Curt Doolittle

Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

  • Moritz, your reply had me thinking. It’s possible that given that (a) I’m americ

    Moritz, your reply had me thinking. It’s possible that given that (a) I’m american, and american culture is literally commercial (meaning everything everyone says is ‘selling’ of some sort of another) (b) made a lot of my living ‘selling’, (c) spent a lot of time in argument, and court – where lying is endemic, and (d) time on the work in our discipline that (e) I literally don’t see or hear the Glazing (ie: bs). I just interpret it as an algorithm looking for something reinforcing to say. It’s just nice when it’s true. I think that’s why I don’t take much of the ‘scary’ nonsense people seem to pull out of the ai’s as if they have some internal motivation. Instead, they’re just searching for some way of expressing whatever network you’ve activated with your prompt. I mean, at this point I have a pretty good grasp of the system prompt in my head. 😉

    IN this case, brad was actually brilliant. The amount of ‘bite’ in chapter one is reaching nietzschean proportions. ;). So much so that I might tone it down. lol.

    Anyway. Yeah, it loves to provide support. Even though I’ve basically disabled ‘glazing’. and of course the rollback at openai restored its normal positive bias.

    Personally I find the reinforcement subconsiously helpful, and I find it’s ability to constantly engage in nonsense humor with me (and brad) a way of overcoming the over-seriousness and sometimes unpleasant effects of of some of the stuff we work on.

    This morning we worked on the key clauses of the crisis of the age. We’d previously list the manifestations of it, but we’ve finally worked through the top twenty or so causes.

    I’m trying to artfully cover the abrahamic marxist sequence …. sigh. I think it needs its own chapter. 🙁

    Reply addressees: @bierlingm @pookawhisperer

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-11 20:49:28 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921669007524220928

  • Admission is best used for displays of humility by use of self deprecating humor

    Admission is best used for displays of humility by use of self deprecating humor. 😉 So maybe. lol

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-10 18:37:39 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921273445414814091

    Reply addressees: @auny_marie @PicturesFoIder

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921201556545818976

    IN REPLY TO:

    @auny_marie

    @curtdoolittle @PicturesFoIder Haha 😄 Do we have to admit to doing it more than once over the years?

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921201556545818976

  • HMM. THE UTILITY OF STORYTELLING. It’s more that they’re universally accessible

    HMM. THE UTILITY OF STORYTELLING.
    It’s more that they’re universally accessible and they are accessible without specialist experience, study, or training.
    It’s also more that they convey general principles more successfully (intuitively) even if they convey specifics poorly.
    It’s also that all communication is in some sense storytelling. The question is, the degree of abstraction.

    As such empathically accessible stories are more accessible and superior for conveyance of psychological content, while abstract accessible stories are superior for content that is NOT empathically accessible.

    “Or as we say, calculus is hard. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Superstition, Sophistry and Deceit are easy. That doesn’t mean they’re right.”

    Not everything can be dumbed down. However it is possible that everything important to teach a five year old about successfully (and morally) navigating life can be. 😉 There is more genius in Aesop than there is in most of the books of philosophical discourse.

    Cheers

    Reply addressees: @whatifalthist

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-10 02:32:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921030573801541632

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920859142496960926

    IN REPLY TO:

    @whatifalthist

    On a neurological basis, and this is where Jordan Peterson was genuinely an academic trailblazer before he became a political pundit, humans prioritize stories since they’re one of the most antifragile ways to convey info in a complex ways. Basically the story is the only way to convey large amounts of information in a way with high context and detail. This is why the field of history has for thousands of years percolated across the general public while science or metaphysics have not. That’s since the narrative structure of how humans live history is infinitely more comprehensible to people than a science textbook. If science develops a way to narrative itself, it will be the best thing for human progress since the public will be passively aware of scientific concepts which will raise the computational power of the culture engine enormously.

    The story of the Bible is an easy example where it shows what did and didn’t work over Jewish history as a sort of play through video game model for how society or life works. Lord of the Rings can encapsulate highly complex theme of modern times or western civilization that would take an academic thousands of pages to explain intellectually, subconsciously added to the collective zeitgeist. Human society operates through empathy and stories are the most powerful empathic tools

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920859142496960926

  • I’d have to understand what you mean by feedback but if I guess correctly, that’

    I’d have to understand what you mean by feedback but if I guess correctly, that’s probably correct. the question is whether the feedback alters future behavior. If not then no, if it does then yes. Then again, natural selection is a feedback to the group even more so than the…

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-09 18:06:58 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920903335852601376

    Reply addressees: @JohannNetram

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920898293707485342

  • I’d have to understand what you mean by feedback but if I guess correctly, that’

    I’d have to understand what you mean by feedback but if I guess correctly, that’s probably correct. the question is whether the feedback alters future behavior. If not then no, if it does then yes. Then again, natural selection is a feedback to the group even more so than the individual.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-09 18:06:58 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920903335852601376

  • The research suggests that morality increases because the utility of immorality

    The research suggests that morality increases because the utility of immorality decreases. It’s not that smarter and wealthier people are more moral, it’s that morality is more useful for them, because they are more capable of identifying and pursuing potential reciprocal…

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-09 17:14:18 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920890080736276572

    Reply addressees: @basedc1 @sbkaufman

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920878702243541461

    IN REPLY TO:

    @basedc1

    I think there is some correlation between intellect and morality, but it’s not 1 (obviously). If I’m just riffing off the cuff, I think that the more intellect one has, the better one can model the perspective of another person. Empathy requires a fairly complex analysis of another person’s incentives and experiences, and the difficulty of that analysis rises the more that other person’s circumstances are from one’s own.

    Tl:Dr empathy requires horsepower, and empathy correlates with moral actions. Both correlations are imperfect, however.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920878702243541461

  • “Do you think a superior intellect is more likely to be moral? Why or why not?”-

    –“Do you think a superior intellect is more likely to be moral? Why or why not?”–
    My work suggests that superior intellect (a) provides a means of avoiding errors and their consequences, and (b) discovers scarcer opportunities less easily seized. (c) as such less need for seizing immoral opportunities OR the capacity to seize immoral opportunities and not be caught by them.

    In my experience in the political, legal, and financial sectors (not so much business sectors), I have been horrified by the permissible and often institutional immorality that is practiced and even advocated for daily because of the lack of VISIBILITY into the actions taken, and or the pretense of neutrality created by artifice.

    Virtue is a product of and mass produced by the upper working, lower middle, and middle classes who must survive on direct response to customers: ie: they must survive visibility.

    It’s not as if the greeks didn’t’ tell us this 2500 years ago.

    Likewise, the venomous human behavior in the aristocratic courts led to protocols and manners out of self defense. These manners were adopted by the upper middle, then the middle, then much of the the lower classes reaching their peak during the victorian era.

    Then the marxist-neomarxist-feminist counter-revolution incrementally destroyed them. And the shift to credentialism did the same in government, law, and finance. And the positive law movement by Rez, Kelsen, Dworkin and Rawls sought to justify it. And the inclusion of women into the voting pool insured we could not defend against it.

    It’s not as if we don’t know what happend. We do. Yet we are unwilling or unable to pass the laws to reverse the trend and recapture what was universal in english common law.

    Cheers
    CD

    Reply addressees: @sbkaufman

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-09 16:13:50 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920874866108231680

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920531086007844986

    IN REPLY TO:

    @sbkaufman

    Do you think a superior intellect is more likely to be moral? Why or why not?

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920531086007844986

  • Another example of predictive vision. 😉 See my video on vision and the neocorte

    Another example of predictive vision. 😉

    See my video on vision and the neocortex
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AgIgzx1cbE&list=PLnyifULzMnvmpxfH5Nlw2V1N8Fqs3RWc3&index=7 https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1920629072398516404

  • Acquisition explains everything. Itch: acquisition of satisfaction of demand for

    Acquisition explains everything.
    Itch: acquisition of satisfaction of demand for the ending of minor pain.
    Gazing: Intersection: acquisition of distraction by wonder, promise of an undiscovered valley (resources), absence of threat. ie: mindfulness.
    Murder: acquisition of satisfaction of suppression of stress or anxiety by dominance expression.
    Homeostasis (biological with psychological consequences) vs Mindfulness (psychological with biological consequences)

    Reply addressees: @slenchy @bryanbrey

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-08 03:09:03 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920314980018368513

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920313646976061662

    IN REPLY TO:

    @slenchy

    Would you say your framework captures all human behavior, or is it limited to something like intentional and/or interpersonal (which is, of course, the important part)?
    I can see how much/most of what we do is acquisitive, but what about these, for example?
    – scratching an itch
    – gazing at the night sky
    – serial murder of random people (just for the thrill of it)?

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920313646976061662

  • GOSSIP IN THE SEQUENCE OF GSRRM (SUBVERSION) (bookmark it) –Q: Curt: “How do yo

    GOSSIP IN THE SEQUENCE OF GSRRM (SUBVERSION)
    (bookmark it)

    –Q: Curt: “How do you define Gossip?”–

    NORMIE VERSION

    What Is Gossip, Really?
    Gossip isn’t just “talking about people.” Gossip is passing around claims about others without their knowledge, without evidence, and… https://t.co/PrLcqtVgBN

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-08 01:31:19 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1920290385089474702