Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Evolution and the Active Intellect

In todays’s new York Times, an evolutionary explanation of the active intellect:

“On a very basic level, judging people by appearance means putting them quickly into impersonal categories, much like deciding whether an animal is a dog or a cat. ‘Stereotypes are seen as a necessary mechanism for making sense of information,’ said David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University. ‘If we look at a chair, we can categorize it quickly even though there are many different kinds of chairs out there.’

Eons ago, this capability was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds.”

This is the article in the NYT.

Discussions - 1 Comment

The article is weak but the research is solid. I recommend two vuglar sources Phil Hellmuth's Read'EM AND REAP with Joe Navarro an FBI special agent and also Mike Caro's Book of Tells.

There are people who are incredibly good at this stuff, which is why we don't need to torture.(albeit the fear that we do is usefull).

The experts aren't the psychologists but the interrogators and some high level poker players like Annie Duke, some actors are also decent to include folks who have no science behind what they say officially such as psychics and used car salesmen(these to a lesser extent)

The number of folks who can pit themselves against a machine that studies a polygraph a voice stress analyzer, and a pupil dilation apparatus and beat it for accuracy in lie detection are very few. A good number of these used to play poker and live in New York where they are employed studying the lymbic reactions of CEO's and CFO's during conference calls. In any case my worry in terms of politics is that for whatever reason the lawyers will chase these guys out of the FBI+CIA+CID and into Wall Street where they won't have to put up with red tape, leaving us in a National Security situation where ironically torture may be more of a necessity.

I also think the existence of these folks makes a mockery of the legal definition of insider knowledge. An accute observer can read so much more into both analyst recommendations and the body language of executives during conference calls, that the idea of perfect information seems a little antiquated.

I know only that more perceptive people exist.

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