Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • “The phrase “survival of the fittest“, which was coined not by Darwin but by the

    —“The phrase “survival of the fittest“, which was coined not by Darwin but by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, is widely misunderstood.

    For starters, there is a lot more to evolution by natural selection than just the survival of the fittest. There must also be a population of replicating entities and variations between them that affect fitness – variation that must be heritable. By itself, survival of the fittest is a dead end. Business people are especially guilty of confusing survival of the fittest with evolution.

    What’s more, although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.

    What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells. Multicellular organisms are made up of cooperating complex cells. Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individual”—

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 17:03:00 UTC

  • “In ‘survival of the fittest’, I understood that ‘fittest’ meant ‘best fit with

    —“In ‘survival of the fittest’, I understood that ‘fittest’ meant ‘best fit with the environment’. But the unfit still don’t fit by that model.”–Claire Rae Randall

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 12:30:00 UTC

  • Survival of the fittest is just a means of overstating the case. When, in fact,

    Survival of the fittest is just a means of overstating the case. When, in fact, we see survival of all but the unfit.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 11:01:00 UTC

  • NUMBERS: POSITIONAL NAMES OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. MATH: THE SCIENCE OF MEASUREMEN

    NUMBERS: POSITIONAL NAMES OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. MATH: THE SCIENCE OF MEASUREMENT OF RELATIONS BY THE USE OF CONSTANT RELATIONS. EXTENSIONS OF ORDINARY LANGUAGE

    Nouns are names. Numbers are names. Numbers are nouns. Numbers evolved as positional names: Nouns.

    We use many positional names: none, one, and some, short medium and tall; small, medium, and large; front, middle, and back; right center and left; port and starboard; daughter, mother, and grandmother;

    Numbers differ from ordinary nouns only in that we produce them by positional naming. Whereas early positional names varied from one two and many, to base ten, or base twelve, or in the twenties, or sixties, each which increases the demand on the human mind; the decimal system of positional naming

    Positional names are produced by a series of consistent operations. We call those series of consistent operations ‘functions’. By analogy we (unfortunately) called all such functions numbers: a convenient fiction.

    Because of positional naming all positional names (numbers) are context independent, scale independent, constant relations, descriptively parsimonious and closed to interpretation.

    So unlike other nouns (names), they are almost impossible to misinterpret by processes of conflation (adding information), and are impossible to further deflate (removing information).

    Any other information we desire to add to the noun,( by which we mean name, positional name, number) must be provided by analogy to a context: application.

    Numbers exist as positional names of constant relations. Those constant relations are scale independent, context dependent, informationally parsimonious, and nearly impossible to conflate with information that will allow for misinterpretation or deception.

    As such, numbers allow us to perform DEDUCTIONS that other names, that lack constant relations, scale independence, context dependence, parsimony, immutability, and incorruptibility do not. Because deduction is possible wherever constant relations, parsimony, immutability, and incorruptibility are present.

    As such, numbers serve as as a method of verbal reasoning within and beyond the limits of human imagination (cognition), short term memory, and ordinary reason.

    Numbers then are simply a very clean set of nouns(positional names), verbs (operations and functions), including tests of positional relations (comparison operators) that allow us to describe, reason and discourse about that which is otherwise beyond our ordinary language, and mental capacity.

    As such we distinguish language, reason, and logic from numbers and measurement, and deduction both artificially and practically. Since while they consist of the same processes, the language of numbers, measurements, and deductions is simply more precise than the language of ordinary language, reason, and logic, if for no other reason that it is nearly closed to ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, deceit, and the fictionalism of superstition, pseudorationalsm, pseudoscience.

    Unfortunately, since to humans, that which allows them to perform such ‘seeming miracles’ that are otherwise beyond comprehension, must be justified, we invented various fictionalisms – primarily idealisms, or what philosophers refer to as platonisms – (mythologies) to explain our actions. To attribute comprehension to that which we did not comprehend. To provide authority by general rule to that which we could only demonstrate through repeated application. So mathematics maintains much of it’s ‘magical language’ and philosophers persist this magical language under the pseudo-rational label of ‘idealism’ or ‘abstraction’. Which roughly translates to “I don’t understand”.

    Perhaps more unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the addition of statistics and the application of mathematics to the inconstant relations of heuristic systems: particularly probability, fiat money, economics, finance, banking and commercial and tax accounting, this language no longer retains informational parsimony, and deducibility, and has instead evolved into a pseudoscience under which ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism and deceit are pervasive.

    Math is a very simple thing. It’s just ordinary language with positional names that allow us to give names and describe transformations to, that which is otherwise beyond our ability to imagine and recall, and therefore describe or reason with.

    Like everything else, if you make up stories of gods, demons, ghosts and monsters, or ‘abstractions’ or ‘ideals’ you can obscure the very simple causality that we seek to discover through science: the systematic attempt to remove error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our language of testimony about the world we perceive, cognate, remember, hypothesize within, act, advocate, negotiate, and cooperate within.

    Numbers are positional names of context independent, scale independent, informationally parsimonious, constant relations and mathematics consists of the grammar of that language.

    In other words, Math is an extension of ordinary language, ordinary reason, and ordinary science: the attempt by which we attempt to obtain information about our world within, above, and below human scale, by the use of rational and physical instrumentation, to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, and deceit from our descriptions, and as a consequence our language, and as a consequence our collective knowledge.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 09:43:00 UTC

  • Via-Negativa is a really intellectualized means of saying ‘survival of the fitte

    Via-Negativa is a really intellectualized means of saying ‘survival of the fittest’

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-27 08:29:00 UTC

  • DEFLATING “SCIENCE” (personal)(sketch) The Discipline of Science Consists of: 1)

    DEFLATING “SCIENCE”

    (personal)(sketch)

    The Discipline of Science Consists of:

    1) An aesthetic discipline – the search for status, power(influence), and profit through the acquisition of decidability (truth) and recipe (knowledge) and ‘stories’ (narratives), by observation, free association, and the elimination of ignorance thru deceit.

    2) A technical discipline – the application and inventions of measures both physical, logical, and social(market) that reduce our possibility of engaging in ignorance thru deceit, leaving only truthful candidates for decidability, recipe and story.

    3) A moral discipline – the means of describing and publishing our measurements, decidability, recipe, and stories by performing due diligence against: ignorance thru deceit, and publishing (speaking) the measurements, decidability, recipes, and ‘stories’ for testing by the market for measurements, decidability, recipes, and stories, consisting of others who share the aesthetic discipline of searching for status, power(influence) and profit through the acquisition of decidability(truth) reciepe(knowledge) and stories(narratives.)

    MAN IS THE MEASURE – THE UNIT OF COMMENSURABILITY

    ( … )

    THE EPISTEMIC METHOD

    There exists only one epistemological method for the discovery of recipes and theories:

    – Observation->perception,

    – Free association-> wayfinding,

    – Hypothesis->construction,

    – Theory->survival from criticism,

    – Law->survival in the market for criticism,

    – Habituation -> survival,

    – Metaphysical inclusion -> replication.

    Within this method we find special cases of the epistemological method: non-contradiction, apriorisms, simplicity – in the same way we discover special cases of prime numbers – and for the same reason: coincidence of simplicities amidst the chaos of possibilities.

    But we eventually run low on simplicities at any given level of precision, and must develop new logical and physical and moral instrumentation in order to obtain sufficient information to discover more simplicities at greater precision.

    All the while defending against our tendencies to engage in error, bias,wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, pseudoscience, pseudorationalism, pseudo-moralism, and deceit.

    THE DIMENSIONS OF TESTING

    To warranty our speech against the dark forces of error, bias, and deceit, we can test each existentially possible dimension – in which humans can act – against error, bias, and deceit.

    – Categorical Consistency – identity

    – Logical Consistency – internal correspondence

    – Empirical Consistency – external correspondence

    – Existential Consistency – operational correspondence

    – Moral Consistency – reciprocal correspondence

    – Scope Consistency – full accounting – dimensional correspondence.

    PARTIAL TESTING : THE SPECIAL CASE: APRIORISM

    1) Apriorism is but a special case of Empiricism, just as Prime Numbers are a special case in mathematics, and just as is any set of operations that returns a natural number; and again, is a special case, just as contradiction is a special case in logic.The laws of triangles form a particularly useful set of special cases.

    2) Few (possibly no non-tautological, or at least non-reductio) aprioristic statements survive scope consistency (I can find none in economics that are actionable).

    3) We can establish free associations(hypotheses) empirically (top down) or constructively (bottom up). But the method of discovery places no truth constraint on the statement. All must survive the full test of dimensions.

    4) This does NOT mean that we cannot use a ‘partial truth’ (an hypothesis that does not survive all six dimensions) to search for further associations (partial search criteria). It is this UTILITY IN SEARCHING that we have converted first into reason, second into rationalism, third into empiricism, fourth in to operationalism, and fifth into scope consistency, and sixth into ‘natural law’ or morality or ‘voluntary cooperation’ – volition which is necessary to ensure the information quality in small groups, just as norms and laws are necessary methods of establishing limits in larger groups, just as money is necessary for producing actionable information in very large groups.

    5) there is but one epistemological method: accumulate information, identify pattern, search for hypothesis, criticize hypothesis to produce a theory, distribute the theory (speak), let others criticize the theory until it fails, or we create a conceptual norm of it (law), and finally until we habituate it entirely (metaphysical judgment).

    THE OUTPUTS OF THE DISCIPLINE OF SCIENCE

    1) Stories (Theories): Theories describe an Opportunity Field.

    2) Decidability (Instruments): Decidability describes objects, relations, values, and comparison operators.

    3) Recipes (Operations or ‘transformations’): Recipes describe actionable knowledge that we can use to transform state.

    4) Measurements (‘Facts’): Measurements describe (obviously) the operations and resulting measurements of objects, relations, and values.

    THIS COMPLETES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

    This process constitutes the completion of the scientific method for the warranty of due diligence of one’s testimony in every domain of human inquiry without exception.

    Now, lets look at its uses…

    THE MEASURE

    1) Meaning (Awareness) ….True enough to imagine a conceptual relationship

    2) Preference ….True enough for me to feel good about.

    3) Actionability ….True enough for me to take actions that produce positive results.

    4) Morality ….True enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me.

    5) Rationality ….True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values.

    6) Decidability ….True enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values.

    7) Truth ….True regardless of all opinions or perspectives.

    8) Tautology ….Tautologically true: in that the two things are equal.

    THE MARKETS

    There is nothing special about physical science other than philosophy was free of COST constraints but held by moral constraints, and science was free of MORAL constraints as well as cost constraints, and judicial law was bound by both.

    Personal

    Associative

    Cooperative

    Reproductive

    Productive

    Commons

    Polities

    DISCIPLINES:

    0 – Sentience (cognitive science – limits of cognition)

    1 – Philosophy (science of truthful speech)

    2 – Law (social/cooperative science)

    3 – Economics (organizational science)

    4 – Mathematics ( science of measurement )

    5 – Physical Science (physical sciences of the universe)

    6 – Technology (physical sciences in materials)

    7 – Engineering, (physical sciences in construction)

    8 – Commerce,

    THE VALUE OF OUTPUTS OF THE DISCIPLINE OF SCIENCE

    Stories (Opportunities [search]) :

    Decidabilty (Choice / Persuade / Decide:)

    Recipies (Transformations):

    Measurements (facts):

    THE DEFLATION OF “THEORY/THEORIES”

    The Story of a theory can fail.

    The Decidability can fail.

    The Recipe can fail

    The Measurements can fail.

    Newton’s Story failed, but his Decidability, and Recipe, and Measurements survive. So while hypotheses fail, it is not necessarily true that theories fail, so much as we continuously improve the precision of those narratives, decidability, recipe and measurements.

    Why? Because the question itself frames the theory. In other words, if we are asking about gravity, newtons question, his decidability, his recipes, all survive and constitute the majority of calculations we perform to this day.

    Measurement provides a means of warranty of due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, and deceit.

    And in fact, we can state that all logical methods constitute some means of measurement. Anything that is testable constitutes a measure. The question is only what dimensions of relations that we wish to measure, and the constancy of those relations.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-26 18:24:00 UTC

  • I would say that our senses cover a wide range of the energy spectrum, and other

    I would say that our senses cover a wide range of the energy spectrum, and other than temperature or sensitivity we are not lacking in available senses nor information processing power.

    I would say that it certainly appears that we can sense everything that we can act upon or react to. Which is all evolution can do for us. Our achievements have been in extending our ability to perceive and act at increasing scales, through the use of cooperation and instrumentation

    I would say that we evolved our reason in concert with our language, and that the limitation of serial utterance of language, and the relatively high cost of speech determines the utility of using stories (think ‘parallelization’) that make use of context (high free association ), and that precision (low context high precision) is the result of our general need to increase sense perception cognition decidability, and retention in concert with our increase in scales of cooperation and instrumentation. ergo: our minds evolved to be limited by our speech.

    As far as I know the demonstrated difference in intellectual performance over the past few centuries has been the conversion of recipe-thinking to general-rule-thinking. And that this has demonstrated that changes in the method of thought dramatically improve the structure of the brain and therefore mind, and the mind’s ability to process information by association. Ergo, seemingly burdensome training of the mind can dramatically increase processing power through the application of new general rules more correspondent with the scale of concepts we utilize. Storytelling, symbols, measures, writing and literacy, reason, rationalism, empiricism, and now testimonialism, all rewire the brain and the mind to use the tools at their disposal – admittedly at some cost of acquisition.

    We observe differences (changes). The limit is information given reaction time, and limit in causal relations. We evolved when we could make lots of use of time. We can process absurd informational density. I am not even sure if we know how to measure it. We can REASON with limited ability.

    So given that some portion of people can master higher precision and greater scale, and some lower precision and lower scale, the question is merely how to construct cooperation among people with different abilities, and we encounter one solution: voluntary exchange, and one problem: dispute resolution. While voluntary cooperation scales indefinitely, dispute resolution is limited to a maximum difference between individuals ability to judge (ergo, dunning kruger).

    Now, the universe cannot ‘lie’. Our imaginations and our brains are filled with folly we increasingly succeed in purging through the development of rules, operations, objects, relations, and values, and saturating the common folk in context and therefore eliminating their need for calculative(rational) equivalency. (environment, information, norms, institutions.

    Ergo some of us can create institutions, norms, information, and environment that the less cognitively able can depend upon as means of obviating their limited ability to calculate, and decreasing the cost of their acquisition of those patterns.

    But an individual regardless of his abilities CAN perform due diligence to the BEST of his abilities. And in fact, that is what we do. And we provide prior restraint in the form of institutions, procedures, laws, norms and traditions to both limit his ability to cause harm to others out of ignorance, and provide contextual, procedural and educational means of enabling him to act within those limits. We do this and always have done it whether it be baby, child, youth, adult, mature adult, or barbarian, slave, serf, freeman, citizen, sovereign.

    Of course, we always seek discounts, and particularly discounts that suit our biases and wishful thinking, and facilitate our use of suggestion, obscurantism and deceit within the limits we can get away with.

    To leap ahead, and seize your concern, The question might be instead, “why does one have the right to ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit if cooperation and non conflict increasingly requires we eliminate them?

    I appreciate your concern for the common man. But in each era, the defenders of the anchors of the prior order of ideas and therefore man, attempt to preserve it – always wrongly. The test is simple: are we adding to the information processing of man or we constraining or reducing it?

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-26 14:21:00 UTC

  • THE RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN THE HIERARCHY OF LAWS 1) Laws of Nature: Equilibria: Th

    THE RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN THE HIERARCHY OF LAWS

    1) Laws of Nature:

    Equilibria: The DISCOVERY of which is the subject of physical science. We can know the first causes of the deterministically equilibrial universe – but we cannot sense them without extensive work.

    2) Laws of Man:

    man is an expensive organism fighting the dark forces of time, ignorance, and scarcity, and must act to acquire, and in acting to acquire, acts rationally (to ensure returns – in the greatest return for the least effort, in the shortest time, with the greatest degree of certainty at the lowest risk); and in acting rationally, must conserve physical, emotional, and mental energy, and expend physical, emotional, and mental effort; and can choose to cooperate with others, prey upon others, or boycott others at all times; and may make use of violence, remuneration, or gossip(lauding/shaming), to do so.

    2) Natural Law:

    Non-Parasitism, leaving Reciprocity as the only possible action, because only by non parasitism do we produce the incentive to cooperate rather than prey upon, retaliate against, or boycott. We can know the first cause of reciprocity through direct observation, and we do know it. We cannot implement reciprocity without extensive work (institutions) which allow us to concentrate our forces.

    3) Natural RIghts:

    The methods of insuring natural law, by an insurer of last resort (militia, military, judiciary, monarchy). We cannot implement those institutions without rules by which institutions may enact processes, independently of subjective opinion.

    4) Property in toto:

    the means of commensurability (measurement) between our actions: changes in state of property in toto exist in reality (laws of nature), limited by the abilities of man’s action (laws of man), violate or do not violate reciprocity (rule of law), and are insured or not insured by institutions (natural rights), and can be measured or not measured by changes in property in toto.

    FRAMING:

    Laws of Nature > (limits of, methods of transformation)

    … Laws of Man > limits of, methods of action)

    … … Laws of Cooperation > (limits of and methods of cooperation.)

    … … … Laws of Information > ( limits of and methods true Speech)

    … … … … Laws of Sentience > (limits and methods of ‘thinking’)

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-21 11:44:00 UTC

  • MEASUREMENTS RENDER COMMENSURABILITY 1) Numbers render countable objects commens

    MEASUREMENTS RENDER COMMENSURABILITY

    1) Numbers render countable objects commensurable

    2) Measurements render relations commensurable

    3) Physics renders physical causes commensurable.

    4) Money renders goods and services commensurable

    5) Property renders cooperation (ethics, morals, politics) commensurable

    6) Reason renders words and concepts commensurable.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-20 11:18:00 UTC

  • IMAGINE A VERY DIFFERENT WORLD…. Imagine how much smarter you would be, the en

    IMAGINE A VERY DIFFERENT WORLD….

    Imagine how much smarter you would be, the entire population would be, if the same increase in intelligence made possible by physical science was made possible by operational science?

    In other words, imaging how much smarter people were after literacy. (about a full standard deviation)

    Imagine how much smarter people were after mass education in the sciences. (about a full standard deviation)

    We have some idea how much dumber people are because of NOT teaching history, economics, grammar, logic, rhetoric.

    What would happen if instead of being saturated by lies, you lived your life in a world of informational truths – at least in the commons. (I suspect it would produce a full standard deviation).

    Your IQ is a genetic thing, but the application of it is dependent upon the quality and quantity of information MINUS the effort you expend in falsification of it.

    If the market for goods, services, and information, increases in productivity and quality (and our assumption about man as well) increases in optimism, undrer the incremental expansion of law from violence to theft, to fraud, to disinformation… then why ca’nt we do the same with information by the same means?

    Why is it so hard to ask for journalists, public intellectuals, and politicians, all of whom distribute information into the market, to warranty their speech the same way we warranty goods, services, and other information that can cause harm?

    Are you saying that more harm is done by marketers than is done by politicians and intellectuals, and journalists?

    Are you crazy?

    these people almost to a man, lie for a living.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-18 11:29:00 UTC