The Dark Escape: A Brief Brief on Madness

[Goodrum]

Aquatic Ape Hypothesis! This is fascinating, another must have read. What is this infatuation humans have for water, and where did it come from. It's not just a food source thingy, water is therapeutic to us, we seek it to play and live on or nearby. There is a very powerful connection between us and the water, it's not just about survival...it's much more.

I never knew this book existed, thanks.

[The Grey Badger]

It not only makes sense on the level of anatomy, but consider -

How many people pay good money to go out on the savannah and run down big game on foot?

Now: how many people pay good money to go in the water and splash around? To fish or to watch sea life playing? To mess around in boats?

Which facility does every town, city, village, and neighborhood think is most important among its recreational facilities? An imitation savannah? Or an imitation beach?

What you choose to pay to do is a really good clue to what you are built to do.

[Goodrum]

...and the bulk of people living on the coastal areas, (at least here in Oz), building houses so close to the sea the gov't has had to reconsider and alter planning law to get people back off the close proximities of beaches. Even to me, an abstract idealist, this construction right on water's edge is not logical. Yet it is logical, clever and relatively wealthy folk doing it!

I'm not waiting for library, I gotta get this book.

[SunPath]

Fuzzynavelnot21:

Well, he gives you the Architect Rational (INTP) ... the Stunned Blocker. So the Derailed Escapist has to be the 'twin' type, the Engineer (ENTP). I would guess the Programmed Checker to be the Mobilizer (ENTJ) and the Spellbound Ruminator as the Planner (INTJ).

Fuzzy, your guesses are accurate. Right on! Good job.

(Dave helps by listing them in groups, but you figured out the pattern all by yourself!)

[The Grey Badger]

I would dearly love a description of the Stunned Blocker!

Pat

[Architron]

I would dearly love a description of the Stunned Blocker!

Pat

I would really love a description of all 16.

[keirsey]

Me too. His has only 10 of the sixteen.

[jwetmore]

I want to pick up on David's reference to Michael Shermer. I have read several of Shermer's books including "Mind of the Market" and am just finishing up "Why People Believe Weird Things". Shermer does not appear to understand temperaments at all (despite being well informed and highly inteligent). In the final chapter of "Why Peple Beleive Weird Things" he spends about one page discussing personality and beliefs. He uses a five characteristic personality system, rather than KTT. He does not make any strong arguments. The book has left me disapointed (though there were many parts of the book I enjoyed). Rather than get into WHY, Shermer spends most of the book providing examples of wierd beliefs and refuting them. The book is more about WHAT, than WHY.

My take on the WHY is that temperament does shape beliefs. As a believer in evolution (I'm with Shermer on that one) I think that the pattern of thinking and believing has advantages in evolutionary fittness. Rational thought is not always the best strategy to pass you genes along to the next generation. So my question to Shermer is, what fittness advantages do weird beliefs have that allow individuals who share those beliefs (or are predisposed to them) to pass their genes on to their offspring?

There are many beliefs that I consider weirder than UFO's, Inteligent Design, ESP and some of the other beliefs Shermer refutes. I know a number of the readers of this blog are libertarian, so I will start with the politically incorrect question of why do so many people believe the Bush administration deregulated the economy in the face of evidence to the contrary (Sarbanes Oxley, No Child Left Behind, etc.)? Why do so many people believe central planning of economies is superior to capitalism? Is it because the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, China (before 1978), India (before 1991) had such strong economies?

There are many more beliefs that I speculate are tied to temperaments, but I will leave my speculations about what temperaments may be susceptable to different beliefs to another post.

[mkb32]

There are many beliefs that I consider weirder than UFO's, Inteligent Design, ESP and some of the other beliefs Shermer refutes. I know a number of the readers of this blog are libertarian, so I will start with the politically incorrect question of why do so many people believe the Bush administration deregulated the economy in the face of evidence to the contrary (Sarbanes Oxley, No Child Left Behind, etc.)? Why do so many people believe central planning of economies is superior to capitalism? Is it because the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, China (before 1978), India (before 1991) had such strong economies?

Dig It !!!

Go ahead, jwetmore, go ahead!

[keirsey]

There are many beliefs that I consider weirder than UFO's, Inteligent Design, ESP and some of the other beliefs Shermer refutes. I know a number of the readers of this blog are libertarian, so I will start with the politically incorrect question of why do so many people believe the Bush administration deregulated the economy in the face of evidence to the contrary (Sarbanes Oxley, No Child Left Behind, etc.)?

Because it is a convenient fiction. Mistakes were made, but not by me.

But then again, Mistakes Were Made, but not by me.

I certainly think that Temperament does effect the beliefs of people, but I would have to say it is a more broad influence than anything too specific. To wit, the notion of a "useful fiction" must be examined, like Daniel Dennett's opening salvo in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena. In particular, Thomas Sowell's notion that "abstract knowledge" (actually that's most knowledge, even the "concrete" knowledge that Artisans and Guardians use) is so remote from the situation, that one can "justify" one's beliefs, without noticing that they do not "hold water."

So my question to Shermer is, what fittness advantages do weird beliefs have that allow individuals who share those beliefs (or are predisposed to them) to pass their genes on to their offspring?

Essentially I would think that the vast majority of "weird ideas" held commonly by a great deal of people have, as William James would call it, cash value. The particular "value" would have to be worked out. A "Social" belief is not useful (or used) at the time, unless many individuals hold it. I suspect most of the beliefs "keep you off the streets", which is a great value. The Nuture Assumption has some of the explanation how groups generate ideas to help separate (and make cohesive) that group from others.

Why do so many people believe central planning of economies is superior to capitalism? Is it because the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, China (before 1978), India (before 1991) had such strong economies?

I doubt many people "believe in central planning" -- first, most people don't think that abstractly, second, they don't recognize (or understand) what the government is doing in the aggregate. The vast majority don't understand "Capitalism" and its strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, you wouldn't do to badly if you modeled the political part of society as having a concrete memory and an attention span of a teenager. In other words, "those fail to learn from history, will not add to it." One should recognize that the vast majority of people on this planet will be forgotten in a generation or two. The lessons of Temperament from a society's point of view -- balance competition and cooperation, add a little abstraction, have been learned, until the next regime of dominant chaos or order sets in.