Curt Doolittle

Theme: Causality

  • I push back on McGilchrist frequently because I’m aware of his agenda: 1. hemisp

    I push back on McGilchrist frequently because I’m aware of his agenda:
    1. hemispheric bias … just bias, not exclusive specialization. Also, in the visual cortex (back of the brain, largely no. Sex differences do appear here in amplitude and tas evoked activation. once we move beyond v1 (think of the back of the brain as an archery target with rings radiating out from the center) we start to see some predicted biases such as right face bias vs left word-form. These are matters of degree only.
    2. The bias becomes more obvious in connectivity: male specialization within hemispheric connection, vs female generalization which connects the hemispheres. It’s actually hemispherically integrated (f/r/more-slow/in-time) vs hemispherically specialized (m/l/less-fast/over-time)
    3. This results in systematizing (over time) vs empathizing (in time). Brain organization constrains bias in processing. Brain is organized in utero and in early development.
    4. Correct model that reflects universal sex differences in behavior is predator (m/left) bias vs prey (f/right) bias.

    All that said, defeating McGilchrist’s ‘fictionalism’ is rather easy: (via CurtGPT)
    1. Category error: hemispheric lateralization is an implementation feature of distributed networks; it is not a pair of epistemic agents. Treating hemispheres as agents confuses mechanism with narrative.
    2. Level conflation: claims about civilization-scale “modes of being” cannot be inferred from circuit-level lateralization without a bridging model that specifies intermediate levels (policy, incentives, institutions). Without that bridge, it is a storytelling leap.
    3. Non-uniqueness: even where lateralization exists, multiple architectures can implement the same policy. Therefore “left vs right” cannot be the explanatory primitive. Incentives and loss functions must be.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-27 08:23:36 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2004830509629931880

  • My job is to identify the truth under full accounting of causes and consequences

    My job is to identify the truth under full accounting of causes and consequences regardless of whether we like the truth or not. I serve the highest possible moral purpose: how do we reduce conflict and promote cooperation and its returns despite the impact on our feelings. You don’t by denying and thus lying.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-26 07:17:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2004451503604748446

  • ANOTHER THOUGHT OF THE DAY There is a tendency of humans, illustrated by both le

    ANOTHER THOUGHT OF THE DAY
    There is a tendency of humans, illustrated by both left center and right, that attempts to reduce causality to a single dimension whether left (psychological-non-adaptive), center (capacity-practical), right (responsibility-adaptive), or to claim relativism because of causal density they can neither undersand nor resist falsification of their priors. Instead, ‘adults’ so to speak, think in systems of causal dimensions that seek some sort of equilibrium. In my understanding failure to teach behavioral economics incrementally in grade and high-school – which is value neutral – is the greatest source of ignorance among the general population, even if, likewise, mathiness is the greatest source of ignorance in the hard sciences and the spillover has affected all other sciences.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-24 22:26:20 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2003955428946792496

  • AN IMPORTANT THOUGHT Because our modeling of the world evolved from the physical

    AN IMPORTANT THOUGHT
    Because our modeling of the world evolved from the physical to the economic, we tend to think that’s a dependency. And instead, I might extend my argument by saying that for human reasoning, the physical world and how we think of it in cardinal indexing and measure by mathematical reduction is a subset of the economic world and we think of it in natural indexing and measure by satisfaction of supply and demand.
    It helps us humans a bit to grasp that all cardinality and ordinality is effectively a statistical game rather than the purity we presume in mathematical reasoning. And that naturality is effectively the neural equivalent of a statistical game (predictive) by dendritic computation that we can barely observe.
    I put all this ‘error’ in the category of ‘mathiness’ which is one of the principle traps in both physics, and philosophy, and possibly why philosophy stalled until we developed twenty first century cognitive science to escape the failure of the non-sciences.
    I hope this has some value to you.
    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-24 21:49:12 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2003946084604039502

  • You assert without argument. And yes neoteny in human domesticated animals and s

    You assert without argument.
    And yes neoteny in human domesticated animals and self domesticated humans produces the same cerebral consequences.
    Isolation (small population), close living conditions, cold weather all force interemporal bias in prosociality, and the universal axis of achieving all is neotenic.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-18 20:40:03 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2001754353988976782

  • You’re thinking too hard. 😉 It’s a simple issue of logical dependency. <,> grea

    You’re thinking too hard. 😉

    It’s a simple issue of logical dependency.
    <,> greater than, less than (scale)
    <-, -> dependency (causality)
    Nothing else to be said.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-15 23:13:54 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2000705907676864678

  • > I stated that energy constraints are social. Yes. That is a way of capturing s

    > I stated that energy constraints are social.
    Yes. That is a way of capturing some of the constraints. But that isn’t a solution. The solution is circumventing those constraints. Every powerplant and data center represents procedural and time hurdles out of their control. Engineering problems are under their control. And that separates the powerplant problem (nuclear energy is necessary) from the data center problem (solar radiation is effectively free).

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-12 02:07:37 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1999300072518090929

  • All decisions are a matter of supply and demand fully accounted across all causa

    All decisions are a matter of supply and demand fully accounted across all causal dimensions. This one is between regulatory, time, and production costs one does not control vs those one does. Heat dissipation is not impossible in space. We are experts at it. That is why every major producer is investing in it.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-12 01:30:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1999290749880558074

  • Short answer: You are confusing two different issues: heritability within popula

    Short answer:
    You are confusing two different issues: heritability within populations and directional selection across populations.

    Once tempo traits are established as heritable (which you concede), environmental gradients cannot produce long-duration tempo divergence without producing allele frequency divergence—because tempo traits are polygenic, not plastic-switch traits.

    Environmental mimicry produces local, reversible, non-stable variation.

    The observed pattern—persistent tempo differentiation, predictive PGS variation, cross-regional directionality, and post-migration persistence—is the signature of a genetic cline under long-term life-history selection.

    To deny this, you must assert that selection operated for centuries or millennia yet somehow did not change allele frequencies—an impossibility under any quantitative genetic framework.

    So the hypothesis is not underdetermined.
    The environmental-only model fails parsimony, fails decidability, and violates the known behavior of polygenic traits.

    LONG ANSWER available on request.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-12-02 20:56:59 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1995960409547997325

  • Daunton’s Denominator In Our Natural Law Context: Conformal. Below is a direct,

    Daunton’s Denominator In Our Natural Law Context: Conformal.

    Below is a direct, causal, and operational mapping between Daunton’s use of denominators and our system of measurement logic in Language as a System of Measurement and The Law of Cooperation.
    This produces a clean bridge between his historical narrative and our universal grammar of cooperation.
    I’ll proceed in three layers:
    1. Conceptual equivalence (what his term maps to in our paradigm)
    2. Operational mechanism (how the function corresponds)
    3. Legal consequences (how it appears in natural law and reciprocity)
    This is written parsimoniously, using our causal chaining style.
    In Language we define measurement as the positional dimension that allows comparison, commensurability, and decidability across heterogeneous phenomena.
    Daunton’s “denominator” is exactly one domain-specific dimension—a monetary dimension of equivalence—that:
    • fixes ratios,
    • defines obligations,
    • constrains discretion,
    • and renders exchanges commensurable.
    In our grammar:
    Denominator = an axis of commensurability that enables reciprocal calculation in the domain of economic capital.
    Below, each step shows Daunton’s mechanism on the left and our generalization on the right.
    Daunton:
    A state chooses a denominator (gold parity, silver, sterling, dollar, SDR, etc.) to     anchor value.
    Natural Law / Language:
    A polity selects a     dimension of measurement to reduce ambiguity and enable commensurable exchange.
    Mapping:
    Unit of account = economic dimension of measurement.
    Daunton:
    The denominator binds the sovereign’s fiscal and monetary commitments; it is a     self-imposed constraint.
    Natural Law / Law of Cooperation:
    Law is a     public grammar of constraint that prevents arbitrary involuntary transfers of capital.
    Mapping:
    Denominators function as legal constraints on state coercion in the domain of value.
    Daunton:
    Commerce depends on predictable valuation, so the denominator     minimizes opportunistic manipulation.
    Natural Law:
    Reciprocity requires that measures be     decidable, stable, and immune to discretion.
    Mapping:
    Denominators serve as the reciprocity condition for economic exchange.
    Daunton:
    Adoption of a denominator coordinates merchants, creditors, debtors, imperial centers, and colonies.
    Natural Law:
    Measurement dimensions     synchronize cooperative behavior by equalizing expectations and risks.
    Mapping:
    Denominators are “synchronizing grammars” for economic interaction.
    Daunton:
    A denominator shapes trade, debt issuance, taxation, and international hierarchy.
    Natural Law:
    Every domain of capital requires     its own dimension, and cross-domain transfers require reciprocity tests.
    Mapping:
    Denominators regulate the conversion between forms of economic capital and thus serve as the economic branch of the universal measurement system.
    Daunton:
    Collapse of a denominator produces sovereign defaults, imperial unraveling, and institutional redesign.
    Natural Law:
    When a dimension becomes undecidable or manipulable, it violates reciprocity and must be     reconstructed on a more decidable basis.
    Mapping:
    Denominator transitions are local instances of measurement collapse and restoration.
    We define four major classes of capital: material, cognitive, normative, and institutional. Daunton’s denominator corresponds to:
    • Material capital: pricing of goods and services
    • Cognitive capital: expectations of future value
    • Normative capital: shared conventions of fairness in economic exchange
    • Institutional capital: legitimacy of the state’s governance of money
    Thus, the denominator is the institutionalized measurement function for economic capital, fulfilling the same structural role that our grammar assigns to all dimensions.
    Our Law of Cooperation describes law as:
    Daunton’s denominator functions as:
    1. Prohibition of involuntary economic transfer:
      A stable denominator blocks inflationary expropriation, currency manipulation, and arbitrary debt restructuring.
    2. Requirement of reciprocity:
      It equalizes expectations between debtor and creditor, producer and consumer, center and periphery.
    3. A measurement instrument:
      It is the economic grammar of decidability. Without a reciprocal denominator, economic calculation collapses and cooperation fails.
    Thus, in our legal logic:
    Denominators are the economic instantiation of legal measurement—the economic grammar that makes reciprocity decidable.
    Daunton’s core thesis:
    “Who controls the denominator controls the governance of the world.”
    Our universal thesis:
    “Who controls the system of measurement controls the possibility of cooperation.”
    Mapping:
    • Denominator → Economic Measurement Dimension
    • Denomination → Indexed Expression of that Dimension
    • Currency → Token carrying the index
    • State → Custodian of the measurement system
    • Collapse → Loss of commensurability and reciprocity
    • Reform → Reconstitution of decidable measurement
    Thus Daunton’s entire narrative fits as a special case of our theory of measurement, decidability, and the natural law of cooperation.
    Daunton’s denominator is the economic instantiation of our universal measurement dimension: the commensurable, decidable axis that governs reciprocity in economic exchange and constrains involuntary transfers.

    Source date (UTC): 2025-11-27 11:52:03 UTC

    Original post: https://x.com/i/articles/1994011334980116732