Curt Doolittle

Theme: Education

  • THE CURRENT CANON (in suggested reading order) Note that I do not list the usual

    THE CURRENT CANON

    (in suggested reading order)

    Note that I do not list the usual works of ‘lament’ about the fall of the west. I assume that we all understand that. But understanding it isn’t a means of countering it. Countering it requires we understand the origins of liberty, the constitution of liberty, and act to restore our liberty. As such I focus on how to construct and reconstruct informal and formal institutions that will do a better job of protecting our liberty than did classical liberalism. However, doing so requires that I dismantle the fallacy of rothbardian ghetto ethics, and german rationalism, and instead, rebuild the case for liberty on science and history.

    THE RESTORATION READING LIST

    Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans

    John Keegan: A History Of Warfare

    Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey

    Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation

    William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization

    Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology

    Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe

    Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom

    Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism

    Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms

    Matt Ridley: The Red Queen

    Dale Petersen: Demonic Males

    Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature

    Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

    Francis Fukuyama: Trust

    Sam Harris : Lying

    Steven Pinker : The Blank Slate

    Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind

    Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism

    Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed

    Doolittle: Propertarianism. High Trust Ethics Necessary for Anarchy

    Hoppe’s Other Publications

    ————-

    A theory of Capitalism and Socialism

    The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy, and the Idea of a Natural Order

    The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

    On The Origin Of Private Property And The Family

    Property, Causality, and Liability

    The Idea of a Private Law Society

    The Private Production of Defense

    The Right To Exclude,

    Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-03 14:05:00 UTC

  • PHILOSOPHY AS A STREET VENDOR, OR HERMIT? (It’s not hard. I read books, papers,

    PHILOSOPHY AS A STREET VENDOR, OR HERMIT?

    (It’s not hard. I read books, papers, news and blogs all day and use FB as a sketchbook. The purpose of sketches is to put ideas in my own words. To see if in my own words I can construct arguments. To, over time, simplify and hone those arguments. Now, some people happen to like watching this ideological blacksmithing, so it’s mutually beneficial. Others learn and are entertained and I get feedback from them. It’s awesome really. How did thinkers just hole up and talk to their books? It works, sure. But it’s just so much more human and enjoyable to work as a street vendor than a hermit.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 17:56:00 UTC

  • HOPPE’S RIGHT – YOU CAN’T SAY ‘LIBERTY’ IN STATE-FUNDED ACADEMIA – YOU HAVE TO W

    HOPPE’S RIGHT – YOU CAN’T SAY ‘LIBERTY’ IN STATE-FUNDED ACADEMIA – YOU HAVE TO WORK OUTSIDE OF ACADEMIA TO DO THE WORK THAT MUST BE DONE.

    I bet I couldn’t find a dissertation committee for my project. I bet if I was in state-funded-academia there is no way I could keep my job and do this work. Sean Gabb lamented a few weeks ago, that we used to have people in academia, media, and government, but we don’t. You have to do your work outside of the state-system. Even our closest allies at GMU never violate the sanctity of the social democratic state, democracy, and equality except in very timid terms: policy preference.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 02:31:00 UTC

  • Intellectual Influences

    [I] love bibliographies of major works. On my site I collect reading lists and the biographies of the authors that I respect most. Today, I’m working on restructuring my chapter order to be less about libertarianism, and to accommodate the improvements in my arguments over the past year. So I am working through Hiadt’s bibliographies trying to see if there is anything that I haven’t read. And, you know, there really isn’t. Which scares me. lol. Although, it really makes sense because we’re very close in age, and went through our intellectual development during the same period, and information that counteracts the progressive fantasy just sort of exploded during the last thirty years. I just was later in my development because I was distracted by ‘business’ when younger and it’s really only over the past ten years that I have been able to devote such concentrated time to my work. When you get down to it, my major (almost exclusive) influences have been: (Poincare + Brouwer + Taleb + Popper) + Hayek + Duchesne + Stephen Hicks + Kahneman + (Hoppe + Haidt). Haidt and Hoppe the most influential. I made the mistake of trying to solve the problem Haidt did with computer science (artificial intelligence) because at the time I was in school, psychology was still in the postmodern catastrophe that was progressivism. It was gut classes for stupid people. But at that point in time, despite the fact taht I understood the problem was one of emotions and objects, I couldn’t solve it. Haidt did. But it worked out as a benefit because computer science is an operational methodology and taught me how to think without the nonsensical platonic categories that are universal to that ‘lost’ discipline we call philosophy. You can say fuzzy things in philosophy, logic and math but you cannot actually operationalize them with a computer, and a computer is just a very fast way of conducting human operations (switches). I did finally understand that voluntary exchange, property, inventory, substitution and acquisitiveness are the means of creating an artificial intelligence, but I have less interest in that field than I do in formal institutions of cooperation. So this is where I’m spending my time. Anyway, collecting these biographies has been fascinating because if you collect enough of them you see that very few works by very few authors have any material impact in social and political science. It’s been a 2500 year journey to try to solve the problem of cooperation. But we are getting very close to it.

  • Intellectual Influences

    [I] love bibliographies of major works. On my site I collect reading lists and the biographies of the authors that I respect most. Today, I’m working on restructuring my chapter order to be less about libertarianism, and to accommodate the improvements in my arguments over the past year. So I am working through Hiadt’s bibliographies trying to see if there is anything that I haven’t read. And, you know, there really isn’t. Which scares me. lol. Although, it really makes sense because we’re very close in age, and went through our intellectual development during the same period, and information that counteracts the progressive fantasy just sort of exploded during the last thirty years. I just was later in my development because I was distracted by ‘business’ when younger and it’s really only over the past ten years that I have been able to devote such concentrated time to my work. When you get down to it, my major (almost exclusive) influences have been: (Poincare + Brouwer + Taleb + Popper) + Hayek + Duchesne + Stephen Hicks + Kahneman + (Hoppe + Haidt). Haidt and Hoppe the most influential. I made the mistake of trying to solve the problem Haidt did with computer science (artificial intelligence) because at the time I was in school, psychology was still in the postmodern catastrophe that was progressivism. It was gut classes for stupid people. But at that point in time, despite the fact taht I understood the problem was one of emotions and objects, I couldn’t solve it. Haidt did. But it worked out as a benefit because computer science is an operational methodology and taught me how to think without the nonsensical platonic categories that are universal to that ‘lost’ discipline we call philosophy. You can say fuzzy things in philosophy, logic and math but you cannot actually operationalize them with a computer, and a computer is just a very fast way of conducting human operations (switches). I did finally understand that voluntary exchange, property, inventory, substitution and acquisitiveness are the means of creating an artificial intelligence, but I have less interest in that field than I do in formal institutions of cooperation. So this is where I’m spending my time. Anyway, collecting these biographies has been fascinating because if you collect enough of them you see that very few works by very few authors have any material impact in social and political science. It’s been a 2500 year journey to try to solve the problem of cooperation. But we are getting very close to it.

  • LIBERTARIAN ILLITERACY The cure to libertarian illiteracy is to keep up on resea

    http://www.propertarianism.com/jonathan-haidts-bibliography/CURING LIBERTARIAN ILLITERACY

    The cure to libertarian illiteracy is to keep up on research, rely on science, and not empty verbalism of continental and cosmopolitan rationalism. (See Axelrod – Cooperation. See Fukuyama – Trust. See Todd ‘Explanation of Ideology; The Invention of Europe. See Hannan – The Invention of Liberty. See Kahnemann. See RIdley. See Pinker. See Haidt: Moral Foundations; The Righteous Mind. Here is the bibliography that points to the relevant research. http://www.propertarianism.com/jonathan-haidts-bibliography/

    The libertarian spectrum is less ignorant of economics, but libertarian scientific illiteracy, moral blindness, and ideological zeal is nearly universal.

    Human moral instincts are objective and universal if we account for differences in reproductive strategies: they are prohibitions on free riding. Cultures may randomly invent different moral CODES that incorporate more or less prohibition on free riding, and accommodate the use of property in relation to family size. But the cause of moral instinct is universal: the prohibition on free riding and the requirement for contribution to production.

    That’s just science. Deal with it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-27 04:20:00 UTC

  • CURING LIBERTARIAN IGNORANCE (“ILLITERA-TARIANISM”) (instead of rothbard, read s

    http://www.amazon.com/War-What-Good-For-Civilization/dp/0374286000LITERACY: CURING LIBERTARIAN IGNORANCE (“ILLITERA-TARIANISM”)

    (instead of rothbard, read something by someone honest, intelligent and moral)

    WAR: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? (A LOT REALLY)

    http://www.amazon.com/War-What-Good-For-Civilization/dp/0374286000

    THE REVENGE OF GEOGRAPHY

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Revenge-Geography-Conflicts-Against-ebook/dp/B007MDJY5K/

    THE RUSSIAN ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Origins-First-World-ebook/dp/B0081YHYHO/

    WAR AND HUMAN CIVILIZATION

    http://www.amazon.com/War-Human-Civilization-Azar-Gat-ebook/dp/B006QV81C6/

    1177BC THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED

    http://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turning-ebook/dp/B00GU1JHIY/

    THE MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Measure-Civilization-Development-Decides-ebook/dp/B00BFGW3H6/

    HOW THE WEST WON

    http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Won-Neglected-Modernity/dp/1610170857/

    INVENTING FREEDOM: HOW THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES MADE THE MODERN WORLD

    http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Peoples-Modern-ebook/dp/B00BATKSIO/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 14:41:00 UTC

  • SARGEANT ON COMMON SENSE RULES OF ECONOMICS (via by Alex Tabarrok) 1. Many thing

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/tom-sargent-summarizes-economics.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.g6CGFLA8.dpufTOM SARGEANT ON COMMON SENSE RULES OF ECONOMICS

    (via by Alex Tabarrok)

    1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible.

    2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs.

    3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do.

    4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended.

    5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency.

    6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse.

    7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation.

    8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made.

    9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore).

    10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation.

    11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves).

    12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-20 04:49:00 UTC

  • REFERENCES FOR MY FELLOW ASPIE-TARIAN LIBERTARIANS As far as I know I’m the only

    REFERENCES FOR MY FELLOW ASPIE-TARIAN LIBERTARIANS

    As far as I know I’m the only one arguing that the autistic spectrum should be described as the “solipsistic-autistic spectrum”, but I might argue that I’m just using loaded language to demonstrate and allow us to criticize the failure of the female side of the spectrum as well as the male. That is because women are are as comfortable using solipsistic arguments as we are using autistic. However, I’m pretty sure that the basic thesis is correct. That is, that most of these brain states are produce by in-utero chemistry.

    Baron-Cohen, S. 1995. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    ______. 2002. “The Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6:248–54.

    ______. 2009. “Autism: The Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory.” In “The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience,” special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1156:68–80.

    Lucas, P., and A. Sheeran. 2006. “Asperger’s Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham.” Journal of Bentham Studies 8:1–20.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-08 11:23:00 UTC

  • INFLUENCES I love bibliographies of major works. On my site I collect reading li

    INFLUENCES

    I love bibliographies of major works. On my site I collect reading lists and the biographies of the authors that I respect most.

    Today, I’m working on restructuring my chapter order to be less about libertarianism, and to accommodate the improvements in my arguments over the past year. So I am working through Hiadt’s bibliographies trying to see if there is anything that I haven’t read.

    And, you know, there really isn’t. Which scares me. lol. Although, it really makes sense because we’re very close in age, and went through our intellectual development during the same period, and information that counteracts the progressive fantasy just sort of exploded during the last thirty years. I just was later in my development because I was distracted by ‘business’ when younger and it’s really only over the past ten years that I have been able to devote such concentrated time to my work.

    When you get down to it, my major (almost exclusive) influences have been: (Poincare + Brouwer + Taleb + Popper) + Hayek + Duchesne + Stephen Hicks + Kahneman + (Hoppe + Haidt). Haidt and Hoppe the most influential.

    I made the mistake of trying to solve the problem Haidt did with computer science (artificial intelligence) because at the time I was in school, psychology was still in the postmodern catastrophe that was progressivism. It was gut classes for stupid people. But at that point in time, despite the fact taht I understood the problem was one of emotions and objects, I couldn’t solve it. Haidt did.

    But it worked out as a benefit because computer science is an operational methodology and taught me how to think without the nonsensical platonic categories that are universal to that ‘lost’ discipline we call philosophy. You can say fuzzy things in philosophy, logic and math but you cannot actually operationalize them with a computer, and a computer is just a very fast way of conducting human operations (switches).

    I did finally understand that voluntary exchange, property, inventory, substitution and acquisitiveness are the means of creating an artificial intelligence, but I have less interest in that field than I do in formal institutions of cooperation. So this is where I’m spending my time.

    Anyway, collecting these biographies has been fascinating because if you collect enough of them you see that very few works by very few authors have any material impact in social and political science.

    It’s been a 2500 year journey to try to solve the problem of cooperation. But we are getting very close to it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-08 08:24:00 UTC