Curt Doolittle

Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

  • What Is Your Personal Philosophy As It Relates To Ethics And Metaphysics? Why?

    This is not so much a philosophy as the results of science that I can no longer deny, and so I live according to the science – in large part because it is advantageous.

    1. We are an expensive life form. Particularly our brains.
    2. We must acquire, and we acquire at cost to ourselves.
    3. All our emotions are nothing but reflections in state of that which we plan to, are in the process of, or have acquired an interest.
    4. Cooperation is logarithmically more productive than any action an individual can take, and therefore we must cooperate to survive. (Possibly as much as ten thousand times as productive.)
    5. People are purely rational, not moral or immoral but amoral: they cheat and try to acquire disproportionately from cooperation, they free ride, steal from, and prey upon others. This is why we demonstrate altruistic punishment of cheaters in all walks of life, even at high personal cost: to prevent defectors from cheating.
    6. The optimum algorithm (really) for developing cooperation is to exhaust every opportunity for cooperation even from cheaters. They almost always come around, because it is always an advantage to come around. This was the entire message of christianity which was lost in the dogma. But it’s just science.
    7. All our speech is merely a dance of negotiation so that we may create opportunities to acquire, do acquire, or preserve what we acquire. All of it is just signaling.
    8. We are entirely incognizant of these behaviors because it is evolutionarily disadvantageous for us to be intuitively honest, honest with ourselves, and honest with others. This is the same reason we have many cognitive, social, and probabilistic biases in our genes. To keep us going when evidence would overwhelm us.
    9. Most of the joy in life is playing this set of word games, cooperative games, and acquisition games with others so that we all acquire what we want as best we can without making others avoid us so that we can’t acquire what we want and need. This is why people commit suicide when they are lonely, and do not commit suicide when they are not.
    10. Therefor the only rule of cooperation, of morality, and of law, is reciprocity: productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary cooperation with each other, and the only immoral actions are those that violate that moral rule by free riding, parasitism, theft, or predation. And that is why reciprocity is the basis of all traditional laws (and why it is not the basis of legislation).

    This little list is the answer to nearly all of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, sociology, ethics, and politics.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-personal-philosophy-as-it-relates-to-ethics-and-metaphysics-Why

  • If You Have An Iq Lower Than 130, Can You Trust Your Own Thoughts?

    Hmmm…. Interesting question. Can you trust your own thoughts? Does intelligence mean you can trust your own thoughts?

    I have an answer for you that you’ll find insightful.

    1. Intelligence generally translates to time required to learn – although below somewhere in the 80’s learning even the most trivial of sequences appears nearly impossible. And below the mid 90’s begins to become prohibitively costly upon those that teach. 10% of people are impossible to teach, and nearly half of people are costly to teach. Hence the future problem of employment.
    2. Intelligence above 105 is largely reducible to a learning curve. at 105 or so you can learn from instructions, repair machines, and express yourself logically. About every 7–10 points or so higher, it’s easier to learn from increasingly abstract (less obviously related) bits of information. Around 115 learn on your own. Around 125 invent new machines. Around 135 understand complex relations and synthesize them for others. Around 145 invent and reorganize existing ideas.

      Above that I have not seen anything meaningful other than the ability to construct longer denser sentences (I cannot speak in long narrations like Chomsky, and I cannot grasp and translate ideas as fast as Terence Tau. And I have also seen the opposite, which is a tendency to place too much value on intuitions (some people who shall remain nameless), and given that I specialize in identifying pseudoscience, there are a vast number of theorists in many fields who do not know about that which they speak.
    3. Those higher than you are not so much smarter as we they had more ‘time’ to create vast networks of relations (associations) – so the time required to identify a new pattern is shorter. The only way I know to improve your “demonstrated” intelligence in every day life is to be well read (possess more general knowledge) in multiple fields, and be lucky to have high conscientiousness as a personality trait. (All fields develop systemic falsehoods, so cross field knowledge is necessary).
    4. Those that are nearly frightening (children), and born with extraordinary abilities are very rare but I think we are beginning to understand what makes them possible (in utero). And their abilities do not necessarily continue past maturity.
    5. People in the 130’s tend to specialize in synthesizing and communicating difficult ideas to those in the standard deviations below them, and you would find that most CEO’s are in the 130’s, just like a lot of professors are in the 140’s. This is why the ability to articulate your ideas and make use of vocabulary is such an extraordinary proxy for intelligence.
    6. So here is my suggestion no matter where you are on the spectrum: Assume you’re wrong until you can’t possible find an alternative. Because that’s actually what demonstrated intelligence means.
    7. So I want to reframe your question for you: there is NEVER A REASON to trust your thoughts, feelings, or intuitions for anything other than “ouch, that hurts”. Knowledge like evolution is the result of survival, not justification. No matter how good you think your reasoning, the only test of truth is survival against all odds.
    8. That’s what being smart means. Which was Socrates’ whole point.

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-have-an-IQ-lower-than-130-can-you-trust-your-own-thoughts

  • Have You Met Anyone Truly Evil? What Makes Them Evil According To You?

    “Yes, my dear, there is evil in this world.”

    Every person who does evil, does not do so because he thinks he is evil, but because he thinks his actions are warranted – either via punishment, retribution, restitution, profit, or some version of ‘getting his or her fair share’ (which is the justification we make for most of our crimes.)

    Even serial killers justify their actions. Mothers justify their criminal sons and daughters. Each of us justifies our indiscretions from the most petty to the most horrid by one excuse or another.

    Was Mao Evil? Was Stalin? Was Mohammed? They are the greatest murderers in history – with the total murders of the communists at more than 100M and the total murders of the Muslims over 500M. Yet they are heroes to some, and in their minds, preventing an even worse bad (they were just wrong).

    Humans are rational actors, and super predators – the most successful super predators on earth. We are gracious, moral, ethical, cooperative, criminal, unethical, immoral, and evil as we see fit.

    YES I KNOW SOME EVIL PEOPLE

    1) I grew up in a farm community fighting with a boy named Bobby Lee on a very regular basis, and the best I could do was pin him and exhaust him. He was dangerous. He grew up to be an arsonist, then a drug dealer, then a stalker, and a double-murderer. The police shot him dead. As any career policeman will tell you “you know by the age of seven who will turn out bad”. And it’s true.

    2) I know a business man (actually a family) that knowingly engaged in Churning resulting in dozens of families losing everything they owned. (I assisted in his prosecution for racketeering).

    3) I know a business man who forged (I turned him into the justice department) legal documents in order to collect money for elderly and their relatives, and keep it.

    4) I know a business man who would use legal extortion, including the most egregious, which was buying a sliver of land next to a child care building, and filing for a permit for housing sexual predators, in order to force the child care company to purchase the land at multiples. (We obtained evidence and turned him into the IRS.)

    5) We all know the (unnamed) fellow who just acquired a patent for a necessary medicine and raised the price dramatically. (He has been prosecuted)

    6) I know a disproportionate number of lawyers and finance people who prey upon well intentioned honorable people in hardship situations. These people are evil (and they get away with it.) I could name them but it would do no good. (this includes a lawyer who fabricated testimony on behalf of his client in a divorce proceeding).

    7) I know a series of venture capitalists that attempt to organize bad deals so that they can upend and take over a company for pennies, and either sell it or strip it of income. More often than not, this is the case.

    8) The top merger and acquisitions law firm in the country regularly counseled my board on means by which to screw shareholders, and actively worked against the interests of shareholders in favor of a minority investor.

    9 ) I know people in the ‘global warming’ movement who engage in misrepresentation of data in order to expand the bureaucracy, and create long term rent seeking jobs for themselves.

    10) There are an absurd number of people in the IRS who perform such heinous crimes against ordinary citizens who make rational mistakes, and ruin them on a regular basis. I know one in particular that takes pleasure in it. She looks for opportunities to take our her envy on others.

    11) I know a certain trial lawyer who only takes death penalty cases, and I can’t even bear know about the people he defends. If you meet any criminal with an IQ under 85, a combination of undesirable personality traits, (more than 3% of the population) and any sort of resentment they are not so much evil as nothing but evil in everything that they think, feel and do.

    12) I know a certain famous economist that does nothing except try to destroy western civilization at every opportunity, out of pure hatred for it in every bone in his body.

    That doesn’t even begin to touch it. Evil is everywhere. And the most evil people are the self righteous who desire something of others because they feel they are due it.

    Now, I can’t tell you what most of these people have in common, because I would be banned for saying it – but all of them are very similar in one respect.

    I hate to say this because I am a long term 1%’er, and I believe in creating wealth, and in my experience Small Business owners and the working class are most honest people. But the legal, financial, government employee, and political classes are about as corrupt and evil as any class of people who ever lived, and if we burned them all at the stake we would live in a far better world.

    If only because everyone that followed after them would understand the consequences.

    So yes, there is evil in this world.

    https://www.quora.com/Have-you-met-anyone-truly-evil-What-makes-them-evil-according-to-you

  • How Does The Level Of Genetic Similarity Compare Between Human Races And Between Dog Breeds?

    This is a question that demonstrates a misunderstanding of the function of genes.

    You can’t measure genetic distance by comparison of the genome but by comparison of the consequences produced by the combinations of genes over time.

    In other words a single change may cause a disease, a small number of changes may produce profound consequences (such as variation in testosterone), and many many changes may cancel each other out, or must be required to operate in sequence to produce visible consequences (intelligence).

    Humans are ‘grown’ not ‘manufactured’. Most of our variation occurs during the process of growth in utero in particular, then as we mature. Most variations occur because of different rates of growth and inhibitors.

    Humans sort by visible and perceptible value to one another. Most of the time by reproductive and associative fitness. Hence low rotation of the classes.

    Our classes and castes are equivalent to various dog breeds.

    https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-level-of-genetic-similarity-compare-between-human-races-and-between-dog-breeds

  • I’m Inexperienced With Women And I Never Know What Is The Next Step To Take. What Should I Do?

    Stop thinking of them as women, and just other people you talk to. Learn to be friends. Then in a few years you will find a woman. You are too underdeveloped socially to be worth anything to a woman. Women are not stupid. They know you are not worthy yet.

    https://www.quora.com/Im-inexperienced-with-women-and-I-never-know-what-is-the-next-step-to-take-What-should-I-do

  • What Is Your Personal Philosophy As It Relates To Ethics And Metaphysics? Why?

    This is not so much a philosophy as the results of science that I can no longer deny, and so I live according to the science – in large part because it is advantageous.

    1. We are an expensive life form. Particularly our brains.
    2. We must acquire, and we acquire at cost to ourselves.
    3. All our emotions are nothing but reflections in state of that which we plan to, are in the process of, or have acquired an interest.
    4. Cooperation is logarithmically more productive than any action an individual can take, and therefore we must cooperate to survive. (Possibly as much as ten thousand times as productive.)
    5. People are purely rational, not moral or immoral but amoral: they cheat and try to acquire disproportionately from cooperation, they free ride, steal from, and prey upon others. This is why we demonstrate altruistic punishment of cheaters in all walks of life, even at high personal cost: to prevent defectors from cheating.
    6. The optimum algorithm (really) for developing cooperation is to exhaust every opportunity for cooperation even from cheaters. They almost always come around, because it is always an advantage to come around. This was the entire message of christianity which was lost in the dogma. But it’s just science.
    7. All our speech is merely a dance of negotiation so that we may create opportunities to acquire, do acquire, or preserve what we acquire. All of it is just signaling.
    8. We are entirely incognizant of these behaviors because it is evolutionarily disadvantageous for us to be intuitively honest, honest with ourselves, and honest with others. This is the same reason we have many cognitive, social, and probabilistic biases in our genes. To keep us going when evidence would overwhelm us.
    9. Most of the joy in life is playing this set of word games, cooperative games, and acquisition games with others so that we all acquire what we want as best we can without making others avoid us so that we can’t acquire what we want and need. This is why people commit suicide when they are lonely, and do not commit suicide when they are not.
    10. Therefor the only rule of cooperation, of morality, and of law, is reciprocity: productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary cooperation with each other, and the only immoral actions are those that violate that moral rule by free riding, parasitism, theft, or predation. And that is why reciprocity is the basis of all traditional laws (and why it is not the basis of legislation).

    This little list is the answer to nearly all of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, sociology, ethics, and politics.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-personal-philosophy-as-it-relates-to-ethics-and-metaphysics-Why

  • If You Have An Iq Lower Than 130, Can You Trust Your Own Thoughts?

    Hmmm…. Interesting question. Can you trust your own thoughts? Does intelligence mean you can trust your own thoughts?

    I have an answer for you that you’ll find insightful.

    1. Intelligence generally translates to time required to learn – although below somewhere in the 80’s learning even the most trivial of sequences appears nearly impossible. And below the mid 90’s begins to become prohibitively costly upon those that teach. 10% of people are impossible to teach, and nearly half of people are costly to teach. Hence the future problem of employment.
    2. Intelligence above 105 is largely reducible to a learning curve. at 105 or so you can learn from instructions, repair machines, and express yourself logically. About every 7–10 points or so higher, it’s easier to learn from increasingly abstract (less obviously related) bits of information. Around 115 learn on your own. Around 125 invent new machines. Around 135 understand complex relations and synthesize them for others. Around 145 invent and reorganize existing ideas.

      Above that I have not seen anything meaningful other than the ability to construct longer denser sentences (I cannot speak in long narrations like Chomsky, and I cannot grasp and translate ideas as fast as Terence Tau. And I have also seen the opposite, which is a tendency to place too much value on intuitions (some people who shall remain nameless), and given that I specialize in identifying pseudoscience, there are a vast number of theorists in many fields who do not know about that which they speak.
    3. Those higher than you are not so much smarter as we they had more ‘time’ to create vast networks of relations (associations) – so the time required to identify a new pattern is shorter. The only way I know to improve your “demonstrated” intelligence in every day life is to be well read (possess more general knowledge) in multiple fields, and be lucky to have high conscientiousness as a personality trait. (All fields develop systemic falsehoods, so cross field knowledge is necessary).
    4. Those that are nearly frightening (children), and born with extraordinary abilities are very rare but I think we are beginning to understand what makes them possible (in utero). And their abilities do not necessarily continue past maturity.
    5. People in the 130’s tend to specialize in synthesizing and communicating difficult ideas to those in the standard deviations below them, and you would find that most CEO’s are in the 130’s, just like a lot of professors are in the 140’s. This is why the ability to articulate your ideas and make use of vocabulary is such an extraordinary proxy for intelligence.
    6. So here is my suggestion no matter where you are on the spectrum: Assume you’re wrong until you can’t possible find an alternative. Because that’s actually what demonstrated intelligence means.
    7. So I want to reframe your question for you: there is NEVER A REASON to trust your thoughts, feelings, or intuitions for anything other than “ouch, that hurts”. Knowledge like evolution is the result of survival, not justification. No matter how good you think your reasoning, the only test of truth is survival against all odds.
    8. That’s what being smart means. Which was Socrates’ whole point.

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-have-an-IQ-lower-than-130-can-you-trust-your-own-thoughts

  • Have You Met Anyone Truly Evil? What Makes Them Evil According To You?

    “Yes, my dear, there is evil in this world.”

    Every person who does evil, does not do so because he thinks he is evil, but because he thinks his actions are warranted – either via punishment, retribution, restitution, profit, or some version of ‘getting his or her fair share’ (which is the justification we make for most of our crimes.)

    Even serial killers justify their actions. Mothers justify their criminal sons and daughters. Each of us justifies our indiscretions from the most petty to the most horrid by one excuse or another.

    Was Mao Evil? Was Stalin? Was Mohammed? They are the greatest murderers in history – with the total murders of the communists at more than 100M and the total murders of the Muslims over 500M. Yet they are heroes to some, and in their minds, preventing an even worse bad (they were just wrong).

    Humans are rational actors, and super predators – the most successful super predators on earth. We are gracious, moral, ethical, cooperative, criminal, unethical, immoral, and evil as we see fit.

    YES I KNOW SOME EVIL PEOPLE

    1) I grew up in a farm community fighting with a boy named Bobby Lee on a very regular basis, and the best I could do was pin him and exhaust him. He was dangerous. He grew up to be an arsonist, then a drug dealer, then a stalker, and a double-murderer. The police shot him dead. As any career policeman will tell you “you know by the age of seven who will turn out bad”. And it’s true.

    2) I know a business man (actually a family) that knowingly engaged in Churning resulting in dozens of families losing everything they owned. (I assisted in his prosecution for racketeering).

    3) I know a business man who forged (I turned him into the justice department) legal documents in order to collect money for elderly and their relatives, and keep it.

    4) I know a business man who would use legal extortion, including the most egregious, which was buying a sliver of land next to a child care building, and filing for a permit for housing sexual predators, in order to force the child care company to purchase the land at multiples. (We obtained evidence and turned him into the IRS.)

    5) We all know the (unnamed) fellow who just acquired a patent for a necessary medicine and raised the price dramatically. (He has been prosecuted)

    6) I know a disproportionate number of lawyers and finance people who prey upon well intentioned honorable people in hardship situations. These people are evil (and they get away with it.) I could name them but it would do no good. (this includes a lawyer who fabricated testimony on behalf of his client in a divorce proceeding).

    7) I know a series of venture capitalists that attempt to organize bad deals so that they can upend and take over a company for pennies, and either sell it or strip it of income. More often than not, this is the case.

    8) The top merger and acquisitions law firm in the country regularly counseled my board on means by which to screw shareholders, and actively worked against the interests of shareholders in favor of a minority investor.

    9 ) I know people in the ‘global warming’ movement who engage in misrepresentation of data in order to expand the bureaucracy, and create long term rent seeking jobs for themselves.

    10) There are an absurd number of people in the IRS who perform such heinous crimes against ordinary citizens who make rational mistakes, and ruin them on a regular basis. I know one in particular that takes pleasure in it. She looks for opportunities to take our her envy on others.

    11) I know a certain trial lawyer who only takes death penalty cases, and I can’t even bear know about the people he defends. If you meet any criminal with an IQ under 85, a combination of undesirable personality traits, (more than 3% of the population) and any sort of resentment they are not so much evil as nothing but evil in everything that they think, feel and do.

    12) I know a certain famous economist that does nothing except try to destroy western civilization at every opportunity, out of pure hatred for it in every bone in his body.

    That doesn’t even begin to touch it. Evil is everywhere. And the most evil people are the self righteous who desire something of others because they feel they are due it.

    Now, I can’t tell you what most of these people have in common, because I would be banned for saying it – but all of them are very similar in one respect.

    I hate to say this because I am a long term 1%’er, and I believe in creating wealth, and in my experience Small Business owners and the working class are most honest people. But the legal, financial, government employee, and political classes are about as corrupt and evil as any class of people who ever lived, and if we burned them all at the stake we would live in a far better world.

    If only because everyone that followed after them would understand the consequences.

    So yes, there is evil in this world.

    https://www.quora.com/Have-you-met-anyone-truly-evil-What-makes-them-evil-according-to-you

  • In other words, differences in expression and differences in impulse (intuition)

    In other words, differences in expression and differences in impulse (intuition) are different.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-03-17 21:09:02 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/975116824630218753

    Reply addressees: @jordanbpeterson

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/975068761236664320

    IN REPLY TO:

    Unknown author

    @jordanbpeterson I’m not sure that’s right Dr Peterson, in the sense that women are not bound by the reciprocal threat between males as they were prior to 1900. Duel, Libel, Slander, and Scold were effective for both genders.

    Original post: https://x.com/i/web/status/975068761236664320

    IN REPLY TO:

    @curtdoolittle

    @jordanbpeterson I’m not sure that’s right Dr Peterson, in the sense that women are not bound by the reciprocal threat between males as they were prior to 1900. Duel, Libel, Slander, and Scold were effective for both genders.

    Original post: https://x.com/i/web/status/975068761236664320

  • Curt Doolittle’s answer: Every person who does evil, does not do so because he t

    Curt Doolittle’s answer: Every person who does evil, does not do so because he thinks he is evil, but because his actions are warranted – either via punishment, retribution, restitution, profit, or some version of ‘getting his or her fair share’ (which is the justification we make for most of ou…