Glen -
I sed:
If we truly understand the complex dynamic of the social system we are
embedded in (and in this case, shaped by) then we might have a chance of
exercising some of our free will in an enlightened self-interest
manner.
... blah blah blah
then you sed:
Right. I wasn't arguing with any of that. 8^) I was _agreeing_ with
your statement:
But the two of, I think we like to argue, or at least stridently offer
alternative views.
We are not who we are proud of being for the most part, and I find that sad.
I just threw it in a combative curve.
See above:
The thing I disagree with is the
idea that any _actionable_ objective toward self-interest will be too
myopic in one form or another.
I do have a sympathetic response to this... I don't know what the
epsilon of free-will and actionionable intention is. I appreciate your
implication that it is (vanishingly?) small, but resist the thought that
it might be nonexistent.
The accretion of the system happens in
such a way, over various scales in space and time, and over various "we"
comprehensions, that objectives can't be sliced out.
I acknowledge having been raised in a tradition with intentions being
central *and* effective up to poor implementation, bad luck, the
disfavor of the gods. My half-century plus of hard knocks leads me to
appreciate your sentiment, but I'm still trying to swallow it as an
absolute truism.
Any
less-than-10-millenia historical account of what _is_ will be flawed,
perhaps fatally so, and any objective that fails to account for enough
side effects and unintended consequences will result in "something to be
ashamed of".
I do often wonder how large of a space-time volume one must integrate
over to be able to evaluate this properly. History is riddled with good
ideas gone wrong if enough time or (social?) distance is taken into account.
Of course, it can all be summed up as "The road to hell is paved with
good intentions."
Well, like the balance of matter and antimatter in our known universe, I
think the road to hell is paved with both good and bad intentions, but
somehow a flutter in the statistical variance makes *this* universe one
where Hell is what you get for consistently being an arseh*le, while a
bumbling hero still gets the pearly gates. Of course, I have no
literal binding of this mythology, but do take it fairly seriously
metaphorically... another thread in it's own right to drive Doug (and
many others?) right up into the tree.
In that regard, what achievements can we be proud of?
My guess is that every answer we might offer to that question has a
dark side to it.
This fits my sense of required subtlety.
At the end of the day, it's easy to see why whole
swaths of people might fall for "positive psychology".
Visualize this!
At some point,
you gotta just quit worrying about what might happen and make some
change just for the sake of change.
If I take this literally (my own brinksmanship) then I would hold you to
it... the key is that you had to start worrying and keep worrying for a
while *before* you quit worrying and JUMP! But whether one's "worry"
is simply encoded in culturally adopted heuristics or heuristics trained
in by a childhood of "play" that was really mock work/war/adventure, I
still hold (my cultural bias I suppose) the deeply embedded feeling that
"one must at least try to do the right thing".
And if we do that, how much hand-wringing is enough to argue that the
changer is responsible in their actions?
Switching from the Literal to the Figurative, I take your use of "hand
wringing" to be perjorative and suggest that such a colorful display of
worry is "all for show" to relieve the hand wringer from any
responsibility for their actions. I'd offer "careful consideration" in
place of "hand wringing".
As a touch of comic relief, I offer you a pivotal scene from Butch
Cassidy and Sundance Kid where the two are cornered by the pursuing
possie at the crest of a cliff overlooking a river. One says to the
other "but I can't swim!" and the other responds "the fall will probably
kill you anyway" as they both pitch over the edge. I agree there are
times and situations where action informed by intuition trumps any
amount of thoughtful consideration (or hand wringing) possible.
Hysteresis itself does not admit free-will, and stigmergy, a bit more
refined, the feedback system being mediated by "symbols" of sorts is a
step closer. While neither model free will, it does seem that
self-aware agency within a system allows for free will to be part of the
dynamic. You might have a better way of saying this (or denying it)?
Well, I've argued my case before. Free will is a generative random
twitch.
Then it is NOT free-will... it is a random twitch (unless you've packed
something more into the word "generative" than I can unpack).
Any apparent purpose, color, or bias that results is purely a
function of the constraints in which that twitch takes place.
I don't disagree that this is entirely possible, but am still left with
my own "illusion of free will" and no good answer to the question of
"who is this *I* with the illusion of free-will?"
This is
why stigmergy and hysteretic are better words than emergence. We each
spastically flop around, banging against the structures in our
environment (including other spastic floppers). If you start with too
few constraints, your produce is random. If you start with too tight a
set of constraints, your produce is nil.
I have spent a bit of time kneeling at the ant-hill watching pretty much
precisely what you describe... placing various obstacles or distractions
in the paths of the ants going about their business. Each one reacts to
my interference-by-surprise with what appears to be a tiny bit of
thoughtful choice, albeit tiny. This could easily be my projection onto
them, as in any agent model of sufficient complexity, the same level of
apparent "choice or thoughtfulness" can be seen, yet also presumably an
astute modeler or programmer can look at the rule base of the agent and
figure out the mechanism or program involved in generating that apparent
"thoughtful choice". BTW, it turns out to be hard to push Ants into any
kind of futile cycle... and when one does bluntly (put an ant in an
empty jar and watch him try to climb the sides until he's
exhausted/depleted) it feels very much like torture (by any definition,
even Rummies?).
You found the embedding of Texas too difficult to change or endure so
you kicked a few of your jets in a way that threw you out of it's orbit
and into another orbit...
Well, I didn't leave because of my beef with the people, institutions,
or government.
I left because I got a good job offer ... and I was
piqued by the idea of living at 7k feet. I did press my employer at the
time to give me a budget to play with (like they had at the New York
office). My bosses didn't even respond to my request. ;-) So, I left.
On the other hand, if you had felt a strong affinity to people,
institutions and government might you have stayed? Sure, the spirit of
adventure, etc. has it's draw... but using your own model, the
constraints of the system relative to your (innate?) nature helped to
push you out of that nest, right?
But I can say that the people, institutions, and government will help
keep me from moving back to Texas. Now that my mom's moving to
Colorado, I have even less reason to consider it. I'm now thinking
Boulder, CO might be a cool place to live for awhile.
Until a few months ago there were a lot of idyllic homes on creekfronts
to choose from too. I just gave a tent to a young man who had his
possessions washed away in the flooding and chose to recover from his
semi-traumatic experience by packing what little he was able to salvage
into his car and hitting the road, visiting his sister in SFe on the
way. I thought it was a very healthy response to what could have been
a catastrophe. I think he's camping somewhere in AZ right now.
I think you can see the difference between a healthy member of a healthy
group and a "spoiled and usurious" parasite living on a stew of
resources taken thoughtlessly from "the commons" by pirates supported by
whatever it is said "parasites" can offer them (votes, deference, $$?).
Maybe. It sounds a bit like the definitions for porn and life... can't
define it but know it when you see it? If that's the case, then I think
it's _begging_ for some reductionist analysis.
I do appreciate how you can play both directions on this field... you
seem to be adept at dismissing reductionist analysis at times and
invoking it at others. I don't mean this dismissively, even though
often it loses me like the game of "crack the whip". I believe there
is continuity, but at my end of the "whip" I fly off the end and tumble.
I hear a lot of "kids
these days". And there's plenty of eschatological doomsaying on both
the left and the right (though in the modern conception, we end up with
some fantastic, well-toned, with good skin and straight teeth, zombie
killers).
grin. I know I must sound like "kids these days!" a lot, but my
primary audience/victim is my own cohort which I think you might roughly
fall on the young end of, and our more senior members here on the older
end of. As my parents generation were "the worlds greatest", I feel
that the children of the "worlds greatest" took on their own
self-important feeling and proceeded to pave the planet with pavement,
swimming pools, strip mines and soon Wind/Solar farms to make it a
better place (riffing on your "paved with good intentions") while
beating our chests about having brought ethnic and gender equality to
all, not to mention ending war (Vietnam). Yet today, many of the old
hippies are now yuppies and are paving faster than ever and quite
sanctimonious about how they "earned it".
Although I don't buy into the Singularity, I do wish there were more
people arguing "It's OK, just go with it, be creative, we'll find
solutions as we go along."
besides, "the fall will probably kill you"
You can't be rational without a ratio.
I like the ring of this... can you unpack it more, or is it just a jingle?
But in the first world, it is latent (or not) hoarding IMO.
I agree. The real trick is that those of us who live with the "wolf at
the door", with a lean supply network, are _shamed_ into hoarding. If
you don't hoard, you are considered immature or irresponsible ...
<deleted long, self-righteous riff on how "wolf at the door" is a thin
mythology in the first world>
Thanks, as always, for your engaged, thoughtful responses and
alternative views,
- Steve
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