Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • Tonight I’m reminded that Hayek was a gentleman and didn’t refute Keynes because

    Tonight I’m reminded that Hayek was a gentleman and didn’t refute Keynes because he thought it was obvious, and that it would be ungentlemanly to criticize him too harshly.

    Friedman was unapologetically argumentative, and Rothbard was radically so. Sowell is at least apologetically argumentative.

    The conservatives have abandoned direct discourse and taken the debate to its constituency on moral grounds and entirely ignores debate with their opposition, focusing only on criticism.

    Which of these approaches to political discourse is empirically superior? Which can we demonstrate has been more effective at altering the course of policy?

    Politics is not nice. It is not sweet. It is a bloody, brutal, dishonest battle for control over teh means of extracting and distributing resources, profits, opportunity and privilege and the stakes are demonstrably high. Perhaps at the cost of the civilization itself.

    The period where we could return to civil discourse is done. The empire must end. They tyranny of the majority must end. Either fight for freedom or lose what you have left of it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 23:06:00 UTC

  • ON POLITICAL DISCOURSE: (sketch) Never give up Seek the objective truth Incentiv

    ON POLITICAL DISCOURSE:

    (sketch)

    Never give up

    Seek the objective truth

    Incentives expose the truth

    Never seek agreement or consent

    Demand your property and voluntary exchange

    Ridicule and shame justifications for theft

    Majority rule is theft by threat of violence.

    There is no reason we cannot use government,

    To facilitate exchanges rather than justify thefts.

    The left is a kleptocracy

    Ridicule, shame, criticize it.

    If necessary, fight, kill and destroy it.

    The source of property is the application of organized violence to prevent involuntary transfers from circumventing the need for voluntary exchange.

    Resistance isn’t futile.

    But action is more effective.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 22:59:00 UTC

  • DOING YOUR INTELLECTUAL LAUNDRY IN PUBLIC I love it. Love doing it. Love partici

    DOING YOUR INTELLECTUAL LAUNDRY IN PUBLIC

    I love it. Love doing it. Love participating in it. Love benefitting from it. Love advocating it.

    We needed representative government. We needed publishers and distributors. We needed Libraries. Mailing lists. Memberships. Journals. And bookstores.

    Today we need Google, SSRN, blogs, auction sites, and an internet connection.

    What we dont need are copyrights, paywalls, and representative government.

    (PS:Conflation has its uses)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-15 10:06:00 UTC

  • IF I AM CORRECT, THEN ETHICAL INTUITIONISM IS CORRECT But they authors just didn

    IF I AM CORRECT, THEN ETHICAL INTUITIONISM IS CORRECT

    But they authors just didn’t have Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe to help them. (I did.)

    What Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe didn’t have, was the past twenty years of scientific research to rely upon.

    And the diverse set of ethical intuitions are not diverse at all.

    He he he he… It’s awesome.

    “All rights are reducible to property rights.” True. “All moral and ethical intuitions are reducible to property rights” is true also. The first is a legal statement. The second is a biological one.

    Libertarians figure it out. Not all of it. But they did it.

    I just put the cherry on the topping.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-14 15:43:00 UTC

  • READ. USE IN DEBATE. Reality needs assistance in the face of ideology myth and d

    http://keithhennessey.com/2013/09/12/observations-paper/MUST READ. USE IN DEBATE.

    Reality needs assistance in the face of ideology myth and dogma.

    CRISIS BULLET POINTS

    Taleb is right: We must not create fragility. (My argument is that we must preserve calculability if we use fiat credit. )

    SUMMARY

    “Narrative 3: “Everyone” was at fault: Wall Street, the government, and our wider society. People in all types of institutions and as individuals became blasé about risk-taking and leverage, creating a bubble across a wide range of investments and countries.”

    http://keithhennessey.com/2013/09/12/observations-paper/

    http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2009/11/23-narrative-elliott-baily

    http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2009/11/23-narrative-elliott-baily/1123_narrative_elliott_baily.pdf

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-12 15:10:00 UTC

  • SPEAK IN A MANNER COMPREHENSIBLE TO THE COMMON PEOPLE “To speak in a manner inte

    SPEAK IN A MANNER COMPREHENSIBLE TO THE COMMON PEOPLE

    “To speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and to comply with every general custom that does not hinder the attainment of our purpose. For we can gain from the multitude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate ourselves to its understanding as far as possible: moreover, we shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of the truth.”

    – Baruch Spinoza

    He could have put a footnote in there about how damned hard it is. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 13:24:00 UTC

  • POSTMODERNISM AS THE INVERSE OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM “Critical rationalism recom

    POSTMODERNISM AS THE INVERSE OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM

    “Critical rationalism recommends that we should focus all of our effort on a search for truth in the absolute sense, and that we should jettison any attempt to justify. Postmodernism does the opposite. It recommends that we should focus all of our effort on a search for justification, and that we should jettison any attempt to discover the truth in any sense whatever.” – Kenneth Allen Hopf

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 13:20:00 UTC

  • IGNORANCE IS A NECESSARY BYPRODUCT OF POSTMODERNISM If you must believe in SOME

    IGNORANCE IS A NECESSARY BYPRODUCT OF POSTMODERNISM

    If you must believe in SOME falsehoods, that means that you do not believe in scientific TRUTHS.

    Socialism + Feminism = Postmodernism = the collapse of reason and science.

    THE HARD REALITY THAT SCIENCE IS SLOWLY DEMONSTRATING

    (And in which postmodern thought is demonstrated to be false.)

    We are vastly unequal in value to one another.

    Genders are unequal in distribution of talents.

    There are no Female Jack the Rippers and no Female Newtons.

    Feminism has increased single motherhood, and increased poverty from single parenthood.

    Family structure determines property rights and morality.

    Homogenous family structures are necessary for homogenous polities.

    Diversity is bad, everywhere, anywhere.

    Race is a deciding factor in all personal interactions.

    Political preferences are a combination of genetics and family structure.

    Redistribution is eventually, genetically, economically, and politically disastrous for a polity.

    Median IQ is the most important property of any population.

    The “smart fraction” is the most important group of people in any population.

    The Pareto principle demonstrates a *requirement* of how much property must be concentrated in the smart fraction of the population.

    The religious conservatives are using religion to oppose the state because it works as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and meritocracy.

    The state and it’s church (universities) are engaged in a religious Pogrom to replace christianity and aristocracy with pseudo-science and socialism.

    LIBERTARIANISM MAY ERR. BUT IT ISN”T FALSE. Or destructive. Postmodernism IS false and destructive.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 11:09:00 UTC

  • GOOGLE IS THE MOST SOCIALLY IMPORTANT COMPANY IN THE WORLD Yep. The next ‘singul

    GOOGLE IS THE MOST SOCIALLY IMPORTANT COMPANY IN THE WORLD

    Yep. The next ‘singularity’ doesn’t have to come from machines. It can come from the gradual elimination of fringe (irrational), false (contrafactual) or loaded (metaphysically biased) ideas.

    I could not have accomplished what I have in the past ten years without the internet. It would have been impossible.

    I just believe, strongly, that postmodernism on one end, islam on the other, with Buddhism somewhere in the middle, will defeat reason just as religion has defeated reason so frequently in the past.

    The only way to defeat religions is to aggressively advance science faster than dysfunctional religions can react to it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 09:55:00 UTC

  • PHILOSOPHICAL TRIVIA: ETYMOLOGY OF “TRUTH” Proto Indo European *dru- “tree,” Mea

    PHILOSOPHICAL TRIVIA: ETYMOLOGY OF “TRUTH”

    Proto Indo European *dru- “tree,”

    Meaning: “As steadfast as an oak”.

    Truth is testimony of correspondence with reality.

    Nothing can be ‘true’ independent of an assertion that something is true. Statements or theories can correspond to reality. But reality can’t correspond to itself. A thing is not true in itself. That’s not logical.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 00:53:00 UTC