---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thomas Loeber Date: Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 7:24 PM Subject: [gs] Institutions; do we want or need them? To: [email protected]
Seems I've gone through a number of “wow” moments during my life. Most recently was while reading the report of a thorough fMRI study on the characteristics of the networks of brain cells done around 2011. Apparently some seventy billion are in the associative cortex in seven networks. The estimate of the number of neurons in one of those, the cerebral cortex, has narrowed over time to being about ten billion cells. If my social theory comes to realization and if humanity ever makes it to a similar population, it would quite likely be roughly of seven networks, each of ten billion, seven times ten to the tenth power in all. For humanity right now there are about eight times ten to the ninth power. I found myself wondering, do those cells use anything like institutions? Appears the answer to that is obvious from the descriptive term used to describe them, associative. They appear to share all in a functional and capable manner with nothing like money or governing bodies separate from the governed. Even private property seems limited to proximal environment sustaining responsibilities. The other thirty to fifty billion cells in the human brain have stipulated information flow networks dependent on specific not distributed cytoarchitectural structures, motor control and sensory circuits that are one way sometimes, receiving information from fixed nerves and sending back information along fixed neuronal pathways. Outside of the nervous system there appears to be little to nothing like self-determination. In the associative cortex, there appears to be no fixed or static hierarchy, the information is allowed to flow freely and comprehensively. What appears to be the main directing body of our personal information control system is associative. The ruler is democratic, or more salient and amenable to scientific appraisal, ergodic, a precept rather than specific entities. Imagine a governing system where all humans are on the same side pitted against our common enemy, classical entropy or what might be simply and relatively loosely called death; not a zero-sum game but more like an all-sum game that aims to make everybody a winner, win-win. Can there be self-rule that is commensurate with all other selves that share a relative time and space frame? Can anything else sustain intelligent life as its own information explosion brings ever greater power and ability to destroy or sustain more freedom and welfare than heretofore manifest? We could have greater, endlessly increasing wealth than any amount of token existence can muster. Considering a social system as an information system one can see important understanding with recognizing analogous components. A basic information system has a message, its source, encoding, transmission through a medium, then reception, decoding and its goal. An encoding system generates symbols that can be transmitted through select media. Human society puts people into hierarchies of different degrees of freedom and abilities affecting what concerns are recognized, what gets focus. Formulation of the hierarchy is the encoding of the social information system message and it largely determines the decoding. More than the medium as McCluhan stated, the message is the hierarchy. Human experiences change all the time. Fixed hierarchies appear to degrade as to their accuracy or worthiness, their integrity. Their focus becomes too narrow, for a few and not for all. Hierarchies are necessary for any work to be done as work needs energy to flow from one set of conditions to another. To think that we need to do without any hierarchy at all is to not see any worthwhile work needing to be done, perhaps a common supposition stemming from flagrant causality denying cosmologies. Comprehending what is best to do at any one moment is best done through comprehensive appraisal of concerns. Fixed hierarchies are like clogged pipes: they get in the way and stifle being able to change with conditions, to recognize and apply better understanding. For example, it is not reasonable with the information explosion that we have used the same fuel for our vehicles over the last hundred years. Less toxic, less ecology destroying fuels and how to use them has existed for all of those hundred years and yet, we are stuck, frozen, with one fuel that is quite violently insane to burn. Claude Shannon's statistical concept of information or what he called “entropy” uses the same mathematics as that of the entropy of physics, thermodynamic probability. There was speculation as to whether or not it should have a negative sign, be a negative quantity. In the general scheme of things this was the glimpsing of a bridge between what is known as the humanities and the fields of research known as the hard sciences. The capacity of an information system to oppose the lessening of options, the decay of diversity, is akin to Maxwell's demon, opposing the natural tendency of things to fall apart, to approach minimal difference and minimal energy flow. Maybe Maxwell would have served us better if he called it an angel. Shannon's entropy is actually the opposite of classical entropy. They are both at maximum when the probabilities of change in their respective domains (information and physics) are isomorphic, similar, everywhere the same. In an information system, the highest amount of information can be conveyed when the symbols of messages are generated with equal probability. The homogeneity that the entropy of physics tends to cause all things to evolve towards is countered by life's incorporating a homogeneity: mutual respect for living beings, sustaining and building functional diversity in a universe that tends towards sameness and no function. We are the manifestation of a counter entropy force, opposed to our own selves falling apart, syntropy. Homogeneous, ergodic, egalitarian sustaining of large populations, more than humanity right now, apparently is the chief governing system of ourselves internally. Is that potentially applicable to the external, to how humanity operates? I guess one could say that cells of the associative cortex have their existence predetermined by genetic code, millions and billions of years of experiment derived ways and means to comply with natural laws. If not too alienated from seeing one's circumstances, with all of the inter-dependencies of living systems that make up our biosphere, (externally to each of us humans) much is controlled, constrained and predetermined by natural laws. Most appear to be out of touch with such, enemies of our own shared nature. We too often act like cancer cells seeking unlimited growth with no concern for our collective well-being: Homo dysfunctional. Freedom for freedom's sake leads to no freedom. Freedom that recognizes our limitations, our responsibilities to life in general for the sake of our own, has a chance, if any, of our continually growing freedom indefinitely. I suspect if we continue to focus on institutions we'll lose stuff that is very real and precious. Big dangers to each and every one of us and our humanity are fomenting right now and it is going to take a lot of collective intelligence to mitigate them, to lessen them, to avoid at least some. I'm afraid it is already too late for many as they suffer and die right now. The clock is ticking on the sustainability of us all as long as we value our whimsical interpretations of existence. Science is corrupted to sustain the illusion of an us verses them attitude, the legacy of seeing ourselves as members of a plethora of institutions that see life as having little if any value. Punishing blame and rewarding fame, the all too simplistic “good guys verses bad guys” stature, doesn't allow us to learn what can stop corruption or help ourselves and others be better humans. We don't collectively adopt sufficient steerage of ourselves to avoid dangers let alone see them. I can give you examples of NASA, USGS, NOAA, FDA, EPA, WHO, nations, the United Nations, senates, courts, corporations, other agencies, churches, schools, chief executive officers, corporate board members; censoring information of value to humanity. They spread misinformation to sustain the illusion of sufficient wherewithal with this weird unfathomable death dealing game that has as many players as can be imagined except maybe those that matter the most, the ones closest to our own hearts, even our own hearts. My own opinion has come around to understanding that we don't want or need institutions. It is challenging enough to live for the sustaining of our own selves. Do we want to get a handle on the information explosion and turn it to our sustained benefit, recognize, respect and coexist with all other relatively similar beings or destroy ourselves for the sake of things that are essentially illusion? Got humanity? If not, I suggest you try to find that very real thing fast cause its our chief asset or be ready to witness much death and suffering that will touch you quite intimately quite soon if not already. -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Global Survival" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/global-survival?hl=en ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
