Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence (2015)

I love this subject. For those who read it, the stage 4.5 that many gifted people (and rarely others) end up going through is also called existential depression [1]. It involves coming to terms with the first principals of the universe and their lack of implicit meaning. If you choose not to believe in free will, you end up as a nihilist.

If you choose however to embrace the lack of meaning our society and exert free will, you usually end up working to improve the silent meta-systems that dictate the quality of life of people and the interactions they have with each other in life. And that becomes the source of meaning - creating or editing these meta-systems on purpose in a way that serves society.

[1]: http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10554

> Fluidity recognizes that ethics can have no ultimate foundation, but that we can still often make clear judgements. [...] It takes ethics to be a matter of collaborative practical improvisation that is responsive to specific situations. Lacking any ultimate principles, an engineering approach to ethical mastery is impossible, but ethical skill—a toolkit of methods for ethical bricolage—can be learned.

If you find this interesting, I recommend Ethics Without Principles by Jonathan Dancy [1], or the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy article on Moral Particularism [2].

[1] http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199270023.001...

[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-particularism/

This article just made my Sunday. It was a great 25m read on cognitive development stages. It definitely wrapped up a lot of loose thoughts I'd had on the subject.

Would be very interesting to hear where HN'ers place themselves. I suspect the estimated 5% of the population that reaches Stage 5 would be well represented here.

*edit - needed coffee, wording.

Maybe I'm just an undeveloped child, but after 2 all of the "improvements" just seem like an outgoing person explaining why they're the evolution of humanity.

Interesting. Would the following simplification be a complete mangling of the author's intent:

Donald Trump is a stage 2 adult who has constructed a message that strongly appeals to certain stage 3 people. He has done this not by actually sharing the group empathy typical of stage 3, but rather by using a media feedback cycle to optimize his message for a certain local maximum.

Hillary Clinton is a stage 5 adult who has trouble connecting with both stage 3 and 4 voters. Her lack of fixed values and fluid meta-systematic approach comes off as greed and manipulative self-interest -- and for good reason, because the stage 5 level of operation is so difficult to judge for most people.

Sanders would have been an appealing stage 3 candidate in this race.