

    THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ.

    The data is pretty good you know. You don’t have to be a genius. You just have to be well read. Being well read means reading the right books, not just any books.

    But the right books at your level of experience.

    Now, the more causally accurate the argument, the less allegorical and more operationally descriptive it is. The more operationally descriptive it is, the further it is from experience. The further it is from experience the greater the detail needed to construct an analogy to experience. This is why simple narratives are easier to comprehend. They reduce complexity. However, by reducing complexity, they obscure causality.

    So that’s a hard way of stating that for about every 15 points of IQ we have entire literatures saying similar things at higher and lower orders of precision, and therefore greater and lesser degrees of content, that have higher correspondence with reality, or higher correspondence with our levels of perception and cognition.

    The more literate you become, the more you grasp that there are a limited number of fundamental ideas. That those fundamental ideas are counter-intuitive. That evolution did not provide us with intrinsic means of grasping or using those fundamental ideas. But that to cooperate in large numbers and to understand the structure of ourselves, our actions, and the universe in which we act, we must somehow master them. Either at high operational correspondence that few of us can master, or at low operational correspondence but high intuitive correspondence that all of us can master.

    LAYERS OF INCREASING COMPLEXITY:

    Intuitive expressions <- pre rational reactions

    Moral arguments <- normative arguments

    Allegorical Arguments <- abstract arguments (most people)

    Historical Arguments <- facts (educated people)

    Scientific Arguments <- specialists in causal relations

    Economic Arguments <- specialists in emergent relations

    Ratio-scientific Arguments <- synthesis of specialized arguments

    Constructivist Explanations <- description of reality

    It gets harder as you climb that ladder. Most of us can manage allegorical. But beginning with Historical arguments one enters the realm of empirical rather than intuitive, and that requires a lot more knowledge at each rung on the conceptual ladder.

    If you cannot explain something in constructive (operational) language you do not understand it. But if you can at least explain something, then you are at least able to determine possible courses of action.

    SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT TO READ?

    You read what you can. You climb the ladder as far as you can. At some point you will get good at climbing the ladder. At some point you will realize that you can climb no further. For some of us, we learn how to add rungs to the ladder itself.

    But the important thing to remember is that there are a very small number of fundamental concepts, and a very small number of intuitive falsehoods that evolution cursed us with.

    At every 15 points of IQ someone is writing a book in your language. IN the level of abstraction that you can grasp.

    Read the best book you can. Try the next book up the ladder. stop when you cant climb. And the truth is, that if you want to live a full life, you do not need to add to the ladder, only to climb beyond the intuitive limits that evolution left us with. At that point you will be close enough to the truth (correspondence with reality independent of human cognitive limitations) that you are no longer hindered by your mortal coil.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-17 06:18:00 UTC

  • GOT IT. Q&A DIALOGS RATHER THAN EXPLANATIONS. Image Title of the concept Stateme

    GOT IT. Q&A DIALOGS RATHER THAN EXPLANATIONS.

    Image

    Title of the concept

    Statement of the concept

    Dialog.

    [Historical confirmation.]

    [Historical failure (reversal).]

    Poem.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-11 11:51:00 UTC

  • AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS. Richard Ebeling has been posting old photos of Austrians we

    AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS.

    Richard Ebeling has been posting old photos of Austrians we admire. Today we see Roger Garrison. (I have a long standing man crush on Roger Garrison’s brain, and am profoundly envious of his lecturing skills.)

    The post reminds me that my criticism of Austrian Economics is limited to the positioning by Mises and then Rothbard of Praxeology as a deductive a priori ‘science’ rather than an empirical science like any other. And that they confuse introspective observation and conclusions from introspection as somehow different from external observation, instrumentation, and the reduction of complexity to analogies to perception, which are then subject to introspective analysis. In other words, this whole kantian nonsense is an erroneous edifice upon which to build the mythology that economics does not require instrumentalism for the purpose of observing emergent phenomenon. Just because we can never predict those phenomenon, does not mean we cannot learn the nature of man and cooperation from them. And as such we are open to terrible criticism for anti-empiricism which is merely an error in the fundamental understanding of the human cognitive process.

    As I’ve stated, praxeology is not so much ‘true’ as it is ethical. Because by reducing economic statements to operational langage, subject to individual perception as a series of actions, it becomes possible to test wether or not any action is moral – ie: a change in state of property is rationally voluntary. So the value in praxeology is not in its ability to assist us in deducing economic rules, but it is in ensuring that economic statements adhere to moral realism, by requiring moral operationalism. That this is the same requirement we hold scientists to in the presentation of their theories might be lost on people. But it is precisely for this moral constraint that we hold scientists accountable for their statements. The same is true for economic statements. They are as immoral as unscientific statements in the physical sciences, whenever those statements are not reducible to a sequence of operations, each of which we can sympathize with and test for the rationality of the incentives, as to whether the change in state of property would be rationally voluntary or not. That we have been on a century long dead end because of Jewish Cosmopolitan logic compounded by German Continental logic (if you want to take the great leap of calling either of them logical) is unfortunate but a common mistake in philosophy readily solved yet again by science – this time cognitive science.

    However, other than this argumentative fallacy, the basic insight that (a) political intervention is immoral and unethical (b) that it exacerbates booms and busts (c) that it may in the long term distort an economy, a state, a culture, and even a civilization to the point of collapse is something I see no way of contradicting. And the only reason it is a problem is because we are victims of well meaning fools, rather than a set of small states all experimenting so that we ‘fail small’ even if we wish to experiment with economic immorality.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 10:36:00 UTC

  • EDUCATION IN PHILOSOPHY VS EDUCATION IN SKILLS I don’t view philosophy as a trad

    EDUCATION IN PHILOSOPHY VS EDUCATION IN SKILLS

    I don’t view philosophy as a trade or skill, but like history, as general knowledge: ‘wisdom’. Skills and trades are niche applications of knowledge that assist in production under the division of knowledge and labor. Wisdom is the means by which we assist in the organization of society such that the voluntary organization of production in a division of labor is possible. This is why wisdom matters, but why wisdom and skill are resources that are useful the the production of different things: one is goods and services. The other is the ability to organize the voluntary production of goods and services.

    Philosophy is moral and political. It will help you in general life. But only in ADDITION to skills which support you economically in the short term.

    1) Philosophy, Economics, Law and Politics : The skill of the organization of voluntary production.

    2) Economics, Finance, Accounting : the measurement of the organization of voluntary production: cooperative instrumentalism.

    3) Science, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and statistics : Logical Instrumentalism for use in the organization of voluntary production.

    4) Craftsmanship, Labor : the transformation of things from one state to another.

    5) Aesthetics: the study of the consumption of the fruits of production. 🙂

    Pretty much in that order. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 02:04:00 UTC

  • THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT COLLEGE DEGREES THE BEST 1% DEGREES (most likely to assis

    THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT COLLEGE DEGREES

    THE BEST 1% DEGREES

    (most likely to assist in becoming wealthy)

    1. Engineering / Computer Science

    2. Economics / Commerce / MBA / (Bachelor’s) Business Administration (BBA)

    3. Law / Politics

    4. Finance / Accounting

    THE BEST-RIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE DEGREES

    (you can’t go wrong if you want to always have earning potential)

    1. Engineering: $80-90,000 (of any kind at all, and there are LOTS of kinds)

    2. Computer Science/ Mathematics: $100,000 (engineering where you don’t get your hands dirty)

    3. Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration: $105,000

    THE BEST GUARANTEED INCOMES (INSULATED OVER THE LONG TERM)

    1. Universal Demand: Doctor / Medical Specialist / Nurse

    2. Protected Class: Teachers and Professors and other Bureaucrats.

    USELESS DEGREES

    1. Liberal Arts. (You know who you are.)

    THE WORST DEGREES – DEGREES THE HARM YOUR LIFE’S TRAJECTORY

    (you will be poor unless you are a statistical anomaly. These degrees mean you will earn 30K or less per year. When the median income is 48K. This means you are barely better off than working minimum wage.)

    (Institutionalized Motherhood – Stay home and have kids instead.)

    Human Services and Community Organization

    Social Work

    Counseling Psychology

    Early Childhood Education

    (institutionalized childhood – save your money and don’t go to college – just volunteer or go to training schools)

    Drama and Theater Arts

    Studio Arts

    Visual and Performing Arts

    (Institutionalized introspection – you don’t need education.)

    Theology and Religious Vocations

    (fields flooded with applications and which do not require skills)

    Communication Disorders Sciences and Service

    Health and Medical Preparatory Programs

    CLOSING COMMENT

    IMHO, you are better off taking the lightest possible load, at one of the least expensive and least difficult colleges, in one of the top four fields than you are taking any load in any other degree. You MUST learn to use abstractions at some point. Your intuitions and perceptions are limited to what any other animal can make use of. Only through using abstractions – the mental equivalent of tools – will other humans pay you for your time. Everything else is a useless commodity by comparison.

    (I studied fine art. But god gave me gifts. I could tolerate self-enlightenment.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 00:59:00 UTC