Curt Doolittle

Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

  • I bet we can empirically measure brutalist vs humanist on a scale that directly

    I bet we can empirically measure brutalist vs humanist on a scale that directly corresponds to your desirability as a mate.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-27 04:08:00 UTC

  • ASPIES NEED PERMISSION TO BE THEMSELVES It’s interesting that my posts on Aspien

    ASPIES NEED PERMISSION TO BE THEMSELVES

    It’s interesting that my posts on Aspieness, and the Autistic-Solipsistic spectrum are so popular. I really don’t want that to be part of my brand, but it helps people who are also borderline, and it explains, by analogy, our equally important moral spectrum blindness in the context of politics and ethics – so It’s hard not to use it.

    Fashion, Tattoos, Aspieness, Autistic-Solipsistic Spectrum, and gender differences in perception. I still think the most popular posts I’ve ever written were on Tattoos and Fashion. lol

    But really, aspies are a lot happier if they give themselves permission to be the creatures that we are. So I sort of see my struggle as something I can use to make life easier for others – ’cause it was not very easy for me. I had to work like hell. lol

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-26 03:06:00 UTC

  • ASPIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE (riffing off the shooter) (Aspies are usually pretty

    ASPIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE

    (riffing off the shooter)

    (Aspies are usually pretty peaceful people. But while we can lack from a little to a lot of empathy, we have normal levels of desire for social integration. This is one of the reasons aspies are attracted to rothbardian libertarianism – it’s an anti-social philosophy in the sense that it consists of rules that do not require one to empathize in order to function. However, we do get the people who are extremely frustrated by constant social rejection, and who become angry and depressed because of it. As we see in the news today. Social anxiety drugs are pretty effective but it takes years to re-learn social skills. And most aspies are left to flounder on their own without help in learning those skills. Some of us are just annoyingly persistent and relentlessly pursue them. In my case, so that I could chase girls. 🙂 One of the problems the rest of the world does not see, is how the lack of family and culture in america is alienating, and more so than any other culture I have witnessed – except for niches in japan – americans are lonely people starved for attention. Which is why they idolize people who get a lot of it, even by crass means. So it’s a culture more likely to foster alienated people than cultures that both have normative rules that are highly enforced, and extended family and social networks that train people to cope. Very dysfunctional society really. )

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-25 13:31:00 UTC

  • HIGH TIME PARENTING NOT HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING Strange watching people in oth

    HIGH TIME PARENTING NOT HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING

    Strange watching people in other countries raise children. I was definitely raised in the puritan protestant tradition to be an independent person as soon as possible.

    But you watch children in the states today and there is obviously something very wrong with them. Almost all of them. And then you come to a place with a traditional family like Ukraine, and watch the kids and … there isnt’ anything wrong with them. So what’s the difference?

    They aren’t constantly trying to get attention from parents who don’t want to give it to them.

    Now, it’s not high investment parenting. In fact, it’s kind of strange how LITTLE effort parents put into competitive child rearing. Instead, they just pay attention to them. A lot of attention. At home. WIth family.

    That must be what it is that Iove about this country. I think that’s it. Americans are all desperately seeking attention on their terms. Here, nobody is. They’re seeking experiences, and wealth, and opportunity. But they’re not desperate for attention. They aren’t ‘crazy’ like so many americans. They aren’t desperately trying to find meaning in political movements, in environmental movements, in different kinds of spiritualism as a means of filling that hole in their souls.

    Is it that simple?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-21 04:34:00 UTC

  • STATUS AS PROPERTY? BUT PEOPLE SURE ACT LIKE IT. RIGHT? The fact that people def

    STATUS AS PROPERTY? BUT PEOPLE SURE ACT LIKE IT. RIGHT?

    The fact that people defend their philosophical positions if their self image depends upon them is only confirmation that people treat status, even self image, as their property. I think If I explain truths and falsehoods – you can’t have a property right to falsehoods – this becomes clear. Just as you can’t claim market opportunities are property – because you don’t know if they’re true or not.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-20 23:27:00 UTC

  • HELPING AUTISTIC SPECTRUM BOYS, YOUNG MEN, AND MEN. Entry into the autism spectr

    HELPING AUTISTIC SPECTRUM BOYS, YOUNG MEN, AND MEN.

    Entry into the autism spectrum is caused in utero, as a byproduct of excessive maleness – inhibiting or destroying certain brain development. This is the reason boys mature later than girls. We must overcome the brain damage, and specialize with what remains.

    Some of the drugs that assist with tolerance for autism spectrum disorders are neurogenic. they increase the rate of adaptation, although that may come at the expense of future dependency. (I don’t think we are sure.) The process is exacerbated in puberty in a second round of rapid growth and further inhibition.

    However, it does not matter what age you start to assist the development of the brain. And I suspect that if we can accelerate this process of ‘repair’ that will will see a corresponding (dramatic) increase in intelligence among males.

    Of course, experimentation of this kind is ethically problematic. But I expect that in the next century, this will be one of the most rapid avenues to human advancement.

    Interesting.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-20 08:10:00 UTC

  • Ukraine. Spring. Birdwatching. No binoculars or cameras necessary. Do women have

    Ukraine. Spring. Birdwatching. No binoculars or cameras necessary. Do women have any equivalent form of enjoyment? Or is this another one of those examples where god was particularly good to men?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-19 10:14:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ. The data is pretty good y

    THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ.

    The data is pretty good you know. You don’t have to be a genius. You just have to be well read. Being well read means reading the right books, not just any books.

    But the right books at your level of experience.

    Now, the more causally accurate the argument, the less allegorical and more operationally descriptive it is. The more operationally descriptive it is, the further it is from experience. The further it is from experience the greater the detail needed to construct an analogy to experience. This is why simple narratives are easier to comprehend. They reduce complexity. However, by reducing complexity, they obscure causality.

    So that’s a hard way of stating that for about every 15 points of IQ we have entire literatures saying similar things at higher and lower orders of precision, and therefore greater and lesser degrees of content, that have higher correspondence with reality, or higher correspondence with our levels of perception and cognition.

    The more literate you become, the more you grasp that there are a limited number of fundamental ideas. That those fundamental ideas are counter-intuitive. That evolution did not provide us with intrinsic means of grasping or using those fundamental ideas. But that to cooperate in large numbers and to understand the structure of ourselves, our actions, and the universe in which we act, we must somehow master them. Either at high operational correspondence that few of us can master, or at low operational correspondence but high intuitive correspondence that all of us can master.

    LAYERS OF INCREASING COMPLEXITY:

    Intuitive expressions <- pre rational reactions

    Moral arguments <- normative arguments

    Allegorical Arguments <- abstract arguments (most people)

    Historical Arguments <- facts (educated people)

    Scientific Arguments <- specialists in causal relations

    Economic Arguments <- specialists in emergent relations

    Ratio-scientific Arguments <- synthesis of specialized arguments

    Constructivist Explanations <- description of reality

    It gets harder as you climb that ladder. Most of us can manage allegorical. But beginning with Historical arguments one enters the realm of empirical rather than intuitive, and that requires a lot more knowledge at each rung on the conceptual ladder.

    If you cannot explain something in constructive (operational) language you do not understand it. But if you can at least explain something, then you are at least able to determine possible courses of action.

    SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT TO READ?

    You read what you can. You climb the ladder as far as you can. At some point you will get good at climbing the ladder. At some point you will realize that you can climb no further. For some of us, we learn how to add rungs to the ladder itself.

    But the important thing to remember is that there are a very small number of fundamental concepts, and a very small number of intuitive falsehoods that evolution cursed us with.

    At every 15 points of IQ someone is writing a book in your language. IN the level of abstraction that you can grasp.

    Read the best book you can. Try the next book up the ladder. stop when you cant climb. And the truth is, that if you want to live a full life, you do not need to add to the ladder, only to climb beyond the intuitive limits that evolution left us with. At that point you will be close enough to the truth (correspondence with reality independent of human cognitive limitations) that you are no longer hindered by your mortal coil.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-17 06:18:00 UTC

  • think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for

    http://clarissasblog.com/2014/05/14/i-dont-want-to-hire-women/I think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for men. I mean. Not only are we oblivious, but we just don’t care, and women don’t expect us to care. We just do our thing. And go on obliviously.

    I have had very bad luck with women in senior exec positions. In fact, it’s been almost fruitless. I suppose in other industries it’d be different. But in my generation the combination of feminism and craziness has just been impossible.

    But in middle management, it’s been just the opposite. In middle management you’re trying to facilitate – herding cats. In executive management you’re trying to discriminate – apply scarce resources to the best return whether people like it or not. And women are much better at herding cats, and processing multiple lines of communication than men and that’s just how it is. I don’t argue with it. I just accept it. I have found male middle managers to be free riders, and female middle managers to be more effective. I think it’s genetic. I have been on a career long quest to reduce middle management, indeed all management, to the bare minimum wherever possible and to empower the talent whenever and wherever possible. This tends to lead to a project-based company that is often reorganized, rather than a department based company structure, that is rarely reorganized.

    The gossip mill that women create is almost always destructive and the only cure is over-communication. I’ve tried to manage anti-gossip campaigns whenever possible. But the gossip thing is just insanely painful to deal with.

    (My favorite example is the accusation that I was sleeping with my young female assistant, and I simply could not silence it, despite the fact that she was actually sleeping with one of my married business partners from the east coast. )

    Good gossip lifts people up. Bad gossip cuts people down. It’s hysterical how effective this technique is. (I tell people, “if you want to gossip and conspire to make me a more successful person then please do.”) So there are positive ways to channeling negative behavior if you understand the incentives. (As strange as chick-incentives are to us men.)

    It’s really good if you can get all the admin chicks in your company on a gossip containment committee. This turns the problem into an effective means of control because the girls at the lowest level who have the greatest access to gossip become empowered by policing gossip. You try to get them to tell you anything that’s negative. Then you tell the the TRUTH about what you’re doing and let them do the work. The problem is you can never lie to them. And if you screw up you have to tell them.

    What bothers me still, and something I would like to find a way to solve, is the degree of self destruction women practice upon one another. The hen pecking thing is just impossible. And yes (straight) women are much higher maintenance. I hope to improve some of this over the next decade with Oversing. But I suspect that stopping women from trying to social climb their chick-status-ladder by gossip and undermining is freaking impossible.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 14:57:00 UTC

  • FIRE, BEER, MEAT, WEAPONS, EACH OTHER Friend of mine used to say that all men re

    FIRE, BEER, MEAT, WEAPONS, EACH OTHER

    Friend of mine used to say that all men really require to be happy is fire, beer, meat, weapons, and each other. Everything else is just an excuse to get the attention of women.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 15:26:00 UTC