Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • (personal) Never realized that my aversion to conflict, which drives my interest

    (personal)

    Never realized that my aversion to conflict, which drives my interest in politics and political economy, was part of of the Aspie-thing, rather than just a reaction to how my father treated my mother and us. I feel that I have to protect everyone (its terrible really) and that I just wish conflict would end so that I didn’t have to. Aspies particularly don’t understand interpersonal, emotional conflict. It’s very distressing. It’s incomprehensible. And we don’t like things that are incomprehensible. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 09:58:00 UTC

  • GETTING CLOSER : INFECTION AND THE MIND The dopamine theory of evolution has alw

    http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/infectious-behaviorBRILLIANT: GETTING CLOSER : INFECTION AND THE MIND

    The dopamine theory of evolution has always seemed the most plausible to me. Partly because our adaptation to Malaria seems somehow related to intelligence. Partly because the relationship between dopamine and histamine. And partly because of the relationship between allergies, depression and ARTISTIC (not autistic) behavior. And the relatively recent work that suggests that depression and schizophrenia are points on a spectrum disorder that seems to have some impact on weakening white matte, and inflammation that breaks the blood brain barrier.

    There is a little part of me that thinks that the dopamine related process of adaptation was not quite as successful as other selection processes, and we’ve been asymmetrically able to repair it over time because of geography and population density.

    Anyway, I’m hopeful that we will get very close to understanding just what it is that gives us this inflammation in our systems, and causes many of these autoimmune diseases that attack or as a byproduct, destroy our nervous systems.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 11:53:00 UTC

  • IS ASPIENESS A DISORDER OR A GIFT? “Firstly, is autism really a disorder? For al

    IS ASPIENESS A DISORDER OR A GIFT?

    “Firstly, is autism really a disorder? For all of the arguments to say that it is, I would strongly suggest that there are counter arguments against.”

    “But, having said that, what about the counter-side: the honesty, the straight talking, the saying what they think as opposed to making things up, the very genuine nature found in so many individuals with autism? What about all of the extraordinary qualities rife within the population, the attention to detail, perfectionism, drive, and focus?”

    “I would say that the only reason we use the term disorder is because there are more NT (neurotypical) people than there are people with autism. “

    COMMENT

    Really, I have a very mild case. I have absurdly narrow focus, and an obsessive form of subconscious concentration, that I can barely control and can crush me physically and mentally if I don’t constantly keep it fed with problems to chew on. And while I can’t read subtle facial expressions it’s not that I can’t read facial expressions at all. And I can read body language exceptionally well – well enough to compensate. And I can understand any emotion that is verbally communicated to me. I just can’t physically empathize well.

    A GIFT

    I love other Aspies. We are AWESOME to each other, and endlessly fascinating to one another. 🙂

    But more importantly, all the significant accomplishments in my life are due largely to taking a long term focus, and letting my inner aspie just act like a jackhammer on any problem I throw at it. So to me, it’s bit of genetic magic that I just worship>

    My most difficult challenge was in learning how to speak to people in mutually communicative terms. It was extremely difficult.

    But with extra effort on that issue, everything else was much easier than it is for neurotypicals.

    WHY

    eh. I’m advocating for other folk like me.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 10:58:00 UTC

  • CONSERVATISM IS FAMILY-ISM Its not rocket science. Conservatives breed more and

    CONSERVATISM IS FAMILY-ISM

    Its not rocket science. Conservatives breed more and spend more on family. More time, more attention, more money, more land. THats why conservatives outbreed progressives. Selfishness is not a good evolutionary strategy. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-14 16:31:00 UTC

  • CAUSAL AXIS OF MORAL BIASES (update) This weekend I spent working on the connect

    CAUSAL AXIS OF MORAL BIASES

    (update)

    This weekend I spent working on the connection between COOPERATION and morality. Now I have to tie cooperation to REPRODUCTION and reproduction to morality. This really is pretty simple. It’s there between Boehm, Ridley and Haidt. Once I do that I have the full chain from memory, to thought, to reproduction, to cooperation, to extended cooperation, which yields the axial dimensions of ‘calculation’ and ‘reproduction’ and ‘cooperation’ and ‘population’. With those axis, I can demonstrate most (all) of human moral behavior.

    I actually get pretty bored with just copying down citations. I know that’s good academic practice and labor, but it’s justificationism to me. Either something has explanatory power or not. Whether it’s justified isn’t something that usually troubles me. 🙂 A descriptive ethic does not need much justification. It’s purely explanatory. A prescriptive (normative) ethic, requires justification.

    Not sure if many people get what that means. But it doesn’t say much for the chance we’d ever come up with a prescriptive set of ethics that wasn’t nonsense. 🙂

    Although only my fellow critical rationalists will really grasp that.

    My objective here, will be to articulate moral biases the way that we articulate cognitive biases. I think, if I can reduce all of the moral biases, via Haidt, to just that, it’ becomes pretty easy to articulate them. And if it’s easy to articulate them, and in turn, show that they are claims against property, then it will mean that I have converted all moral discourse into propertarian language.

    And I am pretty sure then, that I can prove, that most political language is an attempt to use obscurantism to steal.

    And that’s pretty interesting.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-14 11:46:00 UTC

  • ANIMAL RIGHTS If you cannot be trusted with the care of an animal – pet or prope

    ANIMAL RIGHTS

    If you cannot be trusted with the care of an animal – pet or property. Then we cannot trust you with care of the rest of us.

    Simple people use empathy toward animals moral and legal claims, and anthropomorphize all sorts of things instead of using reason.

    But what they intuit in their arationalism is at least functionally correct if not causally correct.

    The seek to protect the victim because it is less aggressive and confrontational than punishing the actor. It is an effective technique but a dishonest one.

    And as such, these people – sensitives – perform a function even though their arguments are arational justifications of their intuitions.

    Unfortunately their arationality creates consequences that are morally, politically and legally damaging to civilization.

    Those of us who because of our lack of fear in confrontation or punishment, have the luxury of honesty, certainly feel compassion for our pets, animals and wildlife. But we correctly understand that not only are the animals a commons that they should respect no matter who cares for them, but that someone sick enough to harm creatures for emotional reasons of any kind, is a danger to all of us. And science has thankfully finally proven why – genetic and birth defect exacerbated by living in families with the same defects.

    Tolerance is not a good thing without accompaniment by training. Without correction it is not tolerance but convenience.

    Animals cannot have rights since they cannot enter into contract. A few pets to some degree can closely imitate that contract (dogs) at the level if a child when dependency forms.

    Humans have contractual obligations with each other not to be cruel to animals. As such it is your contractual duty to the rest of us – your price for our promise not to use violence against you, and to cooperate peaceably with you – that you treat animals as if they are human whenever possible as a ritualistic test of your adherence to contract.

    This contract is a necessary natural law that does not need codification. Natural laws are the minimum rules for peaceful cooperation. They are reducible to statements of property rights. And they are necessary. Human rights are not necessary, they are aspirations once natural rights have been achieved.

    And should you break that contract if natural law, the foolish and weak may shame you and claim animals have rights because they lack the intelligence, wisdom, means and capacity to punish you for violating natural law and demonstrating you are unfit for the contract by which we agree to cooperate, and rescind our use of violence.

    But those of us wise and strong enough will be honest with you.

    And since you have broken the contract of natural law with us, we are no longer forbidden to use violence.

    And we will logically, rationally, wisely, and legally under natural law, punish you sufficiently that you either will not, or cannot, do so again.

    That punishment too, is part of the contract that the strong agree to.

    Curt

    (Propertarianism in application)

    ( also another example of solipsism on one end and autism on the other. )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-10 04:59:00 UTC

  • HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING Doesn’t mean you spend money on your child. It means t

    HIGH INVESTMENT PARENTING

    Doesn’t mean you spend money on your child. It means that you spend time with your child and constantly teach him or her valuable information about the world.

    Throwing the child into the state baby-sitter system which demonstrably fails to make them productive and self sufficient citizens for purely political reasons isn’t high investment.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 07:11:00 UTC

  • MORE FASCINATING HUMAN STUFF : RATES OF GAY DIVORCE (interesting) Regarding UK c

    MORE FASCINATING HUMAN STUFF : RATES OF GAY DIVORCE

    (interesting)

    Regarding UK civil marriages.

    Women, whether straight or gay:

    a) want to tie the knot faster than men

    b) have higher _emotional_ expectations than men

    c) want to end it sooner, and more frequently than men

    Men, by contrast, are:

    a) slower to grasp and understand emotional relations than women.

    b) form lasting emotional relations mostly out of habituation.

    c) stay in relationships out of habituation – ‘comfort’, (Regularity of a relationship rather than stimulation from the relationship. This is partly because of the long emotional adaptation time men require vs women.)

    d) demonstrate being more sentimental than women after the end of a relationship.

    Durability of Relations:

    For women, children are permanent relations, but men are disposable relations. For men, all women are permanent relations. It’s just reproductive economics. It is this way. Because it has to be this way. Women build their children but men build entire tribes.

    It’s not complicated. What makes it complicated is confusing equality under the law in disputes over property, with equality of productivity in the work place, with inequality of reproductive, moral and personal interests.

    We are equal in economic cooperation, but not in emotional interests or reproduction.

    QUOTE

    “In the seven years since gay couples were able to have civil partnerships, 3.2 per cent of male unions ended in dissolution, compared to 6.1 per cent of female couples.”

    (Note: there is a pretty common life cycle to breakups. It pretty much takes about 20 years to be sure you’ll stay together. But rates decline rapidly after five to seven years.)

    “Sociologists believe the lower rates of ‘divorces’ among gay men may reflect a trend of women committing sooner and having higher expectations for a relationship. Women in civil partnerships tie the knot at an average age of 37.6, compared to men, for whom the average age is 40. Erzsebet Bukodim, sociologist at the University of Oxford, said: “In heterosexual marriage the divorce rate is higher if you enter marriage at a very young age. That might be one of the reasons we’re seeing this [high dissolution rate for women] in civil partnerships.”

    “Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, has found in successive studies that women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are twice as likely to dissolve their civil partnerships than men. He said: “This reflects trends in a heterosexual marriage because women are more prone to say they want to marry – but they’re also more likely to initiate a divorce. Women usually have higher demands on relationship quality, that’s often been said in studies. Even if you control for age there is still a trend of more women ending partnerships than men.”

    “Previous figures show British women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to file for divorce than men. Women initiated the divorce in two thirds of cases in the UK in 2011.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 04:22:00 UTC

  • If you negotiate morally, it is much easier to accuse the opposition of unethica

    If you negotiate morally, it is much easier to accuse the opposition of unethical conduct and walk away unassailably. I do this pretty often as a vehicle for killing the other side’s posturing, or replacing their negotiator.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-08 16:34:00 UTC

  • Always preserve some unsettled point of conflict in any deal for the very end, s

    Always preserve some unsettled point of conflict in any deal for the very end, so that you can blow up a deal once the momentum has taken root and the intellectual investment has been made, and everyone is committed. This allows you to crush minor points of petty theft that tend to occur by the participants in the negotiation and at the eleventh hour use their desire to profit from invested time and energy to veto a large set of sketchy provisions.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-08 16:17:00 UTC