On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 4:15:29 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 07 Oct 2013, at 22:58, John Mikes wrote: > > Bruno: you wrote: > > *The US constitution is very good, but is not really followed, and things > like prohibition have put bandits into power, who have broken the important > separation of powers.* > *Lobbying and the role of money in politics should be revised. But we are > a bit out of topic here, I think.* > * > * > Out of topic of "everything"? OK, OK, I know. But the US Constitution > (IMO) HAS BEEN very good in a 300+ year old societal view - drawn by > duelling, pipe-smoking, hunting male chauvinist slave-owner despots to > organize the 'colonies' NOT TO PAY taxes to the King of England. Now, the > Supreme Court's "oldies" (probably younger than me) valuate the 18th c. > language for the 21st c. life in a many times skewed sense. > *Lobbying *I call "buying votes" for a special interest, *money* is not > "talk" and *corporation* is not a 'person' (as e.g. a citizen). And so on. > > > OK. especially with "lobbying = buying votes". > > Bruno > > > > JM > > > On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 3:39 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> On 06 Oct 2013, at 18:08, Alberto G. Corona wrote: >> >> Some academies are just prostituted to rotten (sometime) politics, often >>> just to get enough funding to survive. >>> >>> Money is not the problem. Black, obscure and grey money is the problem. >>> >>> Wait, this is indeed the most fundamental question! >> >> *How knowledge interact with money and power in society and convert >> itself in beliefs as a system that prevent further knowledge must be an >> integral part of research. * >> * >> * >> *For me this meta-knowledge about knowledge faith and power is a more >> fundamental question than knowledge itself.* >> >>> ------- >> >> I think that people don' t want knowledge primarily. >> >> >> Ha Ha ... That reminds me when my father told me that truth is what >> humans fear the most and like the less. >> >> >> >> What they aim at, is like any living being, and in fact, like any stable >> dynamic auto-regulated structure, is * to reduce uncertainty*. >> >> >> The humans oscillate between security/certainty/control and >> freedom/uncertainty/universality. Basically that is why we vote, to have a >> sort of equilibrium in between. >> >> >> >> >> That fit with many considerations at different levels, and embrace >> conclussions of evolution, game theory, computability, social science >> psychology and entropy. >> >> >> That explain how knowledge interact with power (and money and you wish) >> and faith. As I will explain: >> >> To reduce uncertainty can be achieved adquiring pure knowledge of the >> world around in order to predict better the future. >> >> But it can also be achieved by adquiring for themselves money or power, >> or love from other people, or commitment from tem, or respect, or common >> commintment to something or someone. >> >> The fact is that pure knowledge is not enoug. Money is not enough, power >> is not enough, since neither of them work without a committed society that >> make use of this knowledge in an organized way, that respect the money >> value and other properties, that has fair mechanism for adquiring power and >> legitimacy, and more that that, a society with a clear plan for our >> sibiling and generations to come. >> >> Thinking materialistically (I´m not but for a matter of argument) there >> is no social vehicle for our genes if the society have all these >> requirements, and, more important, no people that had not these >> requirements ullfilled survived, so we have inherited this natural seeking >> for all these kinds of uncertainty reduction mechanism around us. >> >> Some societies make enphasis in one kind of uncertainty reduction. Others >> rely more in other different in this equation. These different uncertainty >> reduction alternatives are one against the other. A strict hiearchi of >> power and legitimacy based on an enforced supernatural plan is a excellent >> uncertainty reduction for a stable society that does not need to change. In >> the other side, adquring knowledge is good, but that may challenge the >> structure, questionin legitimacies and creating civil wars, that can be >> pacific or violent. When there is no common plans nor loyaltyes, the >> pacific disputes become violent almos by defintion. >> >> A lot of philosophy on all their branches can be extracted from this >> starting point. >> >> >> The US constitution is very good, but is not really followed, and things >> like prohibition have put bandits into power, who have broken the important >> separation of powers. >> >> Lobbying and the role of money in politics should be revised. But we are >> a bit out of topic here, I think. >> >> Bruno >> >> I can actually bring the topic back around to Symbol Grounding/AI. The issue of corporate personhood has always struck me as a variant of the Chinese Room or China Brain, but recently the concept of money as free speech caught my attention also. Money is used in many different ways. from small personal transactions involving a loaf of bread and some milk to global enterprise. On the level at which campaign financing relates to money, we are talking about the power to employ groups of people to influence the voting behavior of hundreds of millions of people. Employment is the closest we can get as human beings to mechanization. Especially as Americans, we are conditioned to set aside personal preferences and do as we are told when we have the choice comes up in the service of our work.
All of the Enlightenment Era philosophy of the founding fathers was a great commercial for the idea of liberty, but in practice, then as now, the United States has been an experiment in productivity - a mechanization of land and human resources. All of the great American products, from fast food to freeways, telephones to jet planes, have all ultimately succeeded because they allow people to spend more time working and less time doing anything else. Starbucks keeps the caffeine and sugar flowing, cell phones and laptops let us work in hotels and airports. What we are doing specifically for work doesn't matter. Any money is good money, and we have gone to great lengths to inculcate a work ethic and practical worldview handed down from Calvin and Hobbes more than Rousseau. Employment is sacrosanct in America, and being paid to work is more akin to a machine instruction than a statement of opinion, whether that opinion is truthful or not. To conflate dollars with speech is the same symbol grounding error that Comp is founded on - understanding and feeling are not a result that can be cranked out by automation. This is not some fancy sentimental wish for humans and animals to be more special than machines, it is a recognition of an ontological difference between two separate phenomena. Doing is not the same as feeling. We can employ people to do what they do not feel like doing - indeed, that is the function of money in our society. Most people would rather relax in their beds and not commute an hour to work at five in the morning than help a group of wealthy employers expand their fortune. Do they do it because they have been persuaded by the free speech argumentation of a paycheck? Please. The Supreme Court decision shows that even the arbiters of Law themselves can be bought, directly or indirectly, through the mechanized system. It proves that top level common sense and morality can be undermined by bottom up mechanics. Like all quantitative systems, the result of money is to automate and make unconscious - to anesthetize and rapidly mobilize. Money is the essence of mechanism - as the saying goes, it doesn't talk, it curses. Craig > >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
