Curt Doolittle

Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

  • MUCH TROUBLE CAN I GET INTO WITH THIS POSTING? 🙂 (I BET IT’S A LOT.) If Republi

    http://times247.com/articles/pew-republicans-better-informed-more-empatheticHOW MUCH TROUBLE CAN I GET INTO WITH THIS POSTING? 🙂 (I BET IT’S A LOT.)

    If Republicans skew male, and Democrats skew female, and men accumulate more economic and political knowledge than women, and women have fewer and less diverse friends than men, then isn’t the fact that Republicans are better informed and more open minded than Democrats simply an artifact of the distribution of men and women between the parties?

    The classical liberal system was designed to create separate houses for different classes of males. It has not survived the addition of females to the electorate. We should not have eliminated the class division of houses, we should have added to it. Then we could compromise rather than conduct ideological warfare, class warfare, and gender warfare.

    And the results of these polls would be obvious.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-23 10:07:00 UTC

  • Mises On Determinism: An Agnostic.

    His argument is that the human mind must determine action or the human creature cannot survive as an acting animal, And the human mind therefore is incapable of seeing the universe as anything other than a sequence of causes. It is a criticism of the tendency of the human mind to err.

    Quote: “It is impossible, … for the human mind to think of any event as uncaused. The concepts of chance and contingency, if properly analyzed, do not refer ultimately to the course of events in the universe. They refer to human knowledge, prevision, and action. They have a praxeological, not an ontological connotation.”

    [callout]The universe cannot observe itself, predict it’s own movements, and construct a plan by which it may alter events. It consists of constant categories. The categories used by human beings are limited only by their desired actions, and their desired actions, in collective permutation, are less limited than those of the physical universe.[/callout]

    In other words, any notion of determinism is an artifact of the human mind. He goes on to give examples of how different fields err. He summarizes by saying we just don’t know whether it is or not, and that we may be prevented from understanding whether it is or not, simply because we cannot conceive of it otherwise. He’s agnostic. He’s not a determinist. He says we just don’t know, and in all the examples that we have tried so far, none of them survive critical analysis. He argues that the use of numerical aggregates and statistics only reinforce that issue. I can see how someone would not understand his argument if they didn’t read it carefully. But his first paragraph makes the entire argument:

    Quote “Whatever the true nature of the universe and of reality may be, man can learn about it only what the logical structure of his mind makes comprehensible to him. Reason, the sole instrument of human science and philosophy, does not convey absolute knowledge and final wisdom. It is vain to speculate about ultimate things. What appears to man’s inquiry as an ultimate given, defying further analysis and reduction to something more fundamental, may or may not appear such to a more perfect intellect. We do not know.”

    He’s an agnostic, not a determinist: “WE DO NOT KNOW.” And any illusion that we can know is a byproduct of the structure of the human mind. Therefore by occam’s razor, it’s more likely that we’re simply WRONG whenever we have deterministic ideas. So Mises was not a determinist. Since his time, we have learned enough, that it is possible to defeat the argument to physical determinism in human action, if not the physical world. What arguments to Determinism that remain, are artifacts of religious mysticism and the structure of our minds. 1) Causality Exists 2) Determinism doesn’t. (Unless there is a god who determines everything.)

    “RE: “Like “Existence”, “Causation” is, as Gian-Carlo Rota might have said, a folie. There is only direction of entropy as measured by gradients of correlation. It is one of those dirty secrets of philosophy of science.” – A Critic

    This view of causality is only true in the abstract, special case of relations in the physical universe which exist independently of human action. When instead, we consider that category of relations which are the result of human action, and where such action requires information necessary to plan, and where such information is of necessity a generalization of the complexity of the physical universe, and as such where a loss of information is necessitated by such acts of generalization, and where such a loss of information is necessary in order to compose an action which will alter the existing course of events using a process of heuristic calculation, where that calculation is made with fragmentary information, and where actions are limited to the possible scope of human actions. Then by necessity causation consists of a set of actions that are observable, and categorically definable both individually, and in the aggregate, by observation of those actions. Actions which produce patterns of outcome which are distinguishable from the entropic limitations of the physical universe. A physical universe to which calculation and aggregation are impossible concepts. The universe cannot observe itself, predict it’s own movements, and construct a plan by which it may alter events. It consists of constant categories. The categories used by human beings are limited only by their desired actions, and their desired actions, in collective permutation, are less limited than those of the physical universe. Anyway, I think I might understand the suggestion that mises was a causal determinist at this point as saying: a) State t1 is the product of prior states tn{..}. b) each state in tn{} is the product of human naming and identity. BUT c) this is not to say that tn{} is complete. d) this is not to say that tn+1 must occur, only that tn+1 can be described by tn+1{…} In this sense, human action is not deterministic, it is however causally determinable. If the question of determinism is metaphysical, then: a) Mises has made no statements to metaphysical determinism, only that humans think in deterministic terms and are incapable of doing otherwise. This is a statement about human beings, not the physical universe. b) If instead of a metaphysical question, it is a question of praxeological action, then all human actions have causes, moreover, all actions are rational (in the broader sense of the term). c) causality is separate from determinacy. That all events have enumerable causes is separate and distinct from the assertion that all causes produce fixed ends. In this sense, the term causal (praxeological) determinism can have meaning separate from Fatalism, Predeterminism, or Predictability, as well as causal (metaphysical) determinism. Mises may have ben a praxeological determinist but not a metaphysical determinist. Clear as mud I’m sure. 🙂

  • THE QUALITY OF THE PEOPLE NOT THE QUALITY OF THE SCHOOL –The Best Ideas Are Alw

    http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/test-scores-and-housing-costs/ITS THE QUALITY OF THE PEOPLE NOT THE QUALITY OF THE SCHOOL

    –The Best Ideas Are Always In The Comments–

    “the reality of the situation….is it’s the quality of the people who comprise the neighborhood that dictate the quality of the school. Being wealthy is a by-product of the quality of those people. The culture and values of the individual, family and neighborhood matter. The most successful ethnic group in America are Asian-Americans. Why? Confucian-based values, a strong emphasis on family, and a strong work ethic create the environment necessary to raise the next generation of successful individuals. The poor are a by-product of poor individual choices, broken families, and a lack of focus on what is truly important: education.”

    Now, lets understand that white, ashkenazi and east asian scores are superior in each area. But that we’re also less impulsive — calmer. Unfortunately, white IQ has declined in the aggregate since 1850 due to rapid breeding by the underclasses. Is that offensive? Maybe. But if you pursue equality with unequal people you’re just tilting at windmills. Lets not blame the schools for the quality of the students. The only blame the schools carry is tenured teachers that the principles can’t fire.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-20 08:21:00 UTC

  • WORD BUDGETS: Writing vs Speaking, and the Male vs Female myth.

    I can’t quite tell if there is any data to support the commonly quoted difference between men and women’s speaking budgets. It’s one of those things that’s so commonly bandied about that you’d think you could easily find data on it. But you can’t. And what you can, is pretty specious. In fact, it looks pretty much ‘just plain wrong’ when I read it. But there is another explanation; it certainly does appear that men and women speak more in different **contexts**. One thing we know that helps us understand those contexts, is that men have more friends than women, but women have closer relationships than do men. Men tolerate greater diversity of value judgements in their friends. Women tolerate less diversity of value judgments in their friends. Or perhaps better stated, men and women view the source of loyalty that defines friendship as coming from different behaviors: cooperation in pursuit of opportunities for shared gain, versus care-taking which requires bearing costs on behalf of the other. For this reason fear of ostracization is lower in men, and higher in women. Add onto that the men not only feel more comfortable taking risks, but enjoy and seek taking them — albiet the level of risk varies substantially. But conversational risk is very low among men. We think it’s better to hear a bad idea than fail to hear all the ideas. Women are more cautious because they are more sensitive to variation in opinion. In my anecdotal experience, in business meetings and debates, men speak far more words than women. In social settings, and in personal conversations, women speak more words than men. Men seem to enjoy participating in competitive conversations. They even artificially create nonsense-conflicts just to have something to debate: they talk about sports teams, companies, politics, technologies, cars and tools etc. Each as a vehicle for debate. They prefer the abstract to the experiential, and a limited number of contextual changes. Women seem to prefer gradual subtle conversations across multiple contexts where they can build consensus and thoroughly understand one another’s viewpoints in the process. The result of these different preferences is more of a difference in velocity than anything else. Women tend to ‘get there’ using their conversational style just like men do, but more slowly. Like everything else, men are built for speed. The extraneous is removed by evolution. It certainly seems like most woman I’ve been in a relationship with has greater capacity for speech than I do — and I’m pretty talkative. But I suspect that it’s a difference in the content and circumstance not the number of words. I”m not the only man who thinks it’s odd that his mate must revisit her dreams in the morning, and her daily conversations at night. It’s common knowledge among men that we must learn that skill. But it’s good for a relationship when men learn how to feign interest in these things that we lack the emotional bandwidth to appreciate and comprehend. Listening is an exercise in providing what the other person needs, and what she needs is not comprehension and problem solving – it’s to ensure we’re committed to one another, and for her to organize her emotions by way of speaking them in the same way that men organize our ideas by visualizing them. Chatter after all, is negatively correlated with successful hunting. Communication during hunts and war is visual, not verbal. Besides, that female revisitation of emotions is why women help us with our emotional problems when we have them: they’re more experienced at dealing with them. Our compensation for lacking those tools, is that mechanical devices, consumer electronics, and politics are not opaque to our comprehension. But I’m not sure which gender gets the better deal. We forget that we all start out female, and that the template for human beings is female, and that males are highly specialized versions of females. Testosterone shuts all that ‘unnecessary’ emotional processing off for males in the womb so that we can worry about doing dangerous things and making tools, and inventing pretty much everything, without worrying about the needs of children or the danger that other women might ostracize us in a time of weakness, when we and our children need communal support to survive. Applying that word budget to writing: I”m writing about 8K words a day on average now, with an average low of 5K, an average high of 10K, and a max of 25K on rare occasions. I’m not sure what that means. I know that if I dont talk to people all day, I write more, and vice versa. I also know that if I am writing for a competitive argument I write more than if I write in the explanatory neutral voice. But I also need to chat more than does my spouse. We are the product of our genes. The universe is fascinating. Life is a miraculous luxury. And every breath of it is worth savoring.

  • Why Are Conservatives Happier?

    Because the reality of imperfect human nature doesn’t trouble them. They don’t want to change the impossible. The universe is not something they struggle with. It’s something to appreciate. They celebrate present goods over future fantasies. They struggle to improve their their family and career, not the lives of others. They break the problem of life into small pieces. Each family doing the yeoman’s labor of creating the smallest tribe possible:the family. And by creating a multitude of those successful small tribes, the greater tribe emerges from the sum of its parts, not the pursuit of an idealistic folly: an attempt to obtain universal homogenous belief in the pursuit of shared feelings, ideas, and goals. The progressive instead, runs on a squirrel cage, attempting to gain consensus from the multitude, never getting there, and feeling frustrated for having failed. Human nature is all but immutable. Our preferences are genetic. They are determined by the difference in mating strategy between the genders and the imprecision of the gender creation process caused by the difference in in-utero concentrations of hormones that enhance or diminish those gender-based emotional biases. Conservatives are happier because they are more successful at life itself. No human can be happy when he struggles against the universe. It is an exercise in perpetual frustration.

  • WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES HAPPIER? Because the reality of imperfect human nature doe

    WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES HAPPIER?

    Because the reality of imperfect human nature doesn’t trouble them. They don’t want to change the impossible. The universe is not something they struggle with. It’s something to appreciate. They celebrate present goods over future fantasies. They struggle to improve their their family and career, not the lives of others. They break the problem of life into small pieces. Each family doing the yeoman’s labor of creating the smallest tribe possible:the family. And by creating a multitude of those successful small tribes, the greater tribe emerges from the sum of its parts, not the pursuit of an idealistic folly: an attempt to obtain universal homogenous belief in the pursuit of shared feelings, ideas, and goals. The progressive instead, runs on a squirrel cage, attempting to gain consensus from the multitude, never getting there, and feeling frustrated for having failed. Human nature is all but immutable. Our preferences are genetic. They are determined by the difference in mating strategy between the genders and the imprecision of the gender creation process caused by the difference in in-utero concentrations of hormones that enhance or diminish those gender-based emotional biases.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-16 09:56:00 UTC

  • WORD BUDGETS: Writing vs Speaking, and the Male vs Female myth. I can’t quite te

    WORD BUDGETS: Writing vs Speaking, and the Male vs Female myth.

    I can’t quite tell if there is any data to support the commonly quoted difference between men and women’s speaking budgets. It’s one of those things that’s so commonly bandied about that you’d think you could easily find data on it. But you can’t. And what you can, is pretty specious. In fact, it looks pretty much ‘just plain wrong’ when I read it.

    But there is another explanation; it certainly does appear that men and women speak more in different **contexts**.

    One thing we know that helps us understand those contexts, is that men have more friends than women, but women have closer relationships than do men. Men tolerate greater diversity of value judgements in their friends. Women tolerate less diversity of value judgments in their friends. Or perhaps better stated, men and women view the source of loyalty that defines friendship as coming from different behaviors: cooperation in pursuit of opportunities for shared gain, versus care-taking which requires bearing costs on behalf of the other.

    For this reason fear of ostracization is lower in men, and higher in women. Add onto that the men not only feel more comfortable taking risks, but enjoy and seek taking them — albiet the level of risk varies substantially. But conversational risk is very low among men. We think it’s better to hear a bad idea than fail to hear all the ideas. Women are more cautious because they are more sensitive to variation in opinion.

    In my anecdotal experience, in business meetings and debates, men speak far more words than women. In social settings, and in personal conversations, women speak more words than men. Men seem to enjoy participating in competitive conversations. They even artificially create nonsense-conflicts just to have something to debate. (sports teams etc). Women seem to prefer gradual subtle conversations where they can build consensus.

    The result of these different preferences is more of a difference in velocity than anything else. Women tend to ‘get there’ using their conversational style just like men do, but more slowly. Like everything else, men are built for speed. The extraneous is removed by evolution.

    It certainly seems like most woman I’ve been in a relationship with has greater capacity for speech than I do — and I’m pretty talkative. But I suspect that it’s a difference in the content and circumstance not the number of words. I”m not the only man who thinks it’s odd that his mate must revisit her dreams in the morning, and her daily conversations at night.

    But it’s good for a relationship when men learn how to feign interest in these things that we lack the emotional bandwidth to appreciate and comprehend. Listening is an exercise in providing what the other person needs, and what she needs is not comprehension and problem solving – it’s to ensure we’re committed to one another, and for her to organize her emotions by way of speaking them the way men organize our ideas by visualizing them. Chatter after all, is negatively correlated with successful hunting. Communication during hunts and war is visual, not verbal. Besides, that female revisitation of emotions is why women help us with our emotional problems when we have them. They’re more experienced at dealing with them. Our compensation is that mechanical devices and politics are not opaque to our comprehension. But I”m not sure which gender gets the better deal.

    We forget that we all start out female, and that the template for human beings is female, and that males are highly specialized versions of females. Testosterone shuts all that ‘unnecessary’ emotional processing off for males in the womb so that we can worry about doing dangerous things and making tools, and inventing pretty much everything, without about the needs of children or the danger that other women might ostracize us in a time of weakness, when we and our children need communal support to survive.

    Applying that word budget to writing: I”m writing about 8K words a day on average now, with an average low of 5K, an average high of 10K, and a max of 25K on rare occasions.

    I’m not sure what that means. I know that if I dont talk to people all day, I write more, and vice versa. I also know that if I am writing for a competitive argument I write more than if I write in the explanatory neutral voice.

    We are the product of our genes. The universe is fascinating. Life is a miraculous luxury. And every breath of it is worth savoring.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-16 09:44:00 UTC

  • A Heretical Question? Do Women Have Too Much Power?

    GIVENS: Given that women control access to sex and access to reproduction. Given that women have a different mating strategy from men. Given that women determine the outcome of elections. Given that women prefer anti-liberty policies. Given that in the modern economy women are more easily employable than men. (Or rather, that the distribution of women is heavier in the middle, to the disadvantage of men in the lower two quintiles.) Given that women are financially capable of raising children on their own, and are doing so in record numbers. Given that the only sector in which women do not dominate is in the upper quintile of intellectual ability, and therefore the upper incomes in the private sector. Do women not have both in logic and in practice, the power to effectively enslave men by legislative means? Women evolved in order to manipulate one group of men in order to gain control of another group of men. The agrarian order changed that for a short time. Women evolved to seek the best alpha mates that they could obtain, then use sex to gain the resources and cooperation of beta males, once they have their children. Men could cooperate politically because they only differ in ability. But women differ from men in that they do not seek liberty to succeed in order to obtain access to sex and reproduction. Women already control access to sex and reproduction. So can men and women cooperate in a democratic order if it is possible within that political order to conduct involuntary transfers?

  • A Heretical Question? Do Women Have Too Much Power?

    GIVENS: Given that women control access to sex and access to reproduction. Given that women have a different mating strategy from men. Given that women determine the outcome of elections. Given that women prefer anti-liberty policies. Given that in the modern economy women are more easily employable than men. (Or rather, that the distribution of women is heavier in the middle, to the disadvantage of men in the lower two quintiles.) Given that women are financially capable of raising children on their own, and are doing so in record numbers. Given that the only sector in which women do not dominate is in the upper quintile of intellectual ability, and therefore the upper incomes in the private sector. Do women not have both in logic and in practice, the power to effectively enslave men by legislative means? Women evolved in order to manipulate one group of men in order to gain control of another group of men. The agrarian order changed that for a short time. Women evolved to seek the best alpha mates that they could obtain, then use sex to gain the resources and cooperation of beta males, once they have their children. Men could cooperate politically because they only differ in ability. But women differ from men in that they do not seek liberty to succeed in order to obtain access to sex and reproduction. Women already control access to sex and reproduction. So can men and women cooperate in a democratic order if it is possible within that political order to conduct involuntary transfers?

  • Analogies are the core of cognition: Hofstadter

    (Thanks to Skye for pointer) RE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk&feature=related The attempt to better understand the physical structure of our brains doesn’t seem to have produced anything more useful than the philosophical insight that precise definitions, deduction in its three forms, and the syllogism as a means of comparing those definitions, and the use of analogies in their multitude of forms, are the minimum reducible objects of cognition and calculation by that process we call reason. (Note: here are notes on deduction etc: Section III: Types of Analogical Argument) The major improvement to human cognition have been: First the development of writing and accounting that allow us to communicate an idea consistently, and to perceive and compare what we cannot with our senses alone. And second, the use of statistics to create categories we could not perceive with our senses, and calculus to allow us compare multiple axis of causal properties, both of which draw upon our accumulated record of financial information — information that makes economic assessment, and therefore tests of our moral narratives, finally possible by other than purely philosophical means. But in the end, empirical observation must be reduced to some categorical type which is in itself an analogy — and must be. Because we cannot perceive it by our senses alone.