The Most Religious People in the West? (Germans)
[T]he Germans are the most devout, most pious, most religious people in western civilization. They just don’t call it religion. They call it ‘being right’. They made christian morality a post-christian religion. Fascinating. American conservatives treat the constitution with the same sacredness as religious scripture. It is this germanic american religiosity, and continental german religiosity…
OMG Please Don’t Drag Me Into Nazi Nonsense
[Y]es The Nazis tried to remove the undesirables from Europe. They transported these people to resettlement camps. The war failed. They ran out of resources. The resettlement camps turned into death camps. Sure the Jews made a propaganda issue out of it, but so did the rest of the west – the west that germans…
Man is Rational. He Follows Incentives.
**[M]an is not good or bad, he is rational in his choice of cooperation, parasitism, or predation. We must provide him the incentive to choose cooperation. We must not pretend he does not need the incentive.**
The Answer: The Future of Religion
(religion) [J]ust because your ancestors valued a particular comforting lie or falsehood is not a reason to perpetuate the lie or falsehood. We are comfortable now with suppressing lies with physical science where were were not so in the past. We are currently uncomfortable with suppressing lies in social science: ethics, politics, economics,…
Books on Revolutions
[A] lot of work on revolutions is just regurgitation of the American and french, both of which tell us little. And most is meaningless today. For some background I would recommend these: Goldstone’s Short Introduction Goldstone’s Revolutions Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution The IRA Handbook Search google for “revolutionary handbook” (most are there) Poole’s Tactics of…
Philosophy: Unloaded Science vs Loaded Literature
(important piece on the form and content of philosophy) Testimony vs Literature Truth vs Experience Criticism vs Free Association Survival vs Creativity Deflationary vs Conflationary Clarify vs Obscure Persuasion vs Suggestion Decidability vs Opportunity Decrease Cost vs Increase Cost Save vs Spend Action vs Consumption Production vs Entertainment Science vs Art What is the difference…
Is Philosophy the Literature of Deceit?
[W]hen you switch from the conduct of pedagogy to science, justification to criticism, opportunity searching to error reduction, you see that philosophy has unjustifiably self congratulated itself quite a bit throughout history. And when you find the central problem of epistemology is not improvement of your own meagre ability to produce ideas, but the detection…
(sketch) Science Replaces Philosophy
[S]CIENCE REPLACES PHILOSOPHY Existence (need for action) Aesthetics (the sciences of experiences / experience / spirituality) Testimony (the sciences of truth telling / knowledge / psychology) Law (the sciences of cooperation / each other / sociology) Engineering (the hard sciences / the universe / physics) [M]ETHODS OF COMMUNICATION Law(cooperation), Laws Aesthetics(pleasure), Experiences Literature(conflation), Analogies…
(Diary) Progress on Deception in Literature and Philosophy
[G]reat progress on this problem of literature and deception that I have been struggling with for years. I have these periods where I think I am not making progress, and then I make a great deal of progress in a few days. The periods where I make little progress are just records of the effort…
Myth, Religion, Literature, Philosophy, as Promises of Opportunity for Free Riding
[W]hy do we love myth, religion, literature, philosophy, so dearly and pursue history, science, and the various grammars (logics) of calculation with such reluctance? The method of communication is experiential in the first and not so in the second. Our mythology promises opportunities to free ride. The truth does not.
Wishful Thinkers as Hosts for Deceit
[W]ishful thinkers all, we are easy prey for the literature of deceit whose plots promise free riding in a universe whose red queen we struggle to race. We long for suggestion. We long for entertainment. We long for respite that our Myths, Religion, Literature and philosophy provide for us. But we must not confuse fantasy…
Worth Repeating for Newbs: The End of Pseudo-Austrian(Ukrainian) Libertarianism.
[I] love Hoppe as an involuntary mentor and human being. But I had to reform (kill off) rothbardian libertarianism if I wanted to reunite conservatism (aristocracy) and liberty (anglo libertarianism) A LIST OF HOPPE’S ERRORS http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/2015/07/31/a-list-of-hans-hermann-hoppes-errors/ RENDERING ROTHBARD ARGUMENTATIVELY IMPOSSIBLE http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/2014/06/20/rendering-rothbardian-fallacies-intellectually-embarrassing-and-argumentatively-impossible/ MISES WORK IS A FAILURE TO DEVELOP ECONOMIC OPERATIONALISM http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/2014/06/21/mises-praxeology-as-the-failure-to-develop-economic-operationalism-yes/
Truth: Seeking True Names – The Ultimate Parsimony
[T]here is only one ultimate parsimony available to man. That ultimate parsimony consists of the true names of all that exists in the universe. Truth is the name we use to refer to true names. True names are the ultimately most parsimonious descriptions of whatever phenomenon we wish to convey. Now, others might say…
The Great Lies of Both Eras
(Having an angry moment over “the big lies”.) [B]efore the hebrew bible there were myths. But the invention of that history was the invention of lying. Its the invention of the big lie. The battle between the cities in the ancient world is this: Lying: Jerusalem Storytelling: Egypt (Memphis/Thebes?) Reason: Greece/Athens Truth: Rome.) Pragmatism: Sparta.…
Politicians Follow the Incentives We Give Them Using Information They Possess
[P]eople follow incentives given the information at their disposal. The problem for all people when faced with sensory instrumentation insufficient to provide them with decidability in maters of complexity at hand, they rely purely on incentives. In the case of politicians they follow the incentives we have given them. Monopoly (majoritarian) democracy…
The Corrected History Of Civilization: Paternalism as Domestication
(by Eli Harman) [A]dvanced civilization, with production and division of labor, is necessarily founded on property, which is a masculine innovation, the more private, the more masculine. Property is that which you obtain and maintain at personal cost, and that which you are willing and able to defend. Property rights are a subset of that…
How Would A Pure Communist State Look Like?
It would look like a unicorn, a fairy tale, or a dystopian science fiction novel. Communism is impossible for two related reasons: inability to calculate anything economic, and lack of availability of incentives. Communism is a farm for free ridership. https://www.quora.com/How-would-a-pure-communist-state-look-like
What Should I Do In Order To Become Prime Minister In The Future (or President)?
It’s impossible. It’s fairly easy to determine almost all candidates by the time they are 25. https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-in-order-to-become-Prime-Minister-in-the-future-or-President
Do We Really “own” Anything In A Capitalist Society?
CORRECT ANSWER These rights we can observe humans demonstrate: Constituo (homesteading / creation)Transitus (crossing)Observo (observation)Usus (use of 3d space)Fructus (consume the fruits of)Mancipio (sale and transfer)Abusus (destruction / conversion) When we say ‘ownership’ we mean some subset of these properties. The limit on ownership is externalities. In other words, your use of a thing cannot…
What Is Libertarian Communism?
Like “meritocratic communism” it is either an impossibility, or a lie. Most likely a lie to cover an impossibility. Most such lies are created in order to perpetuate fraud by political means by making false moral appeals in an effort to avoid exchanging behavioral limitations for material rewards. Libertarianism: universal individual ownership of property, and…
Is Socialism Dangerous?
Isn’t 100 Million dead in one century because of a pseudoscientific economic and political system propagated by tyrants from the underclasses enough evidence? Isn’t India’s continued problem with ever-present corruption evidence? How do you price the damage done by the soviets, the chinese, the southeast asians, the south americans, the hindus from these experiments with…
What Are The Key Differences Between Nordic Socialism And Other Flavors Of Socialism, And Is There An Example Of Nation That Has Prospered Under It?
Nordics do not practice socialism but very high levels of taxation and redistribution. They are highly capitalist economies. The reasons that they can achieve this state are that Northern europeans have been selectively eliminating the troublesome lower part of the gene pool for thousands of years (impulsivity and IQ under 80.) Cold weather, short summers,…
Is Tech The Only Or Rather Biggest Way To Make A “dent In The Universe” Today? What Are Problems In The World That Need More Than Tech To Solve?
Tech is useful because at present the cost of creating change requires the least capital of all other available options. Tech is still extremely disruptive. However, the desktop appears to have somewhat peaked, and the value of new handheld software appears to be close to peaking. The next disruption is when Apple must seek new…
What Is The History Of Bellevue, Wa?
Coal mines, lumber, swamps. scandinavians. War era manufacturing on the lakes. Bridge = cheap land, ‘the sticks’. suburbia. very white. Tech boom (Microsoft), ‘ bizarre economy’, extreme wealth. Best city to live in in america because no viable underclass, highly educated upper middle class. too expensive for lower classes to move in. no underclass means…
Why Is Russia Leaving Syria?
Putin has established a military base in the region. This was his intention. No other expenditure of effort is necessary. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-leaving-Syria