Glen writes:
"It should be obvious that, say, a nuclear war reduces our efficacy, at least in the short term. It's reasonable to think that we have to go through sporadic catastrophes in order to find a more global optimum." There are other kinds of energy barriers besides catastrophes. Climbing a hill is different than falling in a hole and having to climb out again. Taking on debt or forcing everyone to buy car or health insurance, say. "Violence requires abstraction and objectification of the victim, whereas more subtle remedies to inequality require the more complex mechanisms like empathy or a sense of justice." [I saw the articles mentioning that work today too. Kind of interesting.] I don't see why any cognitive process is needed for violence to occur other than operational aspects of making it happen or planning to avoid retribution. The person that believes there is inequality, say a terrorist, can take up arms without really modeling the target at all. A dog can get kicked just because it was at the wrong place at the wrong time. "These questions are founded on the assumption that the produce is a _simple_ thing. Not only does it assume the measures of productivities is simple, but that the thing(s) being measured are also simple." A group will be made up of a finite number of agents. If there are a much larger number of dimensions for measuring productivity, there may not be any basis for exchange. Each agent could live in their own imaginary world of value unrelated to others. Thus, productivity needs to measured on a relatively small number of dimensions to act as a common currency. On college campuses, I would think the currency would be papers (e.g. your fusion research example), or popularity of classes. For voters, it's current and future earnings. "Right. A simulation can, however, help a non-empathetic person empathize, though. This is the great promise of video/VR games. We now have an extraordinary power to put people in the shoes of others. And if such experiences can lead to a broader sense of ecology, then it will get at that fundamental question." It is not necessarily easy for an emotionally warm person to steel herself in such a way that major risks are addressed independent of the risk of collateral damage. When adding up a bunch of costs and benefits to make a decision, the first five or ten effects might be feasible to model, but not five or ten effects of every person involved. For a world leader that could be billions of small terms in an optimization. I emphasize this because you seem to be pushing back on the suggestion that there are categories of people that are mostly the same and can be modelled as the same -- even if they can't be treated the same, at some point they really must be. "It's interesting to put it that way: there is nothing to _know_. The foundation of social justice is not entirely about facts or knowledge. It's about feelings. And feelings, emotions are one mechanism for data fusion, a collapse of lots of heterogeneous signals down into a single measure (disgust, love, etc.). " I would stick with `know'. Questions like "Should I/he/she feel this way?" are relevant for social purposes. Without them, the chips fall where they may. If there is no language to model how differing emotions will interact and what it all means, then all that can be done is to let a conflict process play out. "Well, there's nothing about SJ that requires homogeneity or lack of diversity. SJ simply requests that we take the opinions of experts seriously. E.g. if the fusion community claims the Germans are close to a practical reactor, then we should listen. If they say Sally's ideas are quackery and should be muted, then we should listen. So, SJ does precisely what you're asking it to do." Perhaps I should have said `top-down' and not `global'. A top-down property would be like a set of cultural or religious norms that weight the value of certain kinds of behaviors. Or it could be a centrally initiated inspiration like Kennedy proposing the moon shot. A bottom-up scenario could instead have non-overlapping preferences with no pressure toward finding overlap or abstracting principles that cause the overlap. In the fusion-expert minority example, the outcome would be of great interest to everyone if it were realized. In the minority that demands cashmere socks, it is not clear to me why the majority should listen unless, say, that group is embedded in the NRA minority or has circulation problems or extremely sensitive skin. To me the word `justice' suggests that subgroup A can exert influence on subgroup B (or B on A) without some sort of dangerous potential energy building-up. If B wants millions of expensive cashmere socks without getting anything in return, there could be a problem. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of glen ☣ <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2016 10:17:01 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Truth vs. Social Justice on college campuses I'll respond to your particulars below. But I think they're a bit distracting. If we indulge in a little essentialism, the proto-hypothesis is that equality-inducing instincts (like empathy or emotions of "justice") are mechanisms for optimizing living systems' effort/power. That's the hypothesis that needs to be formulated. I was interested to see a spate of articles this morning about this book: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10921.html and some other "experts" opinions that violence isn't necessary. The intersection with this conversation (in my own fantasies, anyway) is obvious. Violence requires abstraction and objectification of the victim, whereas more subtle remedies to inequality require the more complex mechanisms like empathy or a sense of justice. It should be obvious that, say, a nuclear war reduces our efficacy, at least in the short term. It's reasonable to think that we have to go through sporadic catastrophes in order to find a more global optimum. But just because that's reasonable, doesn't mean it's inevitable. On 12/06/2016 06:51 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > If we assume that there will be a distribution of productivities for each > person adding to the group, how does the group estimate how at what rate to > tolerate low productivity vs. high productivity additions to the group? For > an average member of a group (or the whole group) how do existing group > members prevent potentially more productive candidates from displacing them? These questions are founded on the assumption that the produce is a _simple_ thing. Not only does it assume the measures of productivities is simple, but that the thing(s) being measured are also simple. It's possible that's not the case. If we allow that the produce can be complex, then the methods for tolerating rates of high or low productivities depend fundamentally on the mesh of products. It's reasonable for, say, a scientist to work their entire lifetime on cheap fusion power and die without having made much progress. But as long as their work can be learned from, the contemporary and future communities of scientists can still call that productive. In the end, we have to resort to the minorities _telling_ the majority what is or is not "just". If the fusion community tells us that Sally is a jerk to the fusion community and shouldn't be tolerated, we have to give that some credence. That's social justice and it's one mechanism for truth seeking. > Sure, one could make a simulation of all this, or apply game theory. I > don't think that gets at a fundamental question which is why should any > selfish agent care if the biosphere is effective? Right. A simulation can, however, help a non-empathetic person empathize, though. This is the great promise of video/VR games. We now have an extraordinary power to put people in the shoes of others. And if such experiences can lead to a broader sense of ecology, then it will get at that fundamental question. > Perhaps there is really nothing to know -- just vote, fight, compete, etc. as > appropriate for prevailing social (dis)order. It's interesting to put it that way: there is nothing to _know_. The foundation of social justice is not entirely about facts or knowledge. It's about feelings. And feelings, emotions are one mechanism for data fusion, a collapse of lots of heterogeneous signals down into a single measure (disgust, love, etc.). These can be used as tools. They hypothesis relies on the idea that they _are_ used as tools, already, by at least animals to make decisions. Social justice, the feelings we feel when, say, Richard Spencer speaks at one's alma mater, is just an extension of that. > Even given the goal of omniscience and omnipotence and an ever-increasing > ambition for harder problems, it still isn't clear that every agent is > useful. Some agents may consume more resources than they contribute. Or > just from a light cone type of argument it can cost more to send a message, > do a calculation, and return a result, than doing it within a smaller > network. From the pro- social justice perspective, one might argue that it > is just too difficult to anticipate what constitutes `fit' behavior, so > everyone must be supported. Well, I think there are both positive and negative sides of social justice. It seems clear that people like Richard Spencer and Curtis Yarvin are attacked by the SJWs because the SJWs feel those people are not useful and should be muted/ignored. So, it's not clear that social justice is about making _everyone_ equal. It is a mechanism for discriminating between the potentially useful and the (obviously?) useless. FWIW, Richard Spencer is obviously useless ... with Yarvin, whose Urbit may well be useful to some extent, it's less obvious ... but we depend on the SJWs to help us navigate the turbulence. > On the other hand there sure seems to be a lot of similar individuals in the > population. In this `global' view, it seems some coherent (but arbitrary) > vision is needed to identify which hard problems to tackle and how to combine > resources to do it. Coherent visions tend to come from individuals or small > groups. Well, there's nothing about SJ that requires homogeneity or lack of diversity. SJ simply requests that we take the opinions of experts seriously. E.g. if the fusion community claims the Germans are close to a practical reactor, then we should listen. If they say Sally's ideas are quackery and should be muted, then we should listen. So, SJ does precisely what you're asking it to do. -- ☣ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
