Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • @Plinz, I’d like a little more clarity since I assume you mean by ‘sound’ a ‘for

    @Plinz,

    I’d like a little more clarity since I assume you mean by ‘sound’ a ‘formal’ or ‘constructable’ explanation of ‘the physical, neurological, and associative construction of representation?

    So Why Did It Take So Long?
    Early 20th Century: Gestalt Psychology – how complex representations are produced in the mind.
    1950s-1960s: Early cognitive models and generative grammar. (Age of the cognitive revolution)
    1970s-1980s: Connectionism, formal semantics, and cognitive linguistics. (Distributed representation)
    1990s-2000s: Embodied cognition, neuroimaging, corpus linguistics, and distributional semantics.
    Recent Years: Computational models, deep learning, and cross-disciplinary research integrating multidimensional data analysis.

    And;
    1. Neurologically we do know.
    2. The emergence of LLM’s have popularized what we have known.
    3. Depending upon your meaning, yes, until Turing we didn’t have the theory we have now. (Because Babbage failed to produce a theory, costing us a century, and the divergence of mathematic, logic, philosophy, and physics that ensued).
    4. And linguistics has, at least since Chomsky adapted Turing for grammar, but in particular at least the past three decades, known (and I employed seventy something library science people for years working on it);
    5. Philosophers have discussed ‘what’s it like to think like a bat’, meaning embodiment, scale, and time differences.
    6. Artists, whether visual, poetic, or musical, or literary have known and made use of it, despite not grasping its constitution.
    7. Mythology and theology certainly have understood.
    And while the ancients thought in atoms (objects) and did grasp that ‘there can’t be nothing because we can’t observe anything without something to compare it to’, so it’s just “persistent relations in time, all the way down”.

    It Took A Profound Reversal in Our Thought
    And we thought, until at least Popper, but it’s certainly still the main framework of human thought, that justification produced non-falsehood, when conversely, the universe consists of persistent relations, and all logic is falsificationary, and even with a full knowledge of all first principles in the universe, given limits on computational and mathematical reducibility cannot cover the scope of operational possibility, rendering prediction of possibilities limited to some general regularly of the emergence of new patterns.

    So there is a pattern in the history of human cognition that like the arc from embodiment through to the operational logic of first principles that evolves from human object, space, background place and location use in wayfinding, and the parsimony of memory needed to remember routes, as well as the parsimony of language necessary to explain both routes and their increasingly abstract applications of wayfinding to all manner of thoughts … that the brain is working in the opposite direction from distributed information, eliminating all information that does not consist of relations, and then combining those relations into perceptions we can then use to wayfind.

    So it’s natural that given all of our introspectively possible cognition would result from such objects and justifications that we would fail to observe the unintrospectable construction of those things from nothing but relations in time between vibrations of neurons.

    Cheers.
    CD

    Reply addressees: @Plinz

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-19 22:44:03 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1792325373306269696

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1792140352410791980

  • ASPIE SPECTRUM: FROM OVERLOADING TO DEPERSONALIZATION The Series: Emotional Floo

    ASPIE SPECTRUM: FROM OVERLOADING TO DEPERSONALIZATION
    The Series: Emotional Flooding(Temporary), Emotional Shutdown(Temporary), Autistic Meltdown (Short Term), Autistic Shutdown(Short term) and Depersonalization (Long Term)

    1. EMOTIONAL FLOODING:
    Emotional Flooding occurs when an individual experiences an overwhelming amount of emotional input, which can lead to a state of confusion, withdrawal, or shutdown. This can happen during intense arguments, conflicts, or highly emotional situations.
    Characteristics:
    Overwhelmed: A sense of being overwhelmed by emotions.
    Confusion: Difficulty thinking clearly or making decisions.
    Withdrawal: Pulling away from the situation or becoming unresponsive.

    2. EMOTIONAL SHUTDOWN:
    Emotional shutdown is a state where an individual becomes emotionally numb or detached in response to overwhelming stress or emotional input. This can be seen as a milder, more common version of an autistic shutdown.
    Characteristics:
    Numbness: Feeling emotionally numb or detached.
    Disconnection: A sense of disconnection from one’s own emotions or from others.
    Withdrawal: Pulling away from social interactions or emotionally intense situations.

    3. Autistic Meltdown:
    An intense response to overwhelming situations or stimuli, characterized by a loss of behavioral control. It is a common experience for individuals on the autism spectrum and can be triggered by sensory overload, changes in routine, emotional stress, or other environmental factors.
    Characteristics:
    Behavioral Outbursts: Individuals may exhibit crying, screaming, hitting, kicking, or other aggressive behaviors.
    Physical Reactions: Some may engage in self-injurious behaviors such as head-banging, biting, or scratching.
    Note, this is ‘deep’ autistic behavior. Most people lower on the spectrum shutdown or disassociate instead of produce outbursts.

    4. AUTISTIC SHUTDOWN:
    Autistic shutdown is an intense, involuntary response to overwhelming sensory, emotional, or cognitive overload. It involves a temporary loss of executive functioning and a significant reduction in one’s ability to process and respond to external stimuli. This can be considered a more severe form of emotional shutdown, particularly prevalent among individuals on the autism spectrum. The individual becomes non-responsive or withdrawn.
    Characteristics:
    Complete Withdrawal: Individuals may become non-responsive, unable to speak, move, or engage with their surroundings.
    Physical Symptoms: Reduced motor skills, decreased eye contact, and a general sense of paralysis.
    Cognitive Impairment: Difficulty thinking, processing information, or making decisions.
    Emotional Numbness: A profound sense of detachment from emotions and the environment.
    Functional Impairment: Inability to perform routine tasks or engage in normal activities.
    Social Isolation: Increased likelihood of withdrawing from social interactions, leading to feelings of isolation.
    Emotional Distress: The aftermath of a shutdown can leave individuals feeling drained, confused, and distressed.

    5. DEPERSONALIZATION/DEREALIZATION DISORDER (DPDR)
    A type of dissociative disorder where individuals experience a persistent or recurrent feeling of being detached from their own body or mental processes (depersonalization) or feeling disconnected from their surroundings (derealization). This condition can indeed result in a profound sense of detachment from one’s emotions, memories, and sense of self, impacting cognitive functions such as judgment, planning, and interaction with the external world.
    Characteristics:

    Depersonalization:
    Feeling Detached from Self: Individuals feel like they are observing themselves from outside their body or that they are in a dream. There can be a sense of unreality about one’s self.
    Altered Sense of Self: The inner “me” feels less present or real. Emotional responses might be blunted or completely absent.
    Disconnection from Emotions: A significant reduction in the ability to feel emotions or to connect emotionally with one’s own experiences or with others.

    Derealization:
    Feeling Detached from Environment: The external world seems unreal, distant, or distorted. Objects may appear lifeless, or the environment may seem foggy or dreamlike.
    Altered Perception: There might be visual or auditory distortions, such as blurry vision or sounds being muted or amplified.

    Impact on Cognitive Functions:
    Memory and Judgment: Difficulty accessing memories and associating them with current experiences, leading to challenges in judgment and planning.
    Awareness: Despite feeling detached, individuals usually maintain an awareness that their experiences are not normal. This can create significant distress and anxiety.
    Functional Impairment: Even though individuals can often perform routine tasks and may continue intellectual work (like research), their ability to interact socially or make decisions can be severely impaired.

    Triggers and Causes
    Stress and Trauma: Chronic stress, severe anxiety, or traumatic experiences are common triggers for DPDR.
    Neurobiological Factors: There might be neurobiological underpinnings, such as imbalances in brain chemicals or differences in the way the brain processes sensory information.

    I hope this helps someone. 😉
    Cheers
    CD

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-19 01:06:46 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791998900359880704

  • Prediction that the individual will not cause you harm even if it is simply not

    Prediction that the individual will not cause you harm even if it is simply not acting against the most subtle of your interests, will not break a promise, agreement, all the way up to betrayal, fraud, and causing you physical harm.
    Biologically it’s just homeostasis plus (a)…

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-17 16:31:50 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791506926615884112

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791485022438105300

  • RT @NoahRevoy: @curtdoolittle @whatifalthist ^^^Stronger families fixes so many

    RT @NoahRevoy: @curtdoolittle @whatifalthist ^^^Stronger families fixes so many secondary problems that can not be legislated away.

    And it…

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-17 11:56:00 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791437511211802631

  • HOW CAN WE REFORM BEHAVIORAL SERVICES? re: coaching > mentoring > behavioral tra

    HOW CAN WE REFORM BEHAVIORAL SERVICES?
    re: coaching > mentoring > behavioral training > counseling > therapy > psychology

    I have a problem with treating coaching, mentoring, behavioral training, counseling, therapy, and psychiatry as ‘mental health’ services. I mean, that’s probably true for psychiatry, but the rest is just behavioral modification by the degree of effort needed to apply some form of education, suggestion, or repetitive exposure (suggestion) to assist someone in improving, overcoming, and correcting behaviors.

    I also have a problem with the pretense that the universities graduate competency in mental health, given the state of the industry and it’s long march out of pseudoscience on one hand and it’s feminine infantilization as the solution to everything on the other.

    So assuming we could obtain the power to legislate a change in an industry that is too frequently either backward, ineffective, or harmful, how could we both reframe the spectrum of behavioral modification, and how could we legitimize those who demonstrated competency rather than demonstrated time in the education system?

    CURT
    So, much of my work is constructed out of cognitive and behavioral science and the scale of those behaviors in law, economics, politics, and group strategic differences.

    At the moment the crisis in psychology is continuing because there is a lag between the discipline as practiced, and the state of the science. (see Kuhn’s ‘disciplines progress via tombstones.’)

    At present we have a spectrum of coaching (unlicensed) > Counseling (licensed) > Therapists (licensed) > Psychiatry (licensed) and Neurologist (licensed).

    Unfortunately there are people who are using the term ‘coach’ even though they are practicing counseling (advice), training(behavioral modification), counseling (crisis) and therapy (repair), because they have developed enough of a client base, published books and articles, and reputation in the market for the quality of their work.

    So, first, is there a label or name for this category of ‘craftsmen’ not yet academically certified (titled), and second, if not, what would be appropriate, and what method could we certify them by?

    Because we are in a period of rapid expansion of mental health issues (for reasons we do understand but we can’t modify the education system to correct it). And the demand for competency is increasing.

    Even in the licensed disciplines of counseling and therapy these are perhaps the most behind, and there are social and political and economic consequences to the present state of these disciplines in the context of the current state of the population.

    And, finally, I guess, third, what would you recommend we do to alter this state of affairs?

    CLAUDE:
    The situation you describe, where individuals are providing mental health services (is it health or fitness?) without formal licensing or academic certification, is a complex issue that raises concerns about quality control, standardization, and public safety.

    The term “coach” is often used as a catch-all for these types of practitioners, but it can be misleading, as it doesn’t adequately distinguish between those providing general guidance and those offering more specialized mental health services.

    Labeling the category of “craftsmen” not yet academically certified: One potential label for this group could be “mental health practitioners” or “mental health consultants.” (Or” behavioral fitness consultants”) Another option might be “behavioral health advisors,” which emphasizes their focus on helping individuals with cognitive and behavioral challenges.

    These terms acknowledge their work in the mental health field while distinguishing them from licensed professionals such as therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists.

    Certifying practitioners: Establishing a certification process for these practitioners could help ensure a minimum standard of competency and provide a level of accountability.

    This certification could be based on a combination of factors, such as:
    a. Relevant education and training in psychology, counseling, or related fields (<< No. This Is the Problem)
    b. Practical experience working with clients (Yes)
    c. Completion of specific courses or workshops focused on evidence-based practices << Again, no.
    d. Adherence to a code of ethics and professional conduct (Yes)
    e. Ongoing professional development and supervision (No)

    The certification could be overseen by a professional association or an independent certifying body, which would set the standards and requirements for certification.

    (SNIP) (The rest is drivel)

    CURT:
    Hmm… Ok. I have one response that I think is important.

    – There is no evidence that educational certification produces the outcome it promises.
    – All it does is insulate the practitioner from liability and give him or her access to funds from insurance companies – which may sound like an exaggeration but the evidence of iQ scores and performance in the field justifies that claim.
    – And the education system has basically certified anyone who puts in the time and pays the bill.

    Conversely, In the case of the law, and in the case of accounting, and in the case of investments (series seven certification) one demonstrates competency by rigorous tests that are demonstrably difficult to pass. In the case of at least german PhD’s you must survive an onslaught of questions by those who train PhD’s.

    IMO we would be better off with apprenticeships and demonstrated success with clients, and tests than we are with academic programs, especially when the academic programs are still using information and strategies that are sixty years behind in many cases. And the entirety of which began with the pseudoscientific narrative of freud, that cause the bifurcation of psychology into from into cognitive science and neurology.

    So if we still have states that you can apprentice in law and just take the test, and if this is the way most disciplines are regulated (‘can you do it’) then why shouldn’t we do so with that border between those people who need help thinking and behaving differently, and those people who are in trauma or crisis, and those people who have some sort of biological issue that requires medical attention and constant moderation?

    CLAUDE:
    You raise a valid point about the limitations of educational certification in ensuring the quality and competency of mental health practitioners. The current system, which relies heavily on academic programs and certifications, does not always guarantee that practitioners have the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively help their clients.

    The idea of shifting towards an apprenticeship model and competency-based testing is an interesting alternative. This approach would focus on practical skills and demonstrable abilities rather than solely on educational credentials. Apprenticeships could provide aspiring mental health practitioners with hands-on experience, allowing them to learn from experienced professionals and develop the skills needed to work effectively with clients.

    Competency-based testing, similar to the rigorous exams required for lawyers, accountants, and investment professionals, could help ensure that mental health practitioners have the necessary knowledge and skills to provide quality care. These tests could cover a range of topics, including:

    (Snip) (Nonsense criteria – failure to know the difference between an obstacle (mental fitness) and a problem (mental health)).

    Moreover, categorizing mental health services based on the level of care required, as you suggest, could help ensure that clients receive the appropriate type of support.

    This could involve distinguishing between:
    1 – Coaching and Encouragement with ordinary life and occcupation.
    2 – Psychological Mentoring for those who need help with thinking and behavior modification
    3 – Counseling or Therapy for individuals experiencing trauma or crisis
    4 – Medical attention and ongoing moderation for those with biological or severe mental health issues

    Implementing such changes would require a significant shift in the current system and would likely face resistance from established institutions and professionals.

    [END]

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-16 18:41:31 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791177175309201408

  • The problem is distinguishing people like you and the others who are highly skil

    The problem is distinguishing people like you and the others who are highly skilled from those who are not, when the only possible demonstration is evidence of the transformation of the state of clients. Maybe that’s the way. Unfortunately when you want to develop a measure of something (professional title), you need to develop that which measures it. And the whole ‘jump through years of training’ has failed the industry, so just as you should be able to practice law if you can pass the bar, there must be some test for certification (validation) of some person’s ability. I mean, most therapists and counselors, are actually doing more infantilzing harm than good. If we fixed that criteria, then that whole side of the industry would rebel.
    FWIW: you can almost always tell by the rate the person charges. Good people are expensive. And they are expensive because they have achieved word of mouth revenue streams (reputation).], or produced other evidence (Your books, your methodology, and your posts serve as exceptional advertising.)

    Reply addressees: @NoahRevoy @al_masani_royal

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-16 17:52:13 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791164766800564224

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791163108540530776

  • WHAT KIND OF COACHING, COUNSELING, THERAPY, MEDICAL CARE DO YOU NEED (riffing of

    WHAT KIND OF COACHING, COUNSELING, THERAPY, MEDICAL CARE DO YOU NEED
    (riffing off a friend’s post)

    Having been on the spectrum and worked my way thorough it I’ve had plenty of experience with the mental health industry – more positive than negative but the negative was VERY…

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-16 17:36:22 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791160777107226744

    Reply addressees: @al_masani_royal @NoahRevoy

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791146845642838361

  • WHAT KIND OF COACHING, COUNSELING, THERAPY, MEDICAL CARE DO YOU NEED (riffing of

    WHAT KIND OF COACHING, COUNSELING, THERAPY, MEDICAL CARE DO YOU NEED
    (riffing off a friend’s post)

    Having been on the spectrum and worked my way thorough it I’ve had plenty of experience with the mental health industry – more positive than negative but the negative was VERY negative. So my work on AI , neuroscience, and cognitive science has given me insights into the failings of the field. And I see the industry as unfortunately needing to continue to transition (reform) out of the hole it dug itself into prior to 2000 – for over a century – just at a tie when our people need it more than at any time in history.

    Coaching, Therapy, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Modification by everything from ‘suggestion’, to repetition, to shocks, to hallucinogenics to surgery can work. 😉

    IMO the various versions of ketamine are the most effective, fast, and durable means of altering negative thoughts and their consequences. But I doubt that we will ever escape the need for pharmaceuticals if modern levels of stress across the spectrum aren’t alleviated through ‘ritual’ meaning ‘training’ means, early enoug in life to serve as a prophylactic.

    So:
    (1) Coaching (enhancement therapy) is almost always effective if you find someone who can sympathize with your cognitive and emotional framework. I have a problem with this term because some people are in fact therapists and others are simply randomly adopting this term as ‘advisors’ or ‘friendly advice you pay for’. So I would rather see a new field between coaching and therapy. But at present the problem is determining the criteria for licensing someone to use that term.

    (2) Therapy (corrective therapy) is a systematic process of suggestion, training, and education, and can be effective but it is more dependent on sympathy with your frameworks than is coaching – and about 80% of therapists are just bad at it, and of the remaining 20%, most are using outdated feminine paradigms, when people like Noah Revoy (coaching) and Taraban (therapy) have completed the transition of the industry out of that debilitating infantilizing depressing model of therapy. I use therapy like most people use the doctor. When I have a problem and I don’t want to burden family, friends, girlfriend, wife, business partners etc, I just make an appointment and usually I can work thorugh ordinary life issues in as few as three weeks, and as long as a couple of months.

    3) Psychiatry works just fine, though the same 80/20 rule applies, but the ‘filtering’ process given that it’s effectively a medical degree will often produce better talent at a higher cost.

    Within Psychiatry the following techniques work just fine, Why? Because you’re trying to cause different neural pathways to organize – and neurons are plastic – and can adapt if you find a way to adapt them, when prevarication and obsession on stressors trauma and other odd behaviors and depressions continually reinforce those networks.

    So to alter your behavior you have to ‘overstimulate’ some other neural network in order to ‘bypass’ and develop different networks of association:
    … (1) Hypnotherapy etc: though there are genetic reasons some of us are more or less susceptible to suggestion. This is a very ‘light touch’ means of altering the behavior of some people in the population.
    … (2) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will adjust minor oddities like irrational fears by repetitions of exposure to the stresses until you’ve trained some network or other to interpret it as other than a risk. (BTW: fear of heights is genetic, sorry.)
    … (3) Shock Therapy such as cold therapy as stated above works for trauma and should try it first.
    … (4) Ketamine therapy (or any related version) will almost certainly work for depression and trauma
    … (5) Pharmaceuticals will work if either a) you need an immediate relief (xanax etc), (b) or it’s a biological rather than trauma problem such as social anxiety, panic disorders, chronic depression, in my case autistic difficulty switching topics, and many cases of ADD (which would not exist if most boys were not forced to sit in chairs in classrooms)
    … (6) and even surgery can be required in some extreme cases – (sarcasm:) Even though it appears that the use of lobotomy hasn’t been fully suppressed given the number of radical leftists out there…. 😉

    Personal: Pharmaceuticals do work. The problem is they can also hurt you – and often irreversibly. (I had a lighter version of the same reaction as Jordan Peterson). It’s not good.) 😉 I’m perfectly happy without OCD and ADD medication. However, it seems to annoy the heck out of people around me now and then. Because while it’s a profound asset at times, the inability to switch contexts or even ‘hear’ or pay attention to others is just, well annoying to them. 😉

    Hope this helps someone.
    Cheers
    CD

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-16 17:36:21 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1791160776750739456

  • (@poodlebeenz You already have a reputation across the organization as the count

    (@poodlebeenz You already have a reputation across the organization as the counter example to the presumption that the cognitive bias is universal rather than a distribution. Thanks for your presence and participation in the discourse.)

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-15 18:29:09 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1790811673810395326

    Reply addressees: @poodlebeenz @NoahRevoy

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1790719927453684204

  • Again, you (and I, and most people somewhere on the spectrum) tend to not grasp

    Again, you (and I, and most people somewhere on the spectrum) tend to not grasp the need or want, or utility of groups relying on others for information, for incentives, for moral justification, to act to gether to achieve a goal.

    We are what’s called ‘disagreeable’ in the literature, but what that means is that we are not easily swayed by empathy or social conformity or emotional appeals vs truth.

    That’s not a ‘truth’ it’s a utility in the division of cognitive and emotional labor necessary to explore all time and population distributions in the polity.

    Reply addressees: @CamoDiver

    Source date (UTC): 2024-05-14 21:26:49 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1790493998525624320

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1790484072340296057