Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • The Five Rude Questions: (Excerpt from Volume 4 – The Law) These questions are d

    The Five Rude Questions:
    (Excerpt from Volume 4 – The Law)

    These questions are described as foundational for philosophy, ethics, and politics, and are intentionally blunt (“rude”) to address core human motivations and societal organization.

    Philosophy: “Why not commit suicide?” (attributed to Albert Camus) – the foundational question of existence and choice.
    Ethics: “Why not kill you and take your stuff?” – the foundational question of cooperation and individual ethics.
    Politics: “Why shouldn’t me and mine kill you and yours and take your stuff?” – the foundational question of group dynamics and political organization.
    Group Strategy: “How shall we organize our people?” – addresses group evolutionary strategy and societal structure.
    Limits of Tolerance: “What are the limits beyond which we abandon the first four rules?” – concerns the boundaries of civility before defection (e.g., suicide, separation, free-riding, parasitism, or predation) occurs.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 15:11:08 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934267434879652198

  • THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION (From The Natural Law Volume 4 –

    THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION
    (From The Natural Law Volume 4 – The Law)

    As conscious beings possessed of degrees of agency, the first question upon which all others depend is why not to suicide? This choice is that of personal philosophy.
    The second question one must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of ethics.
    The third a group must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of politics.

    The answer to all three question is that persistence of the opportunities of existence, of the returns on cooperation, and of the returns on the production of commons, are preferable to engaging in suicide, separation, free riding, parasitism, and predation, and the condition as a victim of the vicissitudes of a nature hostile to all but the gods we imagine.

    For these reasons we organize into families, clans, tribes, nations; and territories, villages, cities, and polities; in the defense of, and for the advancement, of all; and to do so to preserve the returns on cooperation, while increasing proximity and number, and dividing our labors, we produce habits and rules of order consisting of habits, norms, traditions, institutions, processes, rights and obligations, by accident of circumstance, dictate, or choice.  When man makes such rules by choice under sovereignty he produces a contract of processes, rights and obligations because that is all he may.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 14:50:35 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934262265538363565

  • Today we can ‘science’ this a bit better than Le Bron: that crowds – the equival

    Today we can ‘science’ this a bit better than Le Bron: that crowds – the equivalent of packs at large scale (and different from herds) are a natural evolutionary expression of distributed cognition and signaling and the observed behavior of ‘elation in surrender to the pack’ which is caused by the feeling of safety in numbers, combined with the decrease in individual responsibility and agency as it it surrendered to the pack. Neurologically it’s simple.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-09 16:26:38 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1932112110483538412

  • I am afraid I don’t even understand this criticism. (a) it could be you do not g

    I am afraid I don’t even understand this criticism.
    (a) it could be you do not grasp how little individuals matter and instead how much circumstances promote individuals into power. This is one of the most common mistakes in historical analysis.
    (b) It could be you are trying to make some point about organizing violence. If so I don’t understand what point. It’s certainly not that we faiil to address it. IN fact most of my presentation last fall in Texas explained it in detail.

    So I’m sort of lost here.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-06 23:46:50 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1931135728001651013

  • I don’t think I’ve ever initiated a relationship with a woman. If a woman was in

    I don’t think I’ve ever initiated a relationship with a woman. If a woman was interesting I just paid attention, delivered attention, but in all cases the woman made the move to date or create a relationship. Even if it’s asking a girlfriend, or friend of mine to act as an envoy. I went to I think it was four proms my Sr year? And one my freshman year of college.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-06 18:17:38 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1931052879017820664

  • Joshua, I’ve worked on it. And they’re mutually refinforcing. The simple version

    Joshua,
    I’ve worked on it. And they’re mutually refinforcing. The simple version is that men are more internally regulated (environmental adaptability) and women more externally regulated (social conformity) and the evolutionary reasons for this are somewhat obvious.

    Next men systematize over time and women empathize within time. This means men predict narrow criteria (nature) over time and women predict wide criteria (people) in time.

    So absent external regulation the combination of female neuroticism and incapacity for systemic prediction – or perhaps oversensitivity to conflict prediction in time simple pushes women into amplifying their neuroses (negative thoughts).

    At least that’s the simple version of it.

    “Inside every grown woman is a scared little girl” is an old dictum that reemerges every few decades.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-04 21:32:13 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1930377074231128462

  • OK. Though I know it produces mindfulness, clarity, an increase in agency, and a

    OK. Though I know it produces mindfulness, clarity, an increase in agency, and a tendency to plan one’s future, what else does it do? 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-03 19:48:17 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1929988531205878133

  • You don’t give up, you redirect your energies from one set of goals to another –

    You don’t give up, you redirect your energies from one set of goals to another – which is what
    @ItIsHoeMath
    is doing. And given he’s a friend and fellow intellectual that I care about I’ll just state that he is making the right decision – for him. Will it change in ten years? Maybe. But now, he has a brain full of ideas, a passionate mission, and the talent to manifest it, and the evidence is in his accumulating influence.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-31 21:46:46 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1928931184832294934

  • CORRECTLY UNDERSTANDING THE SIMPLICITY OF SENTIENCE VS CONSCIOUSNESS I would cla

    CORRECTLY UNDERSTANDING THE SIMPLICITY OF SENTIENCE VS CONSCIOUSNESS

    I would clarify in that sentience narrowly defined is the capacity to react (autonomically to deliberately) to real world environmental stimuli and its subsequent effect on homeostasis.

    Consciousness requires continuous recursive use of short term memory to review that sense perception and valence in the context of using memory of predictions of consequences and choice of actions and that same effect.

    The difference is the hierarchy that results from sensation to perception to valence to reaction (response without choice) to action (planning with choice).

    Effectively all cognition is just the time span of prediction from memory: reaction to action.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-30 19:32:14 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1928534937386496506

  • Well, I mean, scientifically speaking, that set of mammalian instincts and survi

    Well, I mean, scientifically speaking, that set of mammalian instincts and surviving memory processes that constitute what we metaphorically and pre-scientifically call a ‘soul’ is in fact existential in the individual. So perhaps I don’t grasp what you mean.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-05-30 15:40:04 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1928476511012540783