Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • What I don’t like myself, about american truth telling. —“The U.S. and Finland

    What I don’t like myself, about american truth telling.

    —“The U.S. and Finland both lean heavily towards the truth and directness, but what constitutes truth and directness varies greatly across cultures. Whereas Americans are comfortable taking liberty with the truth when it comes to marketing, selling and getting the business, to a Finn it can sound like lies. You see, the Finns believe that their words are their commitments. They establish their credibility by understating their abilities, and delivering what they promise. Period.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 16:23:00 UTC

  • FAME AND INTELLECTUAL INCENTIVES We gain fame by inventing new tools. We do not

    FAME AND INTELLECTUAL INCENTIVES

    We gain fame by inventing new tools.

    We do not gain fame by inventing new prohibitions.

    Maybe no one invented Propertarianism and Testimonialism before, because the central problems they faced were advancement of utility rather than constraint of falsehoods.

    You can see Hibert didn’t understand his own arguments.

    He doesn’t help us expand the knowledge of mathematics, he just tells us how to ensure that we haven’t erred.

    But you know, the 20th century has a lot of pseudoscientific

    If math is no longer correspondent, it is just a language game.

    Or stated, if math is not used in measurement it is just a puzzle, not a problem.

    While I am trying to create rule of law for heterogeneous polities, I am doing so largely by prohibiting falsehoods. The central problem we face today, is the conflict between authoritarian leftism of diverse polities, and egalitarian libertarianism of homogenous polities. Just as the enlightenment problem was one between the authoritarian state-church mysticism, and the egalitarian rational emergent middle classes. Just as the late roman problem was one between the totalitarian christians of the eastern empire, and the egalitarian stoics and pagans of the western empire. Just as between the establishment and the philosophers in athens. This battle seems never to end.

    I have a vision of a future where Testimonialism is so fully integrated into our language, that the transformation from our current language is as monumental the transformations from mystical, to religious, to rational, probabilistic, and to scientific language.

    At that point, no one remembers (or cares about) the invention of Testimonialism and Propertarianism. They live it every day. They care only about the constitution that makes government of a heterogeneous population possible.

    If a man has a reason to not be remembered, I would love to not be remembered for that reason.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 09:01:00 UTC

  • TRUTH DEFINITIONS Added: Intuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, un

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/05/29/definitions-truth/UPDATED TRUTH DEFINITIONS

    Added:

    Intuition: (sentimental expression) – an uncritical, uncriticized, response to information that expresses a measure of existing biases (priors).

    Preference (rational expression) : a justification of one’s biases (wants).

    Opinion: (justificationism) – a justified uncritical statement given the limits of one’s knowledge about external questions.

    Position: (criticism) – a theoretical statement that survives one’s available criticisms about external questions.

    Demonstrated Preference: – Evidence of intuition, preference, opinion, and position as demonstrated by your actions, independent of your statements.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 04:55:00 UTC

  • STATES LIE AND TEACH US TO LIE (profound)(at least for me) The more I work on th

    STATES LIE AND TEACH US TO LIE

    (profound)(at least for me)

    The more I work on the subject of truth, the more I respect our anglo, north sea, and greek ancestors for just how close they were to truth: they were a very scientific civilization.

    And conversely, the more I work on the subject of truth, the more I am convinced that it is because government never really evolved to organized large-scale production, with a need to justify falsehoods as ‘good’.

    The State and State-Production, Propaganda, and Deceit are all interdependent technologies. Whereas partnerships, familial production, the jury, and truth-telling are all interdependent technologies.

    States lie and teach us to lie.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 02:09:00 UTC

  • TECHNIQUE: JUSTIFICATION (MORAL) AND CRITICISM (AMORAL) You can Justify your sta

    TECHNIQUE: JUSTIFICATION (MORAL) AND CRITICISM (AMORAL)

    You can Justify your statements (as moral) if I trust you, and Criticize your statements (as scientific) if I don’t – or more importantly, if I cannot. Or worse, if it is not a matter of honesty but a matter of error and bias.

    A jury cannot tell the truth of things, it can only determine if you acted rationally given the information at your disposal (operational test of believability of testimony given one’s of incentives), and whether your testimony corresponds with the testimony of others.

    The intellectual disciplines, whether hard science or lacking hard science, all operate by the same process: testimony (publishing).

    Justification (positive tests) evolved out of moral justification: adherence to norms and rules and assumptions.

    Criticism (negative tests) evolved out of scientific criticism: tests of the limits of norms, rules and assumptions.

    Justification is understandable for those things at human scale that we can sympathetically test by experience, and Criticism is necessary for those things we cannot sympathetically test, are not at human scale, and we cannot sympathetically test by experience.

    This is because in matters of morals and norms we are chiefly looking for malfeasance: deceit.

    And in matters of science we are chiefly looking for error and cognitive bias.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 02:02:00 UTC

  • Moral Objectivity or Relativity?

    [M]orality is as absolute as mathematics. Everything else is not morality but competitive strategy: contractual variations upon objective morality. Just as all law is as absolute as mathematics but all legislation contractual variation (or command).

    The conflation of morality with strategy, and law with command is a long-standing problem in rational philosophy. The law and morality are identical in content. Group Strategy and Group Contract are merely utilitarian. Cooperation evolved after individual survival. For cooperation to be rational it must be mutually beneficial. For it to be mutually beneficial it must be (in the aggregate) non-parasitic. We raise our children, demonstrate kin selection with kin, and we cooperate with non-kin, and we compete with those with whom we do not cooperate. So: Productive Fully informed. Warrantied. Voluntary Transfer Free of Negative Externality of the same criteria equals beneficial cooperation. Morality is an absolute. Norms are merely tactics. Legislation is not necessarily lawful. Norms are not necessarily moral. As such, we can measure whether some cultures are more moral than others, by measuring the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding) that is suppressed by law and norm. So not only is morality absolute, but the relative moral content of different cultures is absolute. That this difference determines economic velocity, and economic velocity affords us greater morality (if we choose it) is the more interesting area of inquiry. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Moral Objectivity or Relativity?

    [M]orality is as absolute as mathematics. Everything else is not morality but competitive strategy: contractual variations upon objective morality. Just as all law is as absolute as mathematics but all legislation contractual variation (or command).

    The conflation of morality with strategy, and law with command is a long-standing problem in rational philosophy. The law and morality are identical in content. Group Strategy and Group Contract are merely utilitarian. Cooperation evolved after individual survival. For cooperation to be rational it must be mutually beneficial. For it to be mutually beneficial it must be (in the aggregate) non-parasitic. We raise our children, demonstrate kin selection with kin, and we cooperate with non-kin, and we compete with those with whom we do not cooperate. So: Productive Fully informed. Warrantied. Voluntary Transfer Free of Negative Externality of the same criteria equals beneficial cooperation. Morality is an absolute. Norms are merely tactics. Legislation is not necessarily lawful. Norms are not necessarily moral. As such, we can measure whether some cultures are more moral than others, by measuring the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding) that is suppressed by law and norm. So not only is morality absolute, but the relative moral content of different cultures is absolute. That this difference determines economic velocity, and economic velocity affords us greater morality (if we choose it) is the more interesting area of inquiry. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • MORAL RELATIVITY OR OBJECTIVITY? In the presence of necessary operations we are

    MORAL RELATIVITY OR OBJECTIVITY?

    In the presence of necessary operations we are left with moral absolutism, and normative deviation from morality.

    Morality is as absolute as mathematics. Everything else is not morality but competitive strategy: contractual variations. Just as all law is as absolute as mathematics but all legislation contractual variation (or command).

    The conflation of morality with strategy, and law with command is a long-standing problem in rational philosophy.

    The law and morality are identical in content. Group Strategy and Group Contract are merely utilitarian.

    Cooperation evolved after individual survival. For cooperation to be rational it must be mutually beneficial. For it to be mutually beneficial it must be (in the aggregate) non-parasitic.

    We raise our children, demonstrate kin selection with kin, and we cooperate with non-kin, and we compete with those with whom we do not cooperate.

    So:

    Productive

    Fully informed.

    Warrantied.

    Voluntary Transfer

    Free of Negative Externality of the same criteria

    equals

    beneficial cooperation.

    Morality is an absolute. Norms are merely tactics.

    Legislation is not necessarily lawful. Norms are not necessarily moral.

    As such, we can measure whether some cultures are more moral than others, by measuring the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding) that is suppressed by law and norm.

    So not only is morality absolute, but the relative moral content of different cultures is absolute.

    That this difference determines economic velocity, and economic velocity affords us greater morality (if we choose it) is the more interesting area of inquiry.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-16 07:43:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE WORD. It’s interesting how concerned Ukrainians are about keeping their

    UKRAINE WORD.

    It’s interesting how concerned Ukrainians are about keeping their word.

    It’s a beautiful thing.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-15 07:22:00 UTC

  • PROPERTARAINISM ALLOWS YOU TO WRITE PROOFS. Now, a proof is not a ‘truth’, it is

    PROPERTARAINISM ALLOWS YOU TO WRITE PROOFS.

    Now, a proof is not a ‘truth’, it is a test of existential possibility. It just says something is possible. That’s all it tells you. But just as a proof in math helps you grasp very complex processes, a proof in human action allows you to grasp very complex processes.

    Propertarian proofs are not much harder to write than mathematical proofs. There are a very limited number of operations, and a very limited number of categories of property to consider.

    Within a year or two I will be able to teach people how to write praxeological ‘proofs’, to either test if something is possible, or challenge whether something is possible.

    At that point, psychology will be limited to the study of cognitive biases, and economics will be divided into deceptions (disinformation by policy) and truths (institutional improvements in the means of cooperation).

    And we will be able to demonstrate how to write strictly constructed law free of judicial activism.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-15 05:59:00 UTC