On 12/08/2016 11:43 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What I mean is that there can be sufficient disequilibrium in the global 
> system such that an agent could be reasonably well aware of the impact of the 
> system on them and their impact on the system, and nonetheless act in a way 
> that decreases global fitness but increases their individual fitness.   An 
> example I heard this morning on NPR was a writer that makes a living from 
> advertisement revenue from fake-news at least partially about Clinton, but 
> nonetheless voted for Clinton.  Or any of hundreds of examples of 
> externalized costs by corporations.  Games may or may not clarify these 
> factors.  It's an act of faith to expect altruism, even in a cost neutral 
> situation.

OK.  As long as "the rising tide", that allows the current generation to stand 
on the priors' shoulders, is obfuscated, you're right; there's no reason to 
expect anything like altruism.  But if a) it's true that, and b) individuals 
can see the truth that, increased power of the biosphere results in increased 
individual power, then we would have reason to expect altruism.

Granted, there're lots of assumptions in there.  But the primary complaint in 
SJ issues is that of unrecognized privilege.  So, the important part of what 
we're talking about is facilitating ways in which the individual can _see_ the 
platform on which they stand in some synoptic context.  FWIW, it's also that 
same complaint conservatives make toward entitlements, Boomers make against 
Millenials, etc.  So, this isn't an SJ-specific problem/solution.

> So long that there are some iterative reconciliations between `neighboring' 
> distinct models then one might hope a limited GUM could relax over the 
> centuries (and that GUM would be related to federal government).

Yes, I agree completely.  Pluralism is often a path toward Unitarianism/Monism.


> Nerds make black/white contrasts or do nerds simply bother to make contrasts? 
>  I would expect the stereotype would be that nerds would be more prone to 
> depth-first approaches -- total dominance of some esoteric narrow topic 
> rather than trying to find a way to rationalize a large but ambiguous or 
> partial set of signals.   In doing the latter, model free parameters need to 
> be estimated, and at first that may involve extreme perturbations if 
> measurement is not easy (sample some color with the value of black or white, 
> but not grey -- assuming monotonicity).

Yeah, you're probably right about that, too.  However, depth-first methods 
might always (or at least often) turn into us vs them contrast, which is plenty 
binary.  And there are 2 choices to building your model in the context of free 
parameters: 1) ignore them or 2) assert universality over their dimension.  And 
both approaches result in unjustifiable claims.  So one is better off doing a 
horrible job of estimation and being clear about your estimation methods.  
Nerds often miss this opportunity and land on over-simplified models, which is 
why we're so helpless in the face of complex criticism.

> I could see that would be useful to model politics (esp. high school 
> popularity contests), but it can already hard to model complex things with 
> pairs never mind many body terms.   I suspect someone like Trump really is 
> pairwise in his interactions.   It works because no one in the whole network 
> has come to expect consistency.   With that kind of violence, it is fool's 
> errand to model many body terms.

I disagree.  The way to outmaneuver someone like Trump is by demonstrating 
higher valence in your relationships.  If we assume Trump is the master of 
ambiguous linguistics Lakoff thinks he is, then he already understands this, at 
least tacitly.  Trump (under this idea) purposefully forms his expressions so 
that there are unbound variables that are likely to be bound by the listener.  
That's tantamount to a schematic axiom system, which is inherently many-bodied 
(perhaps infinite valence, depending on the structure of the variables).  But 
since Trump's deliverables are/will only be pairwise, the way to out maneuver 
him is by delivering higher valence artifacts.  Actual agreements that find 
consensus amongst multiple parties.  For example, Al Gore could do this by 
presenting Trump with a deal that satisfies so many players, Trump will be 
incapable of refusing it.


-- 
☣ glen

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