Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • Where does a Newbie Start?

    —” If I were a total newb what book/books should I start with?”—Ziggy Propertarianism (Natural Law) is a painfully precise language for the amoral comparison between the various categories, values, methods of ‘knowing’, methods of communicating, and means of decidability social orders, as well as making inferior superior, moral and immoral, and true and false decisions within and across them. While the grammar of Natural Law is demanding, and the number of principles you need to understand not much more difficult than say, geometry,  it is much easier to learn Natural Law (Propertarianism) if you understand the context that we’re coming from. So, if you asked me how to learn any subject I would tell you to start with an historical novel, or movie about it to provide cultural context. Then I would suggest an autobiography about it to provide personal context. Then I would tell you to read an introduction to the technical aspects – something short. Then to read a textbook about it. So I would tell you to work from broad brush strokes to very precise formula by incremental means.  You do not need to know the history of warfare, of the common law, of the differences in truth content between argumentative and communicative structures, or the depths of epistemology.  You need to know a little about mankind, and then a very little about western civlization’s “luck of the draw”: Sovereignty is possible under certain geographic conditions: when no resource can be centralized and exploited for the purpose of concentrating the proceeds of production in a minor class, and where a self- funded militia is necessary for the defense of territory. So to get you started, I’ll leave you with that one idea, and these four books. After that see the Reading List at the top of the website for more. And honestly, the best way to learn is to follow me. I basically teach class every day, in a vast one-room schoolhouse with students of all grades: Facebook on the internet. THE INDIVIDUAL Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind THE COMMUNITY Francis Fukuyama: Trust

    THE NATION Garett Jones: Hive Mind: How Your Nations IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own MANKIND Peter Turchin: Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

  • Where does a Newbie Start?

    —” If I were a total newb what book/books should I start with?”—Ziggy Propertarianism (Natural Law) is a painfully precise language for the amoral comparison between the various categories, values, methods of ‘knowing’, methods of communicating, and means of decidability social orders, as well as making inferior superior, moral and immoral, and true and false decisions within and across them. While the grammar of Natural Law is demanding, and the number of principles you need to understand not much more difficult than say, geometry,  it is much easier to learn Natural Law (Propertarianism) if you understand the context that we’re coming from. So, if you asked me how to learn any subject I would tell you to start with an historical novel, or movie about it to provide cultural context. Then I would suggest an autobiography about it to provide personal context. Then I would tell you to read an introduction to the technical aspects – something short. Then to read a textbook about it. So I would tell you to work from broad brush strokes to very precise formula by incremental means.  You do not need to know the history of warfare, of the common law, of the differences in truth content between argumentative and communicative structures, or the depths of epistemology.  You need to know a little about mankind, and then a very little about western civlization’s “luck of the draw”: Sovereignty is possible under certain geographic conditions: when no resource can be centralized and exploited for the purpose of concentrating the proceeds of production in a minor class, and where a self- funded militia is necessary for the defense of territory. So to get you started, I’ll leave you with that one idea, and these four books. After that see the Reading List at the top of the website for more. And honestly, the best way to learn is to follow me. I basically teach class every day, in a vast one-room schoolhouse with students of all grades: Facebook on the internet. THE INDIVIDUAL Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind THE COMMUNITY Francis Fukuyama: Trust

    THE NATION Garett Jones: Hive Mind: How Your Nations IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own MANKIND Peter Turchin: Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

  • WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘TRUTHFUL KNOWLEDGE’ In Propertarianism (Natural Law) have a

    WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘TRUTHFUL KNOWLEDGE’

    In Propertarianism (Natural Law) have a very precise definition of ‘truthful knowledge’ that isn’t open to interpretation. We don’t use the word ‘true’ knowledge, and we don’t even use the word ‘true’ very often, except to say ‘that’s not true, or that can’t be true”, and tend use the world ‘truthful’ or ‘truth candidate’ instead.

    I suppose for greater clarity for newcomers would could say that by “Truthful Knowledge” we are referring to the most parsimonious and consistently correspondent statement possible, that is as free of error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, and deceit, as the scope of human language and human knowledge currently tolerates.

    And I could criticize myself for using that Truthful Knowledge which to the inexperienced, immediately invokes via-positiva justificationism, when I mean via negativa ‘a surviving truth candidate’.

    So when we say we are making a Truthful Statement, it is one that has SURVIVED the test of Testimonial Epistemology:

    The Operational Sequence of Universal, Testimonial, Epistemology:

    experience ->

    … free association ->

    … … idea ->

    … … … ‘wayfinding’ ->

    … … … … hypothesis ->

    … … … … … critical testing (falsification) ->

    … … … … … … theory ->

    … … … … … … … publication (market testing) ->

    … … … … … … … … Law ->

    … … … … … … … … … metaphysical assumption(acculturation).

    In that phase of Critical Testing we attempt to construct an operational description of a sequence of subjectively testable operations, (which is a very densely loaded set of terms), that adhere to a very strict grammar.

    This form of ‘strict construction’ exposes (quite readily) whether we know what we are talking about or not. And shows us where we need to add clarity before we can make a truthful statement.

    Then we use a checklist to ensure that we can WARRANTY to others that we have done due diligence, in ensuring that we do not engage in the many problems of ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, loading, framing, obscurantism, and deceit.

    This list includes a set of consistency checks. They are:

    – Categorical Consistency: identity consistency

    – Logical Consistency: internal consistency

    – Empirical Consistency: external correspondence

    – Existential consistency: operational language and subjective testability

    – Moral consistency: Reciprocity (which we have a very strict definition of as well: consisting only of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer limited to productive externalities)

    – Scope Consistency: (this one is hard) but it means have we

    …. (a) fully accounted for call costs?

    …. (b) defined the limits – at what points does this statement no longer apply?

    …. (c) tested the parsimony – (this one is very hard) have we overstated our case, and can this be stated more precisely?

    Because humans ourselves serve as a STANDARD OF MEASURE in relation to other humans due to limited differences in subjective testability; and because of the difficulty in making a series of operational statements, while at the same time surviving the checklist of six dimensions of actionable reality, it is almost impossible to be held accountable by others for speaking a falsehood.

    This is what we mean by ‘Truthful Speech’. Your warranty that you have done due diligence that your speech will do no harm.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Cult of Non Submission

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Natural Law of Sovereign Men

    The Aesthetics of Agency

    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 17:57:00 UTC

  • I START WITH TIME. Time is the only existential commodity available to man, and

    I START WITH TIME.

    Time is the only existential commodity available to man, and all our divisions of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, negotiation, and advocacy serve to produce and distribute calories in various states in ever shorter time. I try to teach people to think in terms of time, where money serves as a store of accumulated time, and debt, promised time. Ergo, we are not wealthier than cave men, we have just made everything infinitely cheaper to acquire with our time. So I start from the basics of time, acquisitionism, cooperation, and competition, and build up from the problem of using memory and reason to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 15:38:00 UTC

  • “Most of the time I see you post something, and a natural consequence of my pers

    —-“Most of the time I see you post something, and a natural consequence of my personality is to ask “How did you go about this? [but you don’t go into enough detail, and I want to learn, becuase I sense ‘something is not right’ in what I have been taught”. —- A friend

    I heavily edited the end there so that I could quickly get the point across.

    It’s very simple from my end. I can only afford to do so much one on one tutorial so to speak. And when I do, I want to make sure (a) i’m informing others as I’m doing it, rather than just you, and (b) i’m improving my skill by doing it. Otherwise it is a sunk cost for me and I’m very conscious of my time left on this earth and the amount of work I have left to do.

    There are very simple things I talk about, and very complex things.

    I see no problem in explaining western civilization using a very small number of ideas that I think people can understand if they have a bit of reading and education behind them, and if they want to think hard a bit for a while.

    But I think it is very, very, very hard to explain epistemology to people.

    And while it is personally one of my favorite topics because it is one of the hardest philosophers have dealt with, and probably one of my more important insights, I actually don’t think it is possible (or a good use of my time anyway) to get into comparative truth with most people at the epistemological level. I think it’s FINE at the group evolutionary strategy level so that we can differentiate between parasitism and production between peoples. But you know, you just don’t need to know that stuff, and … it’s only useful for the category of problems i’m solving

    All you need to know is that when you justify reasoning, a moral action or legal action, that’s because you are trying to demonstrate honesty, morailty and due diligence – that you are cooperating.

    But when you are talking about discovering a truth rather than adhering to a rule, we cannot ‘justify’ truth statements. We must see if they survive all forms of criticism – we must see if they survive in the battle of ideas. This is how we discover truth candidates.

    We create proofs in math and logic and programming to show that we adhered to the rules. We create rational, moral, and legal justification to show that we adhere to the rules. Why? Because the rules are very simple and well known: the causal density of the rules is fairly low).

    When we conduct scientific inquiry in the social or physical world, the rules (the causal density of reality) is very high. So we the size of the problem is very different, and we must test not our intentions, not the rules we followed, but everyting regardless of our intentions.

    But we evolved as social creatures and we lived cooperative lives that required us to communicate in the language of cooperation, and to discuss things that were actionable and perceivable at human scale.

    So in the 19th century as we developed many tools and techniques and logics, and equations, we had to change our thinking from spending most of our time in the logic of cooperation: justification, to the logic of ‘everything bigger than that’, meaning science.

    In other words, we humans moved from a world of JUSTIFIABLE RULES at human scale, to a world of THEORIES at post-human scale. And frankly we have not evolved for it.

    So we are still in the process of converting people from thinking in simple human scale terms of justifications of those things we can act upon and experience, to participating in a society consisting of things we largely cannot perceive or act upon, except in very subtle ways.

    So the ‘alienation’ we experience in post village, post-tribal, post-familial civilization is caused not only by the movement of people to capital instead of capital to people, and the loss of all those human relationships that allow us to rely upon instinctual justification of our actions, but we live in a market society where there is very little feedback, and we think in concepts of very large scale, and we (almost all of us) lack the education necessary to THINK at large scale sufficiently to understand how we fit into that vast but alienating world.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 13:33:00 UTC

  • DEAR MISEDUCATED WORLD: Logic is at least ternary, not binary. (Meaning three st

    DEAR MISEDUCATED WORLD:

    Logic is at least ternary, not binary. (Meaning three states, not two)

    …………… FALSE…….TRUE……..UNDECIDABLE

    FALSE…..FALSE…….FALSE……UNDECIDABLE

    TRUE……FALES…….TRUE……..UNDECIDABLE

    UNDEC…FALSE…….UNDEC…..UNDECIDABLE

    MATHEMATICS

    In mathematics, which for millennia was unfortunately the gold standard of logic, we use the word true when we mean either “balanced” (retaining constant relations), or we mean “proven” (possible to demonstrate), because in mathematics we create proofs of possibility rather than statements of truth. We may claim that we speak truthfully that we have constructed a proof. But mathematics consists of operations, deductions, inferences and guesswork, by which we identify means of demonstrating the possibility and necessity of a series of constant relations (ratios).

    COMPUTER SCIENCE

    In the gold standard of reasoning: computer science – when we refer to values, we call this same sequence true, false, and null (unknown). So in computer science, we either possess sufficient information to state something is provable (true or false), or unprovable (false), or undecidable (lacking the information).

    FORMAL LOGIC

    ( I’ll avoid formal logic because in my view, like all game theory, beyond use in very simple human perceivable scales, it’s been a waste of a century. I mean. I can dismantle the liars paradox in five minutes or less. it was a wasted century.

    PHYSICAL SCIENCE

    In sciences we use the terms False, Possibly True (an hypothesis, theory, or law), and Undecidable. Between the choice of true and false, it is false that we know with certainty. Truth always remains uncertain in all but the most simple of questions.

    EPISTEMOLOGY

    In epistemology we say something is knowingly false, possibly true, and undecidable, or unknown. In epistemology, just as in science, we must determine if an argument survives attempts to falsify it. If it is true, then we can decide if it is possible. I it is possible then we can decide if it is preferable. If it is preferable without causing harm to others, then we have determined that it is good.

    MORALITY, PHILOSOPHY, AND THEOLOGY

    In morality, philosophy, theology, we say (lie) that if we can find an excuse for something (a justification) it is true, or moral, or good. When that only means that according to the established norms, scriptures, and laws. in other words, one is free of blame if he can justify his actions as permissible, moral or good. In morality philosophy and theology, we attempt to survive justification.

    LAW

    When we encounter LAW we use the jury, and debate between two parties, and moderated by a judge, to test both whether we are justified under law, and whether our testimony and our arguments are believable. In law we attempt to survive the battle between three forces: the law as written, the standards of rational behavior of the jury, the logical testing of your statements by the judge, and the subjective testing of your truthfulness by the jury. And in case you don’t know this, most cases are decided by the test of truthfulness, which is why american courts are so useful for commerce. The first sin of american law is failure of informational reciprocity. Failure and error are forgivable. Violation of reciprocity is not.

    HIERARCHY OF CERTAINTY

    … FALSE, that which does not survive tests of falsification.

    … … TRUE, that which survives all tests of falsification

    … … … PROVEN, that which survives tests of possibility.

    … … … … UNDECIDABLE that which cannot be decided.

    THE TRUTH TABLE OF CERTAINTY

    F:False, T:True, P:Provable, U:Undecidable

    …..F…..T…..P…..U

    F…F…..F…..F…..U

    T…F….*T*…P…..U

    P…F…..P…..P…..U

    U..F…..U….U…..U

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 12:13:00 UTC

  • “So, is the “bottom line” of “Propertarianism” a distinction between “decidabili

    —“So, is the “bottom line” of “Propertarianism” a distinction between “decidability” and “meaning”? Is that the departure point?

    Can the antimony and dichotomy of “decidability” and “meaning” be understood as the relation(ship) between Being and non-Being?

    Your philosophy is ultimately grounded in Aristotle, is that accurate?

    “–Francisco Antonio

    Yes, in order to produce an amoral, scientific language of cooperation, all statements are reduced to the transfer of assets. In this way we advocate truth and transparency and voluntary exchange: reciprocity (the balance of both sides) just as we describe a balance sheet, or just as an equation is balanced.

    SERIES

    0) Identity (Correspondence / non-correspondence)

    1) Counting (correspondence balance, including identities),

    2) Mathematical balancing, (including ratios)

    3) Accounting balancing, (including market goods with prices)

    4) Property in toto balancing. (including common goods without)

    In my view I dont’ take philosophers very seriously. And I tend only to read sciences. The science I understand is the common law of sovereign men. but the common law is parsimonious. it tells us only how to decide. it does not provide us with what we desire in a PHILOSOPHY: what is GOOD. it tells us only what is bad, so that we may all select philosophical goods from a market for philosophical goods. But as I have articulated this law to require truthfulness, reciprocity, and beauty, in the provision of ‘shoulds’, this means philosophy is then the study of preferences WITHIN the limits of Natural Law. And this presents a problem for the pseudoscientists and pseudorationalist, but not for the essayist, the novelist, or necessarily the mythicist.

    So when you say, grounded in Aristotle, I would say that greek philosophy was an attempt to improve upon then current current law. and I see Aristotle as the non-conflationist – the proto-empiricist. that applied the law to matters commonly outside the law. This is how bacon also applies the law in the evolution of empiricism. and it is how I apply the law (via Hayek) in the evolution of testimonialism – which I think is the ‘complete’ version of the empirical or scientific tradition.

    My self I see my work as grounded in popper, Kuhn, and Hayek. Philosophers of science and of law.

    If we are to label Aristotle as the first “Deflationist” in the sense of “Deflationary Truth”, then that would make me an aristotelian.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-18 02:15:00 UTC

  • a) the a priori is but a special case of the empirical, and the empirical a spec

    a) the a priori is but a special case of the empirical, and the empirical a special case of the testimonial.

    (b) one does not define a general case by a special. that would require that we ignore information available in the general.

    (c) one of the great fallacies of all time is that a subset of terms can be used to define itself. The fact that you (and many others) posit such things is not much different from the intentional design people positing things after the discovery and expansion of evolution.

    Testimonially speaking, the record of history consists of DEMONSTRATED preferences, and the literary record consists of REPORTED, and undemonstrated preferences. The difference between demonstrated truths and reported lies.

    In other words, just as literature claims only to be fantasy by which we can learn by analogy; Rational Philosophy claims to be that which it cannot be demonstrated (complete); and Theology claims to be that which is impossible to demonstrate (supernatural).

    As far as I can tell, pretty much all of philosophy proper is nonsense, wishful thinking, and deceit. The tradition broke between Supernatural Theology, Imaginary Platonism, and Demonstrated Aristotelianism -fairly early on.

    There are no answers there. Only the record of errors.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-08 15:27:00 UTC

  • TIME NOT MONEY If we can shift economic and political thought from comparing sta

    TIME NOT MONEY

    If we can shift economic and political thought from comparing static money and prices to dynamic time, with money as the means of recording and storing time, then we will have a much easier job correcting the frauds of macroeconomic policy that is sold to the people.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-08 10:45:00 UTC

  • JUSTIFY CHANGES IN STATE, NOT EXCUSES (REASON), AND INTENTIONS. It’s not the jus

    JUSTIFY CHANGES IN STATE, NOT EXCUSES (REASON), AND INTENTIONS.

    It’s not the justification of reasoning that we measure but the change in state of property that results from our actions.

    In other words, the excuse we make are irrelevant. Only the change in state of property in toto has any meaning.

    I realize this is hard to grasp for all of us who have studied the history of excuse making (philosophy) for a long time.

    But it is what it is. 😉

    Warranty of due diligence in all possible dimensions of human action, increases the precision of MORAL justification from habit, to reason, to rationalism, to science, to testimonialism.

    Moral justification = Blame Avoidance.

    Testimonialism = Warranty of due diligence.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-02-06 07:30:00 UTC