Nick writes: "It seems to me that in the discussion we are having, the word "entertainment" cannot go undefined. How do you tell the difference between entertainment and productive work you enjoy. That it makes a profit?"
Suppose individuals are represented by nodes on a graph, each positioned in some high dimensional space (subjectively defined, but such that they can all be projected onto a higher dimensional space by some oracle). A definition of useful is the ability to move from one place in the space to another or to strengthen or weaken connections to others. A connection on the graph could by any sort of transformation that occurs to one node given a change in the other. One way to move is to be attached to another set of individuals that are already moving. Such a set might be, say, a business. To be attached to that set might involve participating in a class of moves relative to other nodes not in the set, say, the customers of that business. These coordinated actions would be profit motivated actions, or more generally social transactions. Similarly, there can be the opposite relationship of customer seeking a service (here entertainment). Some types of transformations ai m to create other coordinated moves, such as a fabric of connections amongst nodes representing theological constraints, criminality, governance, and so on. I'm talking about another kind of useful which is movement in a subjective space that is not constrained, or is only minimally constrained, by the edges in the graph. Movement in this space mostly does not change the configuration of the graph, but the nodes nonetheless move. Useful is not defined in terms of a particular graph transformation, but in understanding how to navigate the new dimensions without the pulling and pushing from other nodes. Given the possibility of collisions in the higher dimensional space, there's the possibility of a new social network forming there. Productive work can be defined socially, in terms of the graph transformations (one case being profit) or it can be defined privately or semi-privately by the subset of nodes that define their state in terms of dimensions not yet influenced by the various social fabrics. Marcus ============================================================ 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
