Month: July 2018

—“The irony is that it is only through a profound amount of liberalism coupled with ideological courage that Curt Doolittle is able to diagnose a variety of issues with great accuracy. But [your prescription] sounds more like radical leftism repackaged. And though there might be some deterministic accuracy to the rise of radicalism in both…

by Luke Weinhagen What happens to the fertility rate of the producers when the cost of the parasites is reduced and the traitors are removed. The big threat is internal. It is comprised of the parasites leaching the value from the producers and the traitors opening the gates from within. Some might see the vectors…

—-”Is it appropriate to racially profile college applicants to promote diversity in admissions?”—- If we use exclusively meritocratic entry, and domestic-only entry, then we aren’t harming anyone in the polity because of their race. If we use profiling (discriminatory) entry, and include international entry, then we **are harming** people in the polity because of their…

From Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green “He had the whole body of Greek civilized opinion behind him. Euripides held that it was proper (eikos) for ‘barbarians’ to be subject to Greeks. Plato and Isocrates both thought of all non-Hellenes as natural enemies who could be enslaved or exterminated at will. Aristotle himself regarded a…

(Stoicism in Scientific Terms) Self Authoring and Journaling are the best training you can give yourself – other than basic physical fitness. I promise you. Why? Because we evolved our minds to search for possibilities optimistically. So its very easy to say stupid things to yourself in the madness of the moment; and much harder…

I have a very simple methodology: the truth. the truth provides decidability. And I don’t leave room for pragmatism. By allowing one pragmatic falsehood you allow all pragmatic falsehoods. By disallowing all falsehoods, no matter how practical, you leave only the truth. —“I get that you teach by a startling statement and follow-up Devil’s advocate…

1) To develop mental fitness and distance from our impulses (to develop agency) 2) To accumulate an inventory of human errors and bias so that we do not make them in our own lives, and are not affected by others who employ them. 3) To survey the sets of myths and paradigms (stories we tell…

(sorry, it’s just science) Rule of Natural Law and Markets in Everything is the optimum set of institutions, for the simple reason that they can continuously adapt and as such continuously suppress rent opportunities, and the accumulation of fragility. Nationalism is the optimum international order. The problem is GETTING EVERYONE THERE the way we dragged…

STOICISM IS INTUITIVE AND ABSENT ANY WOO WOO. THE ANSWER TO A BLUE PILLED WORLD by James Santagata What is powerful about Stoicism is that forces us to maintain an INTERNAL locus of control along with high agency. At the same time, filtering out emotions by considering what we have rather than what we don’t…

—“Begin with your own family”—Lycurgus of Sparta Um. No it doesn’t work in family. It doesn’t work in business. and it doesn’t work in a polity either. Militia, Truth, Duty, Reciprocity, and Markets in Everything: The Natural Law of Sovereign Men. via Andrew Clayton

If you took all the falsehood out of christianity then what would remain? – The mass (A lesson, an oath, a feast), festivals. – The extirpation of hatred from the human heart. – The exhaustion of interpersonal forgiveness as the optimum group cooperative strategy. – The demand for personal acts of charity. If you replace…

By Dima Vorobiev, “I worked for Soviet propaganda” If you are a Westerner and talk to us Russians about freedom, you need to know that we understand freedom quite differently from you. In English, there are two complementary words for the topic: “freedom” and “liberty”. We also have a pair, “svoboda” and “volya”. But the…

—“Pardon my ignorance but what is White Sharia (“The White Law”)?”— Its a neologism for an intolerant, absolutist, expansionist, prosecutorial law of truth, duty, reciprocity, and nationalism. “The law beyond which no religion, state, academy, organization, or individual may tread.” (“Noose, Pike, and Pyre”)

—“The very first adjustment, that I had to make, the very first time I set foot in the USA, was to redefine ‘freedom’. ‘Freedom’ here means ‘freedom to make money’ – the word has no other meaning. As an immediate afterthought – and ‘God’ is for those who stand in the way of that.  I…

by Paul Franklin —“In every case I can think of, there is no difference between a liar and a coward (in the meaning of liars we use). In other words, you can judge for one or the other: veracity or cowardice, they are both the same. Basically that’s it. No need for any complicated tomes.…

I have a terrible habit, developed over many years, from defending myself, my management and staff, and my companies, and out of pure necessity, of changing from argument to defense against litigation. In other words, from working with friends, allies, and customers, to fighting against enemies. Any politician, negotiator, or litigator develops this talent (and…

Um. I can’t emphasize this enough. 1) *While Prices drive to Equilibrium, Markets drive to Disequilibrium*. 2) Loose credit (monetary expansion) increases disequilibrium necessary for causing corrections (discovering limits). 3) The debate between conservatives and progressives is whether the cumulation of short term gains exceeds the costs of the correction. In my opinion, this is…

There is a reason the operational name of mythology is “Wisdom Literature”. Because it contains wisdom that has survived market competition for centuries if no millennia. I have a rather defensive posture with regard to the term ‘truth’. So in order to defend the word ‘truth’ from abuses, the correct term is not ‘truth’ (most…

There is a reason the operational name of mythology is “Wisdom Literature”. Because it contains wisdom that has survived market competition for centuries if no millennia. I have a rather defensive posture with regard to the term ‘truth’. So in order to defend the word ‘truth’ from abuses, the correct term is not ‘truth’ (most…

GENERAL IDEAS: A “FIELD” IN MATHEMATICS (repost by request) Given a six sided die, and the single operation “roll the die”, we can produce a noisy distribution of : 1(x1), 2(x1), 3(x1), 4(x1), 5(x1), 6(x1). Given two six sided dice, and the single operation “roll the dice and sum the results”, we can produce a…

The difference between law and science is that in questions of law, individuals in conflict demand a decision from judge and jury in the present where in science we explicitly deny this demand, and in philosophy where we never do so, and in religion we presume it already made.

—“For Russians a true free will (volya) is enjoyed either by Tsar, an absolute monarch, or by free roaming cossack, vagabond, criminal, who does not have to take the wishes of other people into consideration and either goes into unsettled land where he may continue to live unattached, or to go underground into criminal world,…

—“I know it’s public, but I thought it’d still be polite if I asked. Would it bother you if I used a specific comment you made on one of your statuses in a conversation? You make some really good points.”— A Friend  Look. Here is how this deal works. I get to use the public…

Yes, I work from the Misesian premise of full accounting when referring to money and its substitutes, and the totality of monetary aggregates. However, the problem with the Austrian model is (as has always been stated) it’s overly respectful of lenders (asset holders) without accounting for the moral hazard most money lenders profit from. This…

I’ve had Axelrod’s evolution of cooperation on my recommended reading list for years. If you want a book length treatment of the subject of modeling cooperation so that you have an even better grasp of The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentrism, then after you read the paper below, get Axelrod from our digital library (free).