btrmt. | Betterment

ideologies worth choosing

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About

betterment

noun

making or becoming better;

ideology

noun

rituals of thought, feeling, and action;
the science of ideas;

Humans are animals first. At our core, we are creatures like any other—responding adaptively to the environment around us. We see this in our habits, our routines, and our rituals. Automatic patterns of behaviour that gracefully handle the predictable shapes of everyday life. But rituals of behaviour are preceded by rituals of thought. This is what brains do. And unexamined, such things are karstic: pretty landscapes that obscure sinkholes, caves, and rivers beneath. I thought, better to look where you tread. Hence, btrmt. A place to discover ideologies worth choosing.

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Who am I?

Projects

Analects

analects

I have a terrible memory. Everything I learn I have to leave somewhere I can find later. This is where I put them. Analects are a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings. These are mine, to myself, and anyone else who might find them interesting. With a background in brain science and the sciences of mind, I explore how ideas become ideologies become action, for better or worse. Here, you’ll find links to all the content I produce for any of the btrmt. projects.

The latest | See them all

Animals First

animals first

You might have read about me, but now, let me introduce you to btrmt. Animals First walks you through this little website of mine. The philosophy, and all the major threads and minor projects that make it up. Let's see if you can't find something worth your time.

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Karstica

karstica

Karstica is where I put anything designed to impress people who might want to pay me. White papers, development tools, things like that. Something like the research and development arm of btrmt. The things that work and those that don't . Right now, it's mostly just a landing page, until I get the site moved properly.
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Content

Random Featured

Featured

article

We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successful prophets are not a person, but the followers, who use the leader as an emblem.

Successful Prophets

Article

I’m starting to suspect that something is missing from our narratives surrounding the influence of cult leaders. We see destructive cults as the product of the tragic influence of one dangerously charismatic leader. But on closer inspection, this doesn’t really seem to be true. Cult leaders are often pretty weird. What gives?
We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successful prophets are not a person, but the followers, who use the leader as an emblem.
Read this article

filed under:

collective-architecture connection on-leadership on-thinking-and-reasoning spiritual-architecture

Latest Content

Latest

article

BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.

BDSM as a lazy ideology

Article

I write a lot about ideologies here. Rituals of thought and behaviour that come out of our need to automatically solve predictable problems of a complex world. I also point out that ideologies ‘stack’. They all sort of ‘stick together’, making these bundles of beliefs and behaviours. Most of these are lazy: stacks of ideologies we adopt just because they’re there. I reckon BDSM might be just one of these. It might be an ideology stack that people gravatate to, not because it’s the most efficient way of expressing some core human need, but because it’s just the most common. Let me explain what I mean.
BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
Read this article

filed under:

connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture thought-architecture

article

Everyone is suggestible, not just children or the easily hypnotised; our memories and behaviours are heavily influenced by external suggestions, more than we like to acknowledge.

Everyone's Suggestible

Article

There’s this idea that some people are more suggestible than others—more susceptible to psychic influence. These people are the ones that do wild stuff at a hypnosis show, or are more susceptable to misinformation online. What this idea misses is that suggestion is actually something that works on all of us.
Everyone is suggestible, not just children or the easily hypnotised; our memories and behaviours are heavily influenced by external suggestions, more than we like to acknowledge.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment, normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.

When groups go bad

Article

There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. These things gloss over just how hard it is to get people to do atrocities on a large-scale. Luckily, you have me to tell you how they really happen.
Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment, normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment collective-architecture connection on-culture on-ethics on-friendship on-leadership somatic-architecture

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

ChatGPT isn’t so bad for the environment relative to other things we do, with specific reference to water consumption (though, how this is defined isn’t clear) and energy use. The graphs are very fun, though of course beware of graph fables.

Check out the site

filed under:

betterment collective-architecture on-ethics

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

Is Elon Musk lying about how good he is at games? Amusingly comprehensive. Would be fairly standard for Musk?.

Check out the site

filed under:

gratification digital-architecture on-(un)happiness on-ethics
All the Analects

Recent Missives

Missives

January 17, 2025

December 12, 2024

Last Changelog

A big series of articles largely around the psychology of groups and leadership will take precedence over the next few weeks as I (re)familiarise myself with the content we teach at my new job.

All the Missives
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