Trump's inaugural address better than Obama's

Trump's inaugural address was also his first statement as a holder of political office or, indeed, an employee of the State.
His words are interesting because they derive from seventy years of life experience, not one single one of which was financed in any way by a Govt. paycheck- something unique in American history.

Not surprisingly, he focused his ire on what economists call 'agent principal hazard'- i.e. the temptation for people in Govt. to do what is in their own interest not what is in the interest of the people who pay their salary- and on 'rent seeking' by elites. In particular, Trump as an old fashioned 1980's style property developer- think Tom Wolfe's Charlie Croker from 'A Man in Full'- focuses his ire on the revolving door between K Street and Wall Street- Politics and footless Financial Capital.

Thus he says- 'For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

'The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.'
By contrast, Obama, who graduated in '83, took the shift from 'bricks and mortar' patriarchal capitalism to abstract mathematical financialization for granted. It did not occur to him that a 'New Deal' was required to ensure the incentive compatibility of this greatly changed Economic system. More fundamentally, he did not think the Government had done anything greatly wrong or greatly right. Rather there was some mystical process by which the great mass of the people either achieved greatness or didn't achieve greatness but had a jolly good try anyway.

'In reaffirming the greatness of our nation we understand that greatness is never a given.  It must be earned.  Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less.  It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.  Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. 

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.  For us, they toiled in sweatshops, and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip, and plowed the hard earth.  For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sahn. 

Concord- yes!

Gettysburg- Amen!

Normandy- Hallelujah!

Khe Sahn? 

By mentioning Khe Sahn, Obama is saying that the American masses are stupid.

Whether the fight on the right or wrong side is a matter of chance.
Emerson wrote- 

The German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie.

In other words- American Hegemony was Emersonian Racial Fate.
A dark and inscrutable mystery.

By contrast, Trump- who could actually have fought and died at Khe Sahn- says clearly and simply that things like Khe Sahn are the result of corrupt rent-seeking in Government.

'Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

'But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

'This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

'We are one nation -- and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.'

Trump is saying the Government could have addressed each problem he mentions.

He is furious that successive Governments failed to do so because of their own 'rent seeking'.

Trump says no to more 'American carnage'

Obama says Khe Sahn is morally the same as Gettysburg because the Masses are stupid.

All is the fault, or else the favour, of an inscrutable Emersonian Racial Destiny.

The Government is not responsible for anything.

Obama said- 'Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.  They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today.  We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth.  Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began.  Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week, or last month, or last year.  Our capacity remains undiminished.  But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.  Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

In other words- just go back to work and stop bothering me.

As Kennedy said, 'ask not what I can do for you but what you can do for me.'

By contrast, Trump thinks the Government is doing a bad job.

It has enriched its masters at the expense of those whom they were meant to serve.

The Government is the Agent of the people. Nothing more.

It must always put their interests first.

Obama's mystical belief in Emersonian Racial Destiny prevented him from tackling rent-seeking.

Trump, cavil as we may at the crudity of his rhetoric, is correct to say the American Govt. must put Americans first and do so in a rational manner. That is what the Constitution mandates. Policy Space is one dimensional if it follows the rule that only Costs and Benefits to citizens matter. The moment, Policy Space seeks a Universal domain it becomes multi dimensional and subject to 'agenda control' type rent-seeking manipulation. Trump's 'America First' rule is the only way to avoid 'McKelvey Chaos'. 

Hollywood, which has so railed against Trump, is responsible for stoking fears that America's borders are unsafe. Mexican Cartels, it appears, have super-powers and can murder and maim with impunity though, no doubt, good old Arnie Schwareznegger can beat them back with a blizzard of bullets till the credits roll.

Trump, by contrast, says that it is the Government, not some Emersonian Race Hero with an Austrian accent who should be doing the job. 

'For many decades... we've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.
We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.
One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future. We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.
From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.
From this moment on, it's going to be America First.
Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.
I will fight for you with every breath in my body -- and I will never, ever let you down.
America will start winning again, winning like never before.
We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.
We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.
We will get our people off of welfare and back to work -- rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.
We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world -- but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

Trump has come out openly as a Protectionist. Should we be preparing ourselves for another Smoot Hawley, a third Mexican Repatriation (there was one under Eisenhower, though it is the Depression Era one most people remember) and even perhaps the internment of hyphenated Americans suspected of sympathising with an Enemy power?

No necessarily.

It is enough that Expectations change because that by itself changes incentive compatibility.

Still, don't hold your breath.

Trump's Golden Shower or Ivanov pissing on Peskov?

How shite is MI6?

Very fucking shite indeed.

It employed Christoper Steele who is now in hiding for his life because he had peddled 'intelligence' like this-

In other words, Trump had a hard-on for Russian Real Estate but the Kremlin gave him the cold shoulder. He had to settle for golden showers from prostitutes instead. The Russians filmed these golden showers and...what? Extorted money from him? Got him to spy for them? 

Apparently, them Rusky spies are all paragons of virtue.

They didn't shake down Trump- though they did spill the beans to Steele, gratis, probably coz they read Le Carre and wanna come in from the cold and get a nice warm golden shower from our new James Bond. 

Still, Trump started spying for them . 

Fuck would Trump know about Russian oligarchs and their families?

Where could Trump and his associates obtain such information?

How would Putin know he wasn't being fed a pack of lies?

The answer is that Putin wasn't involved at all.

There was no conspiracy- no 'Moscovian candidate'.

All that is really happening here is that a guy called Peskov- a Turcologist- is being smeared by a bureaucratic rival called Ivanov- who says higher up Russians, like Premier Medvedev, are furious coz they want to play nice with the US, regardless of who is in the White House, because...they want to be able to visit the States in either a private or public capacity.

In other words, Russia isn't a threat to anyone. Just tip off their Premier or President or whatever that if they don't do as they are told they won't get to visit Dollywood or Disneyland and they'll cry their little eyes out and promise to be good.

In fact, you don't even have to threaten the Russians with Visa Denial or a Cavity Search.

Fear of the Cavity Search will do just as well.

Unless that pesky Peskov stays at his desk.

 Ivanov was sacked by Putin last year.
It is speculated that this was for his ham-handed meddling in the US elections.

Is he Steele's source?
Does he 'reports' to him?

Ivanov, unlike young Peskov, is an 'oligarch'- or at least his son is.

People like him might want to be able to 'visit' the West- i.e. visit their money.

He might indeed 'have a drink with Putin' and then blab about it to Steele in order to make an upstart Press Secretary like Peskov look bad. Targeting 'educated youth' in America on behalf of Trump is hilarious and the sort of thing the old fashioned American specialist in the Kremlin might say. Just to be clear- by 'educated youth' he means white people not fucking jigaboos of my complexion, or Obama's come to that. Also you gotta watch out for the Jews. Manafort was actually toppled by one of the chosen people- didn't you know?

How did Steele get anyone to give him money for this dossier compiled of doo-doo?

A story about Trump's golden showers which unravels into an Ivanov pissing on some Peskov.

Backbiting bureaucrats we will always have with us.

They magnify their own importance, tell you what you want to hear and then slip the knife into their rival. Good Intelligence officers don't fall for the scuttlebutt. They wait and watch and then turn the shithead in question. Steele, apparently, wasn't a good intelligence officer. Still, he has had his moment in the Sun- or rather his moment on the run.

Who does he think is after him?

Since polonium poisoning is too expensive, I suppose it must be the Golden Showering Spetsnaz.

As for Trump- if a video surfaces of him watching donkey sex in Mexico or micturating hobags in Moscow- so what? It's what tourists do. Provided he doesn't perjure himself, he is in the clear. As for Kremlin hackers having helped his campaign- what of it? This guy went on TV, at the end of July, to invite the Russians to find Hilary's missing emails.

Steele's dossier exposes the slovenliness of British Intelligence.

But that's never been news.

According to the Chilcot Report, one source for MI6's Iraqi WMD dossier was a Nicholas Cage film.

Steele's dossier, by contrast, references the more tasteful cinematic work of Divine.

Moral Mortmain- a duty to future generations entails misogynistic eugenics.

Suppose I believe that I have a duty to any child I help bring into the world. Suppose, further, that I accept that I have a duty to any child that child might have and so on ad infinitum. Then I must also accept I have a duty to future generations. This duty can be discharged by setting up a trust, though there may be a legal obstacle of the nature of a rule against perpetuities or mortmain.

Do I also have a duty to future generations if I decide not to have children? It could be argued that I do have such a duty and am already neglecting it by not passing on my own genetic material so that it becomes available for future generations. Clearly, the fact that I am not doing my duty in this respect does not diminish my duty to future generations. Even suppose my genetic material is known to be so flawed that it is better for future generations that I don't have kids, still my duty to future generations is not extinguished by my disability.

What if I don't believe I have a duty to just any child I help bring into the world? It could be argued that my belief is irrelevant. Either I have the duty in question or I don't. Duties are objective.

However, if there is an objective duty to future generations, and there can be overlapping consensus in this regard, it follows that there must be an objective eugenic calculus we are obliged to obey in deciding when and under what circumstances we pass on our genetic material- in other words, we are obliged to visibly change our reproductive norms and behaviour to signal adherence to an overlapping consensus re. this objective duty.  Alternatively, this supposedly objective duty has no empirical test and may as well not exist because it changes nothing that is measurable except perhaps the quantum of  bullshit and boondoggle the voter and taxpayer has to put up with.

If the future fitness landscape is Uncertain in the Knightian sense, this objective eugenic calculus might well command men to rape or otherwise inseminate certain women under certain circumstances. Also, it would license forcible sterilization of the sort practised for much of the Twentieth Century by in certain American States and some Scandinavian countries.

Thus,  an objective duty to future generations may conflict with duties to existing people- e.g. the duty to prevent their rape or enforce their reproductive rights. However, if future generations can be conditioned to consider any type of sexual intercourse as consensual, it would still be the case that an objective duty to future generations could lead to a society ruled by an eugenic calculus in which behaviour we consider unconscionable and typifying the worst sort of serial rapist would in fact be normative.

Clearly an objective duty to future agents whose existence depends on our acts can be repugnant.

Could it possibly be beneficial?

Yes- provably so, if no Knightian uncertainty obtains.
But in that case, any evolutionary pressure upon our genetic material is undesirable.

Only conscious eugenic experimentation- or the perfection of cloning- is desirable because the future fitness landscape is known. We know better than Nature and must damp its ignorant attempts to course correct.

This is not a reasonable view.

Thus, a priori, we can say that an objective duty to future generations is not provably beneficial and possibly harmful. Furthermore, it is more naturally related to eugenics and misogyny than any environmental or cultural cause.

In my view, it is mischievous to posit an objective duty to future generations at all.
We wouldn't be here if evolution hadn't hard wired the thing into us.

Kairos and Metanoia

All seek to, by the forelock, seize what, as Fortuna, is yet miscalled

 Whose occiput is, by alopecia's disease, a grim Golgotha bald

For still must Kairos giddily scoot as Metanoia lamely lags

So La Douleur Exquise recruit under fairer and falser flags

Girolamo da Carpi

Derek Parfit's self defeating Epitaph

Bad news from YouTube.

There's a video gone viral showing you in flagrante up Rock Hudson on the lot of Dynasty.

How did it happen?

  Well, an alien scientist from Planet X wants to find out whether, for our species, the struggle to survive entails Philosophical salience for Derek Parfit's Relation R: psychological connectedness (namely, of memory and character) and continuity (overlapping chains of strong connectedness) as opposed to some ineffable, non-reducible, ontologically dysphoric notion of personhood such as we encounter in Love and Literature, Ecstasy and Agony.

To answer this question, the alien has decided to perform a philosophical experiment. He created a perfect copy of you and inserted it into Rock Hudson's timeline and rectum.

Your reproductive success could be affected if this experiment by the alien has legal consequences- in which case the legal concept of 'personality' has salience. 

Suppose you are charged with a criminal offence as a result of your clone's lewd conduct- it may be in your interest to plead that the clone is a separate person. Your lawyer may hire a philosopher to testify that the relevant Judicial hermeneutic must rely on 'Relation R' to define personality and acquit you because you lack 'Relation R' w.r.t your buggering clone.

  At the same time, it may be in your interest to maintain the opposite doctrine so as to bring a civil action for a large money claim. It is not necessarily the case that you are 'estopped' from maintaining contradictory doctrines in the two cases. After all, you should not be punished for something done by your clone. On the other hand, you clearly have a right to benefit from any commercial use of the video of your clone's reaming Rock Hudson under extant 'right to publicity' case law. In this case, 'Relation R' has no salience. The same holds if you seek an injunction preventing YouTube's use of the video in question, under your 'right to privacy'.

As a matter of fact, the Law does recognize that a single person can have multiple legal personalities- whose interests may conflict to such an extent that one may extinguish the other for the sake of a survivable entitlement.

 Does anything similar happen for Moral Philosophy?

No, unless it is something you really care about, because Moral Philosophy can't put you in jail or get you a big settlement or bring about your obloquy by featuring you in a sordid gedanken. 

Suppose you do really care about Moral Philosophy.

In that case would it make any difference if it was you as opposed to some random dude who ended up up Hudson?

If Ethics is 'impersonal'- shouldn't the answer be no?

Surely, what matters is that this thing happened to a person, not who that person is?

What if the person to whom it happened gains or loses something thereby which makes them better able to do Ethics? Another way of saying this is- 'what happens if a gedanken re. personal identity changes 'what matters' for a being concerned with the survival of his personhood?' In this case there is still a sort of psychological continuity and connectedness- i.e. a Relation R- but it is different from what went before because 'what matters'- i.e. causal chains- have changed.
If Ethics is 'impersonal', then your being the victim of the experiment, as opposed to someone else, does change your relationship to Moral Philosophy because 'what matters' to you has changed and thus your way of specifying Relation R has changed. You can't make a personal decision to ignore the change or decide it shouldn't matter. But this means your 'Relation R' is not independent of Ethics in at least one respect- viz. 'what matters' in Ethics to you. This must be endogenously determined by things like the plausibility or other salience of a succesful implementation of a purely Philosophical Gedanken. Moreover, any specification of Relation R that 'matters' to a person claiming to do impersonal Moral Philosophy, can be ranked on the basis of the technology underlying that implementation which in turn depends on the Science that technology is based on. The better the Science, the 'more elite' the specification of Relation R, because the underlying episteme 'carves up the World more closely to its joints'.
David Lewis argues that we needn't commit to 'Relation R'; we can have multiple answers to questions re. personal identity. Parfit takes a different view- as he is entitled to do but it must be either 'personal' to him or else something which in time will be proven to be the most 'elite eligible' way of carving up the world along its 'joints'.

Suppose there is an 'impersonal' Moral Philosophy which does not hold to a narrow doctrine of Self Interest. It permits empathy or identification with a victim to change 'what matters' to a person rationally concerned with his own survival and happiness.
Would not the same result as outlined in the previous paragraph similarly obtain by simply identifying or empathizing more deeply with the victim of the alien scientist?  If so, why not identify or empathize instead with a possible victim of an experiment yet more heinous- e.g one which involved Mahatma Gandhi rather than Rock Hudson? But why stop there? Why not empathize with the incompossible victim of an ineffable experiment? And who is to say we are not all the victims of an evil experiment involving our own Doris Daying of the x*c)2$$ Chora?

One workaround is to say 'Ethics is 'impersonal' but its domain is restricted to some Platonic or otherwise pre-existing set of persons. However, unless, we are ontologically committed to a 'block Universe', such a theory isn't really 'impersonal' at all but rather is based on what some person, at a particular moment in time, thinks constitutes a person. If that person has greater power to implement or otherwise gain salience for a gedanken, then it is that person who decides what David Lewis might call the 'elite eligible' criteria by which 'Reality is carved up along its joints'. Philosophy is now the handmaiden of a hegemony based on superior technology. 

What happens if we say 'Ethics is highly personal- it's about altering our own individual Ethos in a beneficial way- a project we can work on together through rational discussion'?

Well, straight off the bat, we have to admit that alien scientists who post videos on YouTube of our clones sodomizing Rock Hudson on the set of Dynasty can advance Moral Philosophy.

Does the alien scientist have to be real?

Wouldn't an imaginary alien do the job just as well?

Does Rock Hudson really have to be reamed?

Why not consider an imaginary alien who causes us to Doris Day the x*c)2$$ Chora?

How do we know this isn't what actually happens when we do Moral Philosophy?

  One workaround is to say that Moral Philosophy only concerns itself with what is 'reasonable' or 'compossible'. But this means it can't have any truck with the subject matter of either Economics or the Law, for whom personality can be multiple, and invocation of 'Relation R' can be strategic or gameable, because both rely upon what Sir Edward Coke called 'artificial reason' and are, in any case, impersonal. 

This, then, is the dilemma facing Reductionists who care about Moral Philosophy.

If it concerns itself with persons, it can only be either empty or nonsense and one oughtn't to care for it. More concretely, one ought not grant any 'Relation R' type connection between what one does when doing Moral Philosophy and one's own inner ethos or what Lewis calls 'I Relation'.
 Suppose there exists a Kavka toxin only survivable by violators of the identity of R Relations with I Relations for 'what matters' in Moral Philosophy. Provided 'what matter's is the null set, no scandal or aporia arises precisely because the I relation is symmetrical and the R relation isn't, because it has a direction and thus features non commutative operators which fact, by itself, gives rise to uncertainty. Thus it must be impossible to prove Lewis's claim in a manner independent of one's choice of logic- i.e. in a manner that does not beg the question.
 More generally, any selective pressure, not just a Kavka toxin, will at the margin have the same effect provided 'what matters' is a set of a certain type- not necessarily null- but impredicative in some strategic sense.

Of course, an 'impersonal' Moral Philosophy can simply drop the pretense of concerning itself with anything save its own senseless burgeoning irrespective of 'what matters' to any existing or possible persons. In that case, it is a cult. Having come to this realization, you oughtn't to care about it, unless you are content to be cult fodder. 

This doesn't mean you shouldn't do Moral Philosophy.

Do it, by all means- just don't care about it.

Phone it in.

Derek Parfit didn't phone it in.

Deciding it was possible, though very difficult, to believe himself constituted by nothing other than 'Relation R'; because, he says, the Buddha had accomplished a similar feat, the epitaph he pronounces upon himself, being so thoroughly self defeating, belongs now to Literature-

My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

What changed Parfit's view?

What granted him 'Moksha'?

He says it was because he rejected the implications of 'imagined cases' like the one used here.

Why did he do so?

Au fond it was fidelity to his own posited 'Relation R'.

What prompted that fidelity?

It was the less depressing course. The alternative would have been playing backgammon and dining richly and writing the sort of highly partisan Humean Histories his undergraduate education had fitted him to do.

Like the Buddha, Parfit was born into an elite 'Sangha'- a Society- and found a way to serve it without identifying with it by showing a path to a more Universal type of association in which, however, an elite natal habitus was conserved or re-transcribed.

This appeals to Fex Urbis, bahishkrit, lumpen swine like me precisely because it is not 'Revolutionary'- it does not immanentize a Utilitarian eschaton- but rather is dimly 'Dukkha' or 'Regret' minimizing. Here 'consistency' achieves generality as 'Hannan consistency' and that's a good thing because we know in our bones that Evolution utilizes a Hannan consistent strategy to ensure the survival of my class of intellectual lepers and moral untouchables because Buddhas we will always have with us.

Why?

Parfits die.

These are deaths we are right to regret.

But only because the Pariah we represent is immortal.

But for us, every elite eligible Purusha Sukta carves up the World in vain.

Was Derek Parfit a Golem?

Peter Singer writes-

Derek shared the final version of On What Matters Volume Three with me, and it seems fitting now to share the final paragraphs, which give a brief statement of what Derek considered matters most, as well as an indication of what we have lost by his inability to complete his larger project.

“I regret that, in a book called On What Matters, I have said so little about what matters. I hope to say more in what would be my Volume Four. I shall end this volume with slight revisions of some of my earlier claims.

One thing that greatly matters is the failure of we rich people to prevent, as we so easily could, much of the suffering and many of the early deaths of the poorest people in the world. The money that we spend on an evening’s entertainment might instead save some poor person from death, blindness, or chronic and severe pain. If we believe that, in our treatment of these poorest people, we are not acting wrongly, we are like those who believed that they were justified in having slaves.

Some of us ask how much of our wealth we rich people ought to give to these poorest people. But that question wrongly assumes that our wealth is ours to give. This wealth is legally ours. But these poorest people have much stronger moral claims to some of this wealth. We ought to transfer to these people, in ways that I mention in a note, at least ten per cent of what we earn.

What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy.

Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.

If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”

Parfit's parents were Doctors- missionaries in China, where he was born.

Parfit didn't study Medicine.

Was he lazy or stupid or simply callous?

No.
He was a bright workaholic who cared deeply about the suffering poor.

Yet, at the end of his life, he all but openly tells us that, from the perspective of 'what really matters', his work was worse than worthless.

How so?

The poor, not the pedants, had a moral claim upon his working time- presumably his chief resource.

His Moral Philosophy acknowledges this claim.
Moreover, Parfit was actually a moral man- surely a rarity in his field.

He did not say 'I'm doing moral philosophy not for its own sake but for the sake of the poor' because that wasn't true. Singer suggests, however, that Parfit's work cashes out as whatever would have been required had it been true. In other words, Singer's Parfit was engaged in the provision of, not 'first order' goods for the poor- like Norman Borlaug or Jack Prager- but 'second order' goods- the stock excuse of the annoying 'chugger'-  because he was either too stupid or evil to do otherwise.

Alternatively, Parfit was just a bad philosopher (his first degree was in History) ignorant of developments in Choice theory (Tyler Cowan's reason for dismissing his recent work) who ended up producing such philosophy as would have been created by someone uninterested in that discipline whose motivation was to help the poor in a second order manner.

In either case, what is interesting here is that Parfit's Moral Philosophy is self defeating iff he espouses it. 

Why?
His oneiric 'can' is orthogonal to what his lucubrational 'ought' prescribes.

An Ethical Principle which doesn't hold doing Ethics, as opposed to Philanthropy, to be the highest good is obviously self defeating because we can easily envisage a situation where the former crowds out the latter. Indeed, the only situation where such crowding out would not obtain is one where Society consists only of one human programmer and a bunch of Robots or- to take an example for which an ancient philosophical tradition exists- a Society composed of one Rabbi and a bunch of Golems whom he animates by the Principle he hold to be True.

Professors of Ethics can't be either Programmers or Rabbis unless they actually do Programming or discharge Rabbinical functions.

Does this make Derek Parfit a Golem?

Let us see what happens when we map his theory onto a purely halachic universe.

A Golem, as readers of my blog are well aware, may, if need arise, count in constituting a Minyan but only if created by one of the 'Children of Israel' as 'nolad mahud'.

But no Golem, espousing Judaism and undergoing circumcision, becomes a Child of Israel thereby.

Why?

Well, the halachah re. ab ovo circumcised Golems is v’lo l’maaseh- theoretical- in a manner necessarily orthogonal to reality. How so? Because if real, it would be 'vein morin kein'- i.e. it would forbid the very action its cognizance would otherwise enjoin.

Put simply, 'Children of Israel' is a category either from God or else is Golem gameable. 

But, by permitting only 'nolad mahud' Golems, and forbidding self-circumcisers- every Levinasian, or merely clockwork Mussar, Moses such as is his own ethical castration's asymptotic Mohel- Halachic Judaism disposed of the quaestio juris/ quaestio facti, non commutative uncertainty, or fact/value entanglement problematic for Herzl Zionism in a manner the reverse of Duhring's and therefore, as we see with increasing surprise, actually quite incentive compatible. 

The Haskalah, obedient to a Parfit's Triple Imperative, subsidise the Haredi Malthusian...

disaster?

No.

Not at fucking all.

Israel works.

Parfit's theory has a concrete model.

But one which programmatically forbade the interessement of Old Etonian gentil parfit knights- like Sir Phillip Sassoon.

England too, my England of the poor, not Parfit's of the rich, forbids his, by Suffering uncircumcised,  philanthropy.

Why?

Well, the LSE was set up for no other reason than that Parfit persons and reasons can't be Children of...

What?

 Fex Urbis filiality such as mine;

The Lex Orbis of West Kensington's Gandhian or Gadarene swine;

Stupidity and Ignorance as Suffering's guerdon.

Dementia's, or Drunkenness', confabulations as Deep Parrhesia's gravamen.

Mine is the only Moral Philosophy commissioned by the Malthusian Poor. 

It too easily disposes of Parfit or Gentile Knights or Fellows of All Souls.
Why?
Their 'Truth' is so not nolad mahud, it can only be a meretricious 'naamam'- or Golem 'amat'.

Judge for yourself.

Consider Derek's 'Triple Theory' of Kantian Consequentialism.

'An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable."
Either no act is wrong or at least one act successfully implementing antagonomia (i.e. 'dissent for dissent's sake') re. this Triple Theory is wrong. This is because antagonomia can always choose to express itself as that one wrong act. But, in this case, either antagonomia is itself wrong or else there is a principle within the theory which stipulates that antagonomia be disregarded. But this means, either dissent is forbidden or ignored, 'on principle'.  Clearly this is 'reasonably rejectabe', not 'universally willable' and, if Knightian Uncertainty obtains, or Darwin, not Deuteronomy, is Schelling salient, provably non-optimific.

Reading Parfit, clearly, is a waste of time- though, no doubt, lazy antagonomics get pleasure by trolling this golem, animated only by the 'amat' (the Hebrew word for Truth) inscribed on his forehead by a stupid academic availability cascade, who yearns for some Teilhardian Omega he thinks best achievable by us not eating nice things and spending all our money on fostering a Malthusian disaster in the Third World.

Yet, now the 'alpha' has been erased from Parfit's forehead, and he is turning back to clay, re-reading Parfit is suddenly useful to non-Golems because death has made the whited sepulchre a red Adam.

Why?

How so?

Well, we only need to replace every mention of 'Consistency' in his oeuvre with 'Hannan Consistency'- in which case his faux Buddhist theory of Personal identity is false- and every mention of 'Rationality' with 'Muth Rationality'- which immediately gets rid of all his Kavka type paradoxes as well as his 'Repugnant Conclusion'- in order to reclaim this lovely bloke for our own, not barzakh, but antarabhava where he can breed, not Malthusian golems, but the myriad Adams of Apurvata capable of such truly original sins as require expulsion into and the conquest of the ever Cantor re-diagonalized Lebenwelts of ontological dysphoria.

Fidelity's plundered fruit.

Of Beauty bereft, now her tree is bare

At Eve's Sin we'd yet despair

 Did not Fidelity's oft plundered fruit

So wither & tempt to Ruth.