Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • YOU ARE WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVILEGE —“White privilege isn’t just for white peopl

    YOU ARE WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVILEGE

    —“White privilege isn’t just for white people. It’s a privilege to live in a world with us in it.”— Eli Harman

    —“We tell the truth, seek the truth, trust one another, rely on property rights, the jury, the militia, and individual responsibility – all so that the rest of the world doesn’t have to. White privilege is a universal good.”— Curt Doolittle

    —“Even with all the mistakes we made, we still managed to drag humanity out of mysticism, ignorance, illness, despotism and poverty – albeit, kicking and screaming all the way. We shall never be heroes to our debtors. However, we should never apologize for what we have done for man. So, that said, Sorry, no, we’re not sorry. We are sorry that we didn’t save mankind for mysticism, ignorance, illness, despotism, and poverty, earlier, faster, or better. But I am not, we are not, sorry for having done so, and reaping the benefits of doing it, and continuing to do it.”—Curt Doolittle

    —“Privilege is earned by a people enforcing high costs on its members. Abandoning mysticism, deceit, cheating, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, dual ethics, tribalism, familialism, magic, ignorance, certainty, justification, unearned status, hierarchy and despotism, and admit to yourself the truth of the failure of your culture to achieve the same – is a very high cost. You can have the privilege of white people too, if you abandon your mysticism, deceit, cheating, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, dual ethics, tribalism, familialism, magic, ignorance, certainty, justification, unearned status, hierarchy and despotism. “—Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-15 08:06:00 UTC

  • RULE OF LAW IS SACRED TO WESTERN MAN –“our prophet is sacred to us”– Rule of l

    RULE OF LAW IS SACRED TO WESTERN MAN

    –“our prophet is sacred to us”–

    Rule of law is more sacred than our lives. Rule of law requires we speak, and understand the truth, not myth. The reason for the velocity of western advancement in all fields is that we tell the truth whether it hurts or not, whether it offends or not, a man must earn respect by speaking the truth, not myth, rather than receive respect for his folly. Western man has systematically eliminated error from mans mind by demanding the truth in all walks of life.

    As a political question then, why does a man have a right to believe false things? We cannot stop him from his beliefs in false things, but we can stop him from spreading his beliefs in false things. We can prevent it from his speech. We can prevent it from his publications. We can prevent it from his commerce, his law, and his politics.

    The source of western exceptionalism is truth telling – even if it hurts.

    Muslims living in the west are not given special privilege to escape our most sacred value: truth.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-12 05:13:00 UTC

  • JUSTIFICATION VS CRITICISM : WARRANTY IN NORMATIVE CONTRACT VS WARRANTY IN EXPLO

    JUSTIFICATION VS CRITICISM : WARRANTY IN NORMATIVE CONTRACT VS WARRANTY IN EXPLORATION INDEPENDENT OF NORMS

    First, what do we mean by “knowledge”, and of those things we mean, what is merely allegory, and what is necessity?

    Little of the universe is absent regular patterns. However, some are very noisy and difficult to find. Some are very subtle and hard to find. Some are either too large or too small to observe without relying upon instruments, and others must be deduced using logical instruments. We call these regular patterns ‘information’.

    Humans can modify the real world in a variety of ways, leaving information behind. We can do this as simply leaving evidence of passage through a forces or field, or in archeological evidence. We can do this intentionally with cave paintings and writing. And we can do it with our architecture, monuments and earth works. We can do this by the memories that we transfer between generations through repetition of experience, advice and story.

    A computer must run a program to create the experience we see before us when using it. Information must mix with memories, to create the experience we call ‘knowing’.

    Knowledge is reconstructed from information by mixing with existing memories, just as meaning is transferred by the use of analogies to transfer properties. So information exists without a knowing subject. And that information may be very good, or very bad at producing the experience of knowledge in a subject.

    But in colloquial language we seem to have an intellectual bias that wants to separate untrue knowledge from true, or at least tested, knowledge thereby conflating QUALITY of knowledge and EXISTENCE of knowledge. We can forgive philosophers this common error, since they are concerned most often with the persuasive quality (truth) of propositions.

    And if we look carefully at the discussion of ‘knowledge’ we find philosophers conflating (a)existence/awareness, (b) risk/willingness to act, (c) truth content.

    And moreover, truth content consists of two additional properties: (c.i) persuasive power assuming an honest participant, and (c.ii) parsimonious correspondence with reality (what we mean by ‘true’).

    The reason that discussion of knowledge is problematic is that this term is a sort of catch-all for these separate properties. And so like many concepts, argument is a problem of conflating properties, each of which exists on a separate spectrum.

    “Knowing” could mean ‘awareness gained through experience’, or ‘given what we know from experience, I am willing to act upon it’, or knowing could mean ‘through experience we believe this is true’.

    So I think that the only POSSIBLE meaning of the category ‘knowledge’ is ‘awareness of a regular pattern that allows us to predict something, even if it is only to predict in the sense of identifying something as part of a category – the most simple prediction possible.

    And then we have the persuasive power of knowledge in convincing the self or others, first to state something is possible, then second to state something is worthy of action (risk).

    For example, no one ‘knows’ how to build a computer (or a cheeseburger for that matter) in the sense that they possess knowledge of construction of the constituent parts. So some knowledge can never be centralized except as a hierarchy of abstractions – trust in one another’s claim to actionable knowledge.

    For these reasons (the number of causal axis in the category we call knowledge), I think we cannot improve upon casting knowledge as:

    (a) awareness (existence) of a regular pattern combining information and memory to create an experience, which we then also remember.

    (b) all knowledge is theoretical, and open to revision (no premises are certain)

    where theoretical propositions contain both:

    (d) truth content(parsimonious correspondence with reality).

    (c) persuasive power (sufficiency) in an honest discourse(risk reduction/reward increase),

    JUSTIFICATOIN VERSUS CRITICISM = CONTRACT VS TRUTH

    So I my problem is that ‘justified true belief’ is not false under the test of risk, but is not meaningful under the test of analytic truth. In this sense, it depends upon which thing we are talking about: willingness to act (justified true belief), willingness of others to insure actions (contractual justified true belief), and analytic truth (parsimonious correspondence with reality).

    If a man gives witness in testimony and later on we find a video of the events, and it turns out that he is wrong, but that it is easy to understand how he was mistaken, we do not consider his testimony false. We only warranty what rational man is capable of warranting.

    In science we warranty that we have done due diligence: we have criticized our own arguments. We testify that we have done due diligence – we have criticized our own position.

    In this sense both justified true belief is necessary for contractual propositions, while critical rationalism (warranty) is the only epistemological possibility we can rely upon.

    The fact that argument evolved out of law (debate in the polis) probably explains the origin of conflation of contractual justification according to the norms of the polity, with the pursuit of analytic truth in epistemological exploration.

    The fact that most human action is contractual, and very little of our lives epistemic, explains the persistence of both the contractual (justificationary),and epistemic (critical scientific) as method, and the conflation of the term knowledge as a general term covering both contractual and epistemic uses.

    Norms guide most human actions. Norms are habituated and therefore reduced to intuitions to function. The norms are contractual (justificationary – so that we avoid blame). Science by contrast, produces not actions but testimony. The problem is inverted. In science all we produce is testimony regardless of normative rules. In normative relations we produce actions that we justify as according to the normative rules of society.

    So we testify that we were justified according to norms in contractual relations, and we testify that our statements are free of norms, imaginary, error, bias, habituated deception and outright deception, in science.

    This is why science is a luxury good: it’s terribly expensive, and scientific testimony is terribly expensive. Justification allows us to use scientifically tested or evolutionarily tested general rules in real world actions – contractual relations.

    And must. We cannot create general rules out of justificationary testimony, only out of critical testimony. For this reason, both justificationary and critical testimony will persist forever. While our warranties must be given by critical means, our testimony is forever justificationary. (I think that is fairly profound).

    As far as I know, albeit in brief, this is the most accurate statement of our extant understanding of the question of knowledge, and why it has been so troublesome a concept.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-10 16:10:00 UTC

  • JUSTIFICATION VS CRITICISM : WARRANTY IN CONTRACT VS EXPLORATION (from elsewhere

    JUSTIFICATION VS CRITICISM : WARRANTY IN CONTRACT VS EXPLORATION

    (from elsewhere)

    James Stevens Valliant :

    Just wanted to say that you argued this topic quite well. And I was trying to think if I could give you any language that would help you in the future.

    You have one position that I think is correct, and one that I think you should consider modifying. First, I agree that knowledge is reconstructed from information, just as meaning is transferred by the use of analogies to transfer properties. So information exists without a knowing subject. And that information may be very good, or very bad at producing the experience of knowledge in a subject.

    Second is the problem of conflating (a)awareness, (b)risk, (c)truth content, and truth content consist of two additional properties: (c.i)persuasive power, and (c.ii)parsimonious correspondence with reality (what we mean by ‘true’).

    The reason that discussion of knowledge is problematic is that this term is a sort of catch-all for these separate properties. And so like many concepts, argument is a problem of conflating properties, each of which exists on a separate spectrum.

    “Knowing” could mean ‘awareness gained through experience’, or ‘given what we know from experience, I am willing to act upon it’, or knowing could mean ‘through experience we believe this is true’.

    –“If you think that knowledge is something other than true belief, then we also strongly differ. For that old fashioned kind of knowledge, contact with reality is required. But at least you know that I know what we normally call “science” already assumes a mountain of knowledge.”–

    So I think that the only POSSIBLE meaning of the category ‘knowledge’ is ‘awareness of a regular pattern that allows us to predict something, even if it is only to predict in the sense of identifying something as part of a category – the most simple prediction possible.

    And then we have the persuasive power of knowledge in convincing the self or others, first to state something is possible, then second to state something is worthy of action (risk).

    For example, no one ‘knows’ how to build a computer (or a cheeseburger for that matter) in the sense that they possess knowledge of construction of the constituent parts. So some knowledge can never be centralized except as a hierarchy of abstractions – trust in one another’s claim to actionable knowledge.

    For these reasons (the number of causal axis in the category we call knowledge), I think we cannot improve upon casting knowledge as awareness, all knowledge theoretical, where theoretical contains both persuasive power in an honest discourse(risk reduction), and truth content( parsimonious correspondence with reality).

    So I my problem is that ‘justified true belief’ is not false under the test of risk, but is not meaningful under the test of analytic truth. In this sense, it depends upon which thing we are talking about: willingness to act (justified true belief), willingness of others to insure actions (contractual justified true belief), and analytic truth (parsimonious correspondence with reality). If a man gives witness in testimony and later on we find a video of the events, and it turns out that he is wrong, but that it is easy to understand how he was mistaken, we do not consider his testimony false. We only warranty what rational man is capable of warranting. In science we warranty that we have done due diligence: we have criticized our own arguments. We testify that we have done due diligence – we have criticized our own position.

    In this sense both justified true belief is necessary for contractual propositions, while critical rationalism (warranty) is the only epistemological possibility.

    The fact that argument evolved out of law (debate in the polis) probably explains the origin of conflation of contractual justification according to the norms of the polity, with the pursuit of analytic truth in epistemological exploration.

    The fact that most human action is contractual, and very little of it epistemic, explains the persistence of both the contractual (justificationary),and epistemic (critical scientific) as practices, and the conflation of the term knowledge as a general term covering both contractual and epistemic uses. Norms guide most human actions. Norms are habituated and therefore reduced to intuitions to function. The norms is contractual (justificationary – so that we avoid blame). Science produces not actions but testimony. The problem is inverted. In science all we produce is testimony regardless of normative rules. In normative relations we produce actions that we justify as according to the normative rules of society. So we testify that we were justified according to norms in contractual relations, and we testify that our statements are free of norms, imaginary, error, bias, habituated deception and outright deception, in science. This is why science is a luxury good: it’s terribly expensive, and scientific testimony is terribly expensive. Justification allows us to use scientifically tested or evolutionarily tested general rules in real world actions – contracts.

    And must. We cannot create general rules out of justificationary testimony, only out of critical testimony. For this reason, both justificationary and critical testimony will persist forever. While our warranties must be given by critical means, our testimony is forever justificationary. (I think that is fairly profound).

    As far as I know, albeit in brief, this is the most accurate statement of our extant understanding of the question of knowledge, and why it has been so troublesome a concept.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    NOTE: I have Kenneth blocked for personal attacks in defense of his ideological position, so I can’t see his posts. But I can understand your frustration. There is a reason why people feel they want to externalize responsibility for actions. And there is a long standing tradition of attempting to treat imaginary concepts as existential rather than experiential. And worse, in German, Jewish and Islamic cultures (not Anglo or Sinic) this is an attempt to create authoritarianism by abstracting the existential into the spiritual (metaphysical or platonic world.) So you have to look at such arguments as non logical, non-truthful, but mere justificationary attempts to establish traditional textual authority – something learned from monotheism. I am not really finished with my analysis of suggestion, loading, framing, overloading, conflation, and obscurantism as rationalist means of deception. I think a quick read of Kevin MacDonald’s analysis of the deceptive argumentative technique of Critique is probably very helpful to most – we can trace monotheistic argument, through greek, christian, and enlightenment, german and jewish counter-enlightenment thinkers. But the more I study the problem the more obvious it is that the purpose of science is to eliminate authority and the purpose of rationalism in all its forms, is to construct scriptural authority out of cunning but deceptive arguments. Science uses logic(internal consistency), experiment (external correspondence), operational definitions (existential possibility), falsification (parsimony), to create a testimony that one is speaking truthfully and non-allegorically, and his work is as free of imaginary content, whether it be error, bias, habituated (unconscious) deception or intentional deception – even if we never know if we speak the most parsimonious theory possible.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-10 07:39:00 UTC

  • Information is the correct metaphor. I am not certain we can improve upon our cu

    Information is the correct metaphor. I am not certain we can improve upon our current understanding of knowledge as information – meaning necessary to change state – and I am not certain that we can improve upon what is currently called the scientific method – except that if we introduce costs and objective morality into the set of warranties, it would serve as the universal method for warrantied theories. I am more concerned now that we have largely managed to eliminate bias and error, that we eliminate bias, deception, fraud and theft from theories – at which point all human knowledge can be judged by the same means regardless of discipline.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-07 09:30:00 UTC

  • BUT SINCE YOU GAVE ME AN EXCUSE TO RIDICULE ARGUMENTATION ETHICS I HAVE TO SEIZE

    BUT SINCE YOU GAVE ME AN EXCUSE TO RIDICULE ARGUMENTATION ETHICS I HAVE TO SEIZE IT.

    Argumentation ethics relies on the weapon of contradiction. This mighty weapon works precisely nowhere except in a court where property is based upon high trust moral constraint that is itself impossible under rothbardian ethics. (That is a lovely contradiction.)

    Argumentation ethics are nonsense. Property rights exist as a property of contractual relations. In the absence of contractual relations, violence is our greatest competitive asset. Libertarians (Libertines) attempt to escape the high cost of using violence. They do this for a variety of reasons. FOr self congratualtory imaginary status. To escape their powerless inferiority. To avoid the cost of policing using violence. To avoid the risk of applying violence. In other words, libertines conduct a fraud – free riding by fraud.

    Certainly progressives don’t care about argumentation. Certainly conservatives advance and use violence. But just like libertines, progressives attempt to free ride. TO gain status over their superiors who make their privileges possible by the organized use of violence.

    Under Propertarian ethics and Aristocratic Egalitarianism, the use of violence to actively suppress, institute property rights throughout the scale, and demand truth-speaking, is a defensive, moral and wise, activity.

    And right now, WE NEED TO START USING ORGANIZED VIOLENCE TO SAVE OUR PEOPLE

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-07 08:27:00 UTC

  • A THEORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JUSTIFICATION, CRITICISM AND MORALITY If em

    A THEORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JUSTIFICATION, CRITICISM AND MORALITY

    If empiricists are correct, and that all memories are the product of observations (both internal and external), and that intuition serves as a search engine(which cognitive scientists seem to agree at present), and imagination a hypothetical engine(again a search engine), then all mental content originates with reality, all knowledge as theory, and the function of thinking, reasoning, and science are to criticize imaginary intuitions, hypotheses to see if they can take the standing of theories (which is analogous to belief), and law (which is analogous to norm, ritual, or sacred tenet).

    The difference between justificationary and critical points of view buried unconsciously in our language, is that feeling, belief, knowledge and truth describe a justificationary epistemology, and intuition, hypothesis, theory and law describe a critical epistemology.

    I would add that I believe (hypothesize) justificationary epistemology is necessary in highly interdependent small polities where most reproduction and production functions as a commons in which all members are shareholders; and therefore the use of most property, is as common property, and so even normative rules (the normative commons) must be justified to others. Whereas under an advanced economy, we are individual actors, and need not justify to others how we make use of resources – only that we do no harm to them. Under both Justification and Criticism we must warranty our words and deeds. Just as we do in all of life.

    This is probably the correct interpretation of why we evolved from systems of beliefs (justifications within a commons) to systems of theories (criticisms under individual property rights) – we must claim knowledge is ethically and morally obtained and practiced. But what constitutes moral action changes as property is increasingly privatized. We move from needing permission to use property, to not. But in the process, we increasingly privatize responsibility for our actions as well.

    It appears that all justification and criticism are merely the conditions of warranty under different structures of property. And that we have increasingly applied our cooperative methodology to those areas of the world where cooperation is no longer involved.

    In other words, it was necessary to privatize property to gain the normative permission to seek the truth. Having privatized it, we have now obtained a condition where we see that the only truth possible is critical. And having abandoned morality from the pursuit of truth, it appears I am unconsciously, unknowingly, and unwittingly, reinserting it into the search for truth as a constraint upon the externalities produced by our search, in an effort to constrain people who would take advantage of the justificationary system for criminal, unethical, and immoral purposes to which it has been put for the past century and a half.

    More to come as I drill into this further.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-07 03:29:00 UTC

  • WHATEVER TRUTH WE CHASE IS ACCIDENTAL – WE NEGOTIATE. I am increasingly convince

    WHATEVER TRUTH WE CHASE IS ACCIDENTAL – WE NEGOTIATE.

    I am increasingly convinced that all thought, all conversation, all discourse, and all debate is not truth seeking but negotiation – whether we believe or desire to pursue the truth or not. And that those few of us who do seek truth only happen to do so because it coincidentally reflects our negotiating strategy.

    I am fairly sure that this is correct. And that alternative explanations are remnants of the search for tribally homogeneous means of persuasion under the presumption of equality of interest and relative ability.

    When in our present condition, in the absence of economic dependence upon the family and tribe, it appears that we participate in a division of knowledge and labor at individualistic atomicity, and that our different interests cannot be rationally accommodated – nor need they be. And attempts to do so are always and forever attempts at privatization.

    And as such voluntary exchange (operational truth testing) and prices (amplitude of value) act as our only operationally possible forms of reason. So` the question is not what is best, but how to enable us to make use of one another’s information and demand, with the least distortion (dishonesty).

    I just can’t decide whether it’s beautiful or horrible….

    Michael Philip:

    “Social negotiation”

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 08:47:00 UTC

  • THE HIGH TAX OF TRUTH TELLING It is a terribly high tax – a payment into the com

    THE HIGH TAX OF TRUTH TELLING

    It is a terribly high tax – a payment into the commons – to speak the truth, to speak it truthfully, to promise, to hold one’s promise, to take only what is voluntarily exchanged, productive, and free of negative externality. That is why no other people does it. No one other than Germanic man. It is terribly expensive. And why we do it may be traditional, or genetic, a combination of the two.

    Over the past century and a half, the counter-enlightenment efforts of the Germans and the Jews have taught us to lie again, through the use of new media, just as they forced us to stop learning the truth by closing the greek schools and then forcibly taught us to lie in the first place, via the new media of the church and bible. We rescued ourselves from the system of lies after more than a millennium of enforced ignorance and deception. And then the anglo evangelical puritans, and now, after the Germans have been conquered, anglo neo-puritans, have allied with the Cosmopolitan Jews and taught us to lie, justified lying as in the common good, ridiculed us for telling the truth, taken over our academy (seminaries) and our government, and our media (churches), and forced our children to listen to lies, to lie, and to obey lies.

    Truth telling is enough. With courts of common law, property rights including the physical, normative, and informational commons, and the requirement for productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality – and its inverse: the prohibition on involuntary imposition of costs – we can, each of us, police the division of knowledge and labor at our own discretion, according to our fragmentary knowledge and ability, and use truth and violence to construct our unique, prosperous, innovative, moral order, and eradicate from government the parasitism we have eliminated from tribe, and locality, and centralized in the bureaucratic state.

    This is what the high tax of truth telling, and the equally high tax of using violence to enforce truth telling buys us: the most prosperous and innovative society on earth, that leads man toward his potential of being the god he imagines directs him, but who, if exists, seeks only to succeed him, as do all parents.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 04:26:00 UTC

  • The world is just too short of good criticism. Why? Because its expensive. And p

    The world is just too short of good criticism.

    Why? Because its expensive.

    And production of uncritical argument is cheap.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 14:11:00 UTC