Curt Doolittle

Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

  • Disease Gradients Impede Cooperation

    (Via Francesco Principi)

    “The xenophobia expressed in environments with high pathogen severity creates barriers to intergroup cooperation. These barriers cause greater poverty in environments with increased pathogen severity, in addition to the direct effects of disease on the human capital that is essential to economic growth. Xenophobic groups in competition for resources are unwilling to resolve this competition through cooperative means, and they are more likely to resort to violent conflict.”

    This idea has legs.

  • Eli on Love (Great Post)

    [I] think that love (noun) refers to the condition in which one’s happiness depends on another’s. And therefore to love (verb) must mean to act in a manner consistent with this condition prevailing. If we adopt these as our definitions, then it becomes obvious, upon cursory examination, that we can never accurately describe actual “love” (either the noun or the verb) as either universal or unconditional for long. For example, unrequited love would tend to consume, either its host, or its host’s willingness to continue entertaining it; for it entails costs with certainty, but holds out no sure promise of benefits, and would be easy to take advantage of. But reciprocal love may prove (under some conditions) sustainable or even (under others) productive. Curt Doolittle made a status the other day, or perhaps a comment, wherein he opined that the statement “I love you” must resolve operationally to something like “I promise that if you test the hypothesis that ‘I love you’ you will not find it untrue.” So we can resolve this still further to say that “I love you” means “I promise that if you test the hypothesis that my happiness depends on your own against my actions, you will not find it untrue.” —Eli Harman

  • Eli on Love (Great Post)

    [I] think that love (noun) refers to the condition in which one’s happiness depends on another’s. And therefore to love (verb) must mean to act in a manner consistent with this condition prevailing. If we adopt these as our definitions, then it becomes obvious, upon cursory examination, that we can never accurately describe actual “love” (either the noun or the verb) as either universal or unconditional for long. For example, unrequited love would tend to consume, either its host, or its host’s willingness to continue entertaining it; for it entails costs with certainty, but holds out no sure promise of benefits, and would be easy to take advantage of. But reciprocal love may prove (under some conditions) sustainable or even (under others) productive. Curt Doolittle made a status the other day, or perhaps a comment, wherein he opined that the statement “I love you” must resolve operationally to something like “I promise that if you test the hypothesis that ‘I love you’ you will not find it untrue.” So we can resolve this still further to say that “I love you” means “I promise that if you test the hypothesis that my happiness depends on your own against my actions, you will not find it untrue.” —Eli Harman

  • Debating Useful Idiots of All Stripes

    (snippet of debate we can learn from) [I] almost always operate under the assumption that genes do the talking and that the rational mind needs assistance in overcoming the influence of accumulated cognitive bias in favor of one’s reproductive strategy. So I suspect you are just the usual victim of WISHFUL THINKING and need rescuing. Because I don’t see evidence that you’re knowledgeable enough to engage in FRAUD. And I don’t see evidence that you’re emotionally neutral and openly skeptical of your opinion so I do not think you ERR. As such, you are the perfect target for cosmopolitan deception: an obscurant and complex justification for whatever your cognitive bias: socialist, libertine, or neocon. You are a ‘useful idiot’ for the anti-western anti-aristocratic pseudoscientific, pseudo-rational, religions. The great lie version two. This time in multiple class sizes: socialist, libertine, and neocon. It’s not so bad that one is fooled – we all are. What’s bad is maintaining a bias that’s increasingly, obviously, false, because it was a bad but exciting investment.

  • Debating Useful Idiots of All Stripes

    (snippet of debate we can learn from) [I] almost always operate under the assumption that genes do the talking and that the rational mind needs assistance in overcoming the influence of accumulated cognitive bias in favor of one’s reproductive strategy. So I suspect you are just the usual victim of WISHFUL THINKING and need rescuing. Because I don’t see evidence that you’re knowledgeable enough to engage in FRAUD. And I don’t see evidence that you’re emotionally neutral and openly skeptical of your opinion so I do not think you ERR. As such, you are the perfect target for cosmopolitan deception: an obscurant and complex justification for whatever your cognitive bias: socialist, libertine, or neocon. You are a ‘useful idiot’ for the anti-western anti-aristocratic pseudoscientific, pseudo-rational, religions. The great lie version two. This time in multiple class sizes: socialist, libertine, and neocon. It’s not so bad that one is fooled – we all are. What’s bad is maintaining a bias that’s increasingly, obviously, false, because it was a bad but exciting investment.

  • “Everyone fights. No one quits. If you run, I’ll kill you myself.”— —“men fi

    —“Everyone fights. No one quits. If you run, I’ll kill you myself.”—

    —“men fight for the men next to them”—

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-13 10:35:00 UTC

  • DEBATING THE USEFUL IDIOTS OF ALL STRIPES (snippet of debate we can learn from)

    DEBATING THE USEFUL IDIOTS OF ALL STRIPES

    (snippet of debate we can learn from)

    I almost always operate under the assumption that genes do the talking and that the rational mind needs assistance in overcoming the influence of accumulated cognitive bias in favor of one’s reproductive strategy.

    So I suspect you are just the usual victim of WISHFUL THINKING and need rescuing.

    Because I don’t see evidence that you’re knowledgeable enough to engage in FRAUD.

    And I don’t see evidence that you’re emotionally neutral and openly skeptical of your opinion so I do not think you ERR.

    As such, you are the perfect target for cosmopolitan deception: an obscurant and complex justification for whatever your cognitive bias: socialist, libertine, or neocon. You are a ‘useful idiot’ for the anti-western anti-aristocratic pseudoscientific, pseudo-rational, religions. The great lie version two. This time in multiple class sizes: socialist, libertine, and neocon.

    It’s not so bad that one is fooled – we all are. What’s bad is maintaining a bias that’s increasingly, obviously, false, because it was a bad but exciting investment.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-12 13:05:00 UTC

  • TWO MODES OF TRANSCENDENCE? BUT BOTH REQUIRE TRUTH. (worth repeating) I think th

    TWO MODES OF TRANSCENDENCE? BUT BOTH REQUIRE TRUTH.

    (worth repeating)

    I think that we are still half animal and have not yet transcended into fully human. because our genes do bias us.

    One of the competing theories I’m working with is that we function as a collective at all times, and that our diversity of abilities allows us both specialize in an intertemporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, and advocacy, and to adapt to the changing universe around us. And that our cognitive biases are a useful means of specialization.

    If this is true then we need only now how we err, not know the truth, since the truth so to speak is a product of social interaction assuming we can obtain truthfulness (the best information possible) from others.

    So we have two possible axis of evolution: equality or specialization. And given the difference between the genders and the difference in our abilities I am rapidly converting from the individual to the social.

    In both axis we must learn how to speak truthfully. However for all practical purposes we will always be superior as a collective for the purpose of collective ascertainment of truth. It s simply a matter of computational power and specialization.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-11 04:13:00 UTC

  • SELF DECEPTION OR NOT SELF DECEPTION IN TRANSCENDENCE? My fiend Lee C Waaks trie

    SELF DECEPTION OR NOT SELF DECEPTION IN TRANSCENDENCE?

    My fiend Lee C Waaks tries to remind me regularly the people do not engage in self deception so much as cognitive bias. I hold the position that our genes cause us to possess different intensities of cognitive bias, such that we tend to construct edifices of falsehood to defend our reproductive strategies. The reason we do this is that we must act optimistically in favor of our strategies even if those strategies are difficult or next to impossible. as such our genes are capable of deceiving that part of us that we call self awareness or ‘self’. And we must struggle very hard at times to learn tools of truth if truth is our ambition. This is because truth is usually more useful than our genes evolved to accommodate. And that is because our ability to discern truth is relatively recent in our developmental history.

    perception->memory->intuition->presentation->reason.

    <—————un-aware———-.-><——–aware————>

    <—————gene-driven———><–awareness driven–>

    …………….”The Elephant”………..|……….The Rider………..

    SO IS THIS “SELF”?

    <——————————–Self———————————->

    OR IS THIS “SELF”

    <————–Not-Self—————><———–Self————>

    Because in the former we are capable of self deception, while in the latter we are not capable of self deception, so much as struggling either in favor of or against bias-reinforcement.

    GENE MACHINES

    I think that we are still half animal and have not yet transcended into fully human. because our genes do bias us.

    One of the competing theories I’m working with is that we function as a collective at all times, and that our diversity of abilities allows us both specialize in an intertemporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, and advocacy, and to adapt to the changing universe around us. And that our cognitive biases are a useful means of specialization.

    If this is true then we need only now how we err, not know the truth, since the truth so to speak is a product of social interaction assuming we can obtain truthfulness (the best information possible) from others.

    So we have two possible axis of evolution: equality or specialization. And given the difference between the genders and the difference in our abilities I am rapidly converting from the individual to the social.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-11 04:10:00 UTC

  • Can someone help me with this: Given a population of 100,000. 51% female living

    Can someone help me with this:

    Given a population of 100,000.

    51% female living to 70, 49%male living to 65.

    Evenly distributed by age.

    IQ of 80 – 120 is normally distributed

    Random Reproduction with in 15 points within 8 years difference in age.

    70% of females have 3 children on average over 12 a year period starting at the age of 18.

    Offspring regress toward the mean of the parents.

    Random 1% of males between 16 and 30 from the lowest two quintiles are lost every year to disease.

    What is the change in population and IQ distribution every century over 1000 years?

    I’d have to write a program to do this.

    Any r-nerds that help me with this?

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-10 12:14:00 UTC