Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • Cooperation is not a penultimate good. There exist no penultimate goods other th

    Cooperation is not a penultimate good. There exist no penultimate goods other than the quality of persistence of self and kin.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-13 17:43:44 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/665223536231993345

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/665219842367209473

    IN REPLY TO:

    Unknown author

    The first question of ethics is why don’t I kill you and take your land, women, and things – not assuming cooperation as the starting point.

    Original post: https://x.com/i/web/status/665219842367209473

    IN REPLY TO:

    @curtdoolittle

    The first question of ethics is why don’t I kill you and take your land, women, and things – not assuming cooperation as the starting point.

    Original post: https://x.com/i/web/status/665219842367209473

  • MEN: It’s better to ask questions and seek to understand, than to make arguments

    MEN: It’s better to ask questions and seek to understand, than to make arguments and demand to be agreed with. Autism comes in many guises.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-13 17:27:00 UTC

  • Cooperation is not a penultimate good. There exist no penultimate goods other th

    Cooperation is not a penultimate good. There exist no penultimate goods other than the quality of, and persistence of, self and kin.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-13 12:43:00 UTC

  • The General Challenge of Improving Demonstrated Intelligence Is In Making Fewer Errors.

    —“General knowledge, scientific knowledge, and testimonial truth will pretty much reduce any error you might accumulate through normal human cognitive bias. And, from what I can see, the general challenge of improving demonstrated intelligence is not getting smarter, it is making fewer errors. I know engineers who are not particularly smart, but they demonstrate the intelligence that they do have very well, because engineering-thinking is pretty scientific and practical. I see this in doctors as well as engineers. Whether they’re exceptional or not matters less. Their entire profession is built upon the scientific principle of doing no harm. So they may fewer errors. Too bad economists and politicians don’t do the same.”—

  • The General Challenge of Improving Demonstrated Intelligence Is In Making Fewer Errors.

    —“General knowledge, scientific knowledge, and testimonial truth will pretty much reduce any error you might accumulate through normal human cognitive bias. And, from what I can see, the general challenge of improving demonstrated intelligence is not getting smarter, it is making fewer errors. I know engineers who are not particularly smart, but they demonstrate the intelligence that they do have very well, because engineering-thinking is pretty scientific and practical. I see this in doctors as well as engineers. Whether they’re exceptional or not matters less. Their entire profession is built upon the scientific principle of doing no harm. So they may fewer errors. Too bad economists and politicians don’t do the same.”—

  • Why I Am Not Good at Arithmetic, Multiplication, Division, and Chess.

    [I] have a lot of friends who are good at chess, and I do think chess is a pretty good determinant of intelligence, and perhaps a better determinant of academic and career success. I was in a chess club through seventh or eighth grade, and really never got that good until the first machines came out because they played perfectly – too perfectly. But as an illustration, There are three reasons I am not very good at it: (a) Puzzles vs Problems ethic: I have a problem with puzzles as wasted effort, when I should be working on problems. Just as I have a problem going from books to problems, rather than from problems to books. So in effect I see playing games that require more than casual attention (cards), as an immoral waste of my time. (Which a certain girlfriend in college beat into me through insults as well.) So I cant make myself spend times on such things without feeling like I’m letting the time run out on my lifespan. (b) Working (short term) memory – one of the reasons I became interested in IQ is the understanding of both the myopia of my autistic thinking and what I began to understand was a problem for me in arithmetic calculation despite my abilities in mathematical reasoning. I work on certain categories of problems partly because I seemed to have a fairly weak working memory compared to other students. I have trouble adding and multiplying, or working with a lot of states: like origami requires. I have no problem reasoning. I can detect truth content pre-cognitively, and I can define spectra – lines of causality. I cannot however juggle many independent and as I see it – unrelated – states of things. (c) Limited lateral thinking. (which I suppose I could overcome with practice) but not only do I have trouble with humor – which depends upon it, with cunning in a game of chess (i tend to play aggressively with every move and am too concerned with optimum moves and can be baited by them), but I tend not to find ‘shortcuts’ so much as ‘truths’. Basically ‘if its in motion in time’ I intuit it. If it exists in states I don’t. Everything consists of flights of arrows. This tells me a lot really, because again, I see the world as a division of cognitive labor, with all these variations in smart people producing different ‘sensors’ that detect different ‘bits’ of reality, and our voluntary cooperation and trade as the information system by which we different sensors share that information. Man is a gloriously fascinating creature. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Why I Am Not Good at Arithmetic, Multiplication, Division, and Chess.

    [I] have a lot of friends who are good at chess, and I do think chess is a pretty good determinant of intelligence, and perhaps a better determinant of academic and career success. I was in a chess club through seventh or eighth grade, and really never got that good until the first machines came out because they played perfectly – too perfectly. But as an illustration, There are three reasons I am not very good at it: (a) Puzzles vs Problems ethic: I have a problem with puzzles as wasted effort, when I should be working on problems. Just as I have a problem going from books to problems, rather than from problems to books. So in effect I see playing games that require more than casual attention (cards), as an immoral waste of my time. (Which a certain girlfriend in college beat into me through insults as well.) So I cant make myself spend times on such things without feeling like I’m letting the time run out on my lifespan. (b) Working (short term) memory – one of the reasons I became interested in IQ is the understanding of both the myopia of my autistic thinking and what I began to understand was a problem for me in arithmetic calculation despite my abilities in mathematical reasoning. I work on certain categories of problems partly because I seemed to have a fairly weak working memory compared to other students. I have trouble adding and multiplying, or working with a lot of states: like origami requires. I have no problem reasoning. I can detect truth content pre-cognitively, and I can define spectra – lines of causality. I cannot however juggle many independent and as I see it – unrelated – states of things. (c) Limited lateral thinking. (which I suppose I could overcome with practice) but not only do I have trouble with humor – which depends upon it, with cunning in a game of chess (i tend to play aggressively with every move and am too concerned with optimum moves and can be baited by them), but I tend not to find ‘shortcuts’ so much as ‘truths’. Basically ‘if its in motion in time’ I intuit it. If it exists in states I don’t. Everything consists of flights of arrows. This tells me a lot really, because again, I see the world as a division of cognitive labor, with all these variations in smart people producing different ‘sensors’ that detect different ‘bits’ of reality, and our voluntary cooperation and trade as the information system by which we different sensors share that information. Man is a gloriously fascinating creature. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • “The altruism of genius” #hbd #feedly

    “The altruism of genius” #hbd #feedly http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-altruism-of-genius.html

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-11 13:35:46 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/664436355632615424

  • All human utterances consist of wishes, negotiations, or deceptions on behalf of

    All human utterances consist of wishes, negotiations, or deceptions on behalf of their reproductive strategies. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-11 09:57:45 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/664381491850407936

    Reply addressees: @paulg @pmarca

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/664263559635861504

    IN REPLY TO:

    @paulg

    I wonder how many people simultaneously believe that startups exploit their employees and that overpaid tech workers are ruining SF.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/664263559635861504

  • INTERNET MALE-NESS Most males on the internet are seeking dominance-expression t

    INTERNET MALE-NESS

    Most males on the internet are seeking dominance-expression through argument. The internet is a safe place to fail. And they learn through increasing tests of their abilities. Some learn the first year over and over again. Others progress every year. But it is merely combat practice – training, in an effort to both vent the stress if powerlessness and rejection, as well as the stress of being surrounded by ignorance and error, as well as an attempt to transcend the boy and become the man. So while I would prefer that such gladiators prefer to improve, than prefer to justify their failure to improve, or merely seek attention by discounted means, I also see the rattling of cages, positioning and threats, and the trowing of feces as mere, learning by doing. And I would rather see men learn than not. My advice is to help those years behind you. And together as a group we all advance.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-09 06:10:00 UTC