On 06/09/2015 10:36 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published.
Ha! I laughed out loud at that... thanks!
I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin.
There are other metaphysical stances we can use. I think a better technical name is "sample", as in each person (at each time point) is a sample of the possibility space presented to us by the universe. The metaphysical part is the assumption that there's a search mechanism (cf neo-Darwinism) that put each sample at that point in the space.
So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?
With this metaphysics, then, we can rephrase your question as: Is there an optimum, a unique one? Is it a global optimum or just a local one? What's the dimensionality of the space? Do the optima of the subspaces correlate with the optima of the whole space? Etc. The One True Truth believers will answer yes to the first question. And I think the people who think we (collectively or alone) are capable of (consciously) approaching the optimum should answer yes to 4th quesion, too. My point about evolution being smarter than we are (collectively or alone) seems to have been lost, though. The proto-theological stance, in this metaphysics is that our Lord Evolution has a plan for each and every one of us ... a mysterious plan we are incapable of grasping with our little minds. And to continue answering Nick's question, after attempting to figure out what some nonsense-spouting sample is trying to say, the next most powerful method is to study the solutions demonstrated to us by our Lord Evolution ... which is exactly what we're trying to do in fields like ALife or biomimetics. It's a wonder anyone would call that "sophomoric". Reverse engineering the black box solutions provided to us by our Lord is anything but. And it seems a hell of a lot more productive than sanctimonious whining about the willful ignorance of the another tribe. But, as usual, I could be wrong. My position was recently rebuked by a man much smarter than me with a fairly difficult challenge to this metaphysical stance. Thank God I'm agnostic. -- ⇔ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
