Glen - I find this "phase space" model of social (and more aptly personal) dynamics very compelling. It helps me to understand the myriad accusations I have endured in my life of having *this privilege* or *that privilege*... it was always offered (or at least taken) as a moral failure on my part. Realizing that the momentum component of the phase space is in some ways more important than the 0th derivatives is very helpful. I could riff on anecdotal examples, as is my wont, but I am refraining. The *larger* socioeconomic system/landscape is clearly a complex system where in many regions, outcomes *are* highly sensitive to initial conditions. I can reflect on my own life and notice how many "saddle passes" or "bifurcation points" I transitioned over/through and see how "but for the grace of Gawdess, there go I" when I notice others in my cadre whose orbits didn't take them *quite* up to/over those saddles/bifurcations, and if him properly humble, notice those who *did* leave my orbit and tumble on into a whole new regime (a hoodlum I used to cause trouble with in middle school now owns his own private jet and flies parts all over central/south america and lives a lavish lifestyle, a peer of my daughters is a famous movie director who got a break apprenticing with James Cameron 20 years ago, etc.).
Like the dynamic experience of downhill skiing and mogul bashing/carving, however, I am left trying to understand the role of agency and free-will in the slopes we "choose" to ski and the shape the runs take on under the edges of our skis (willful choices)? - Steve On 9/29/20 8:31 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > Well, the reason I titled the post "ideas are lies" was in part due to our > faith in deduction. If only we could hammer out the credibility of each > sentence, we could automatically transform one truth into another truth. But > we cannot. So, your radical skepticism regarding each sentence *facilitates* > motivated reasoning. You can doubt the conclusion solely because you hold up > deduction as ideal. > > But that's not how humans work. Human deduction is a dangerous idea. And it's > just as much a lie as the free market or the orthogonality of social systems. > Deduction is nicely computational. And many of us would love to live in a > computational Utopia. > > Instead, humans are driven by consequence, constraint solving, as opposed to > deduction. We arbitrarily (not randomly) *sample* the spaces in which we find > ourselves. In this context, too, the assumptions of libertarianism are at > odds with reality because libertarianism assumes a well-behaved *space* for > us to explore. It's not a matter of individual free will. It's a matter of > path dependence and historicity. Joe Sixpack's available space, like everyone > else's, was bound by constraints before he ever *had* free will in the first > place. Yes, the choices he makes at age 30 constrain/guide the possible > choices he can make at age 50. But similarly, the choices he makes at age 0.1 > constrain/guide the choices he can make at age 30. > > Most importantly for libertarianism's falsity, the choices Joe Sixpack can > make at age 0.1 are constrained/guided by choices made by those in his > various communities (geographic, informational, etc.), 30 years before Joe > was ever born. Socialist systems like anarcho-syndicalism attempt to *design* > society to optimize for freedom and competence. Individualist systems like > libertarianism abdicate any responsibility to design society and then blame > the victim for not solving problems it never had the chance to solve. > > If you want individuals to spend less time in space X, then *minimize* the > size of space X. Don't blame the individuals born inside space X for their > failure to escape that space. Buck up and start *designing* the world. Even > Hayek would advocate that *where* you know how to do it, then do it. That's > what justified his naive arguments that where you *don't* know how to do it, > don't do it. > > Of course, because we only have 1 world, we have limited protocols by which > to experiment. And most experiments are unethical. So we have to a) be > manipulationist/perturbationist and b) quickly admit mistakes and > re-manipulate when our actions cause more pain. Or we can simply plunge our > heads in the sand, rationalizing our luck with post-hoc delusions about our > own competence and "well-made decisions" while the unlucky riffraff suffer in > droves around us. > > > On 9/28/20 5:33 PM, Eric Charles wrote: >> To Glen's point.... it's hard to evaluate the overall argument of a piece >> when almost every factual claim seems factually wrong, and a decent chunk of >> those claims are in my area of ostensible expertise... The entire >> "evolutionary psychology" part is just bunk... I've also had enough >> training in economics, anthropology, philosophy, and other areas to suspect >> that much of the coverage of that is bunk..... so even if I could wade >> through enough to judge the conclusion, there is definitely no world in >> which I agree with the argument. When I say I'm suspicious of most >> sentences, that includes the transition sentences that create "the >> narrative." He says "X. And X therefore Y. So Y, and if Y we should >> definitely Z", and I not only think X is wrong, but also that even if X were >> true it would /not /necessitate Y; and even if Y was necessitated, that >> wouldn't mean we should Z. >> <mailto:[email protected]> >> >> I think the comment about Libertarians assuming decoupling is /much /more >> interesting than all points in the original article put together. Well worth >> breaking out into a different thread, level interesting. That would be a >> way, way better discussion.... in contrast with trying to figure out what it >> would mean for evolution (?) to favor (?) a >> massive-fiction-masquerading-as-a-Machiavellian-lie that either originated >> in the 1770s or in the late 1940s (unclear which). >> >> You said: Libertarians aren't "even questioning why Joe Sixpack would prefer >> to watch The Voice and drink Budweiser over inventing mouse traps in his >> basement, after having spent the last 8 hours being ordered around by >> someone half his age in a flourescent lit cubicle." >> >> And, like, yeah, clearly those are related. But I would phrase the issue >> slightly differently. I would say that one fundamental issue with >> Libertarian thinking is that it assumes something akin to old fashioned >> "free will." It would point out that SOME people do work on the mouse traps, >> and that while watching The Voice and drinking Budweiser might be an >> understandable response to cubicle drudgery, it is also "a choice the person >> makes." Some libertarians will go all abstract in their claims about what >> someone could or could not choose to do, that's very true. However, more >> grounded ones are referencing actual people doing the things they are >> talking about, to push back against claims that such behavior is somehow >> impossible. >> >> It is quite possible that such a claim is functionally identical to >> acknowledging "dependencies" or "coupling", we'd have to dive in deeper for >> me to figure that out. Maybe "free will" isn't the issue as much as some >> notion of "self-directedness." We all know that some percentage of poor >> people get out of poverty. A larger percentage don't. Out of those who >> don't, we have a lot who seem to be perennially making bad choices, which >> isn't very interesting in the context of this discussion (but could be in >> the context of other discussions). More interestingly, we also know that >> some percentage of poor people seem to make similar decisions to those who >> get out of poverty, but the dice never quite roll in their favor. So there >> is coupling, and there are probabilistic outcomes, and all that stuff. But >> even after acknowledging all that, the question remains to what extent the >> choices made by the individuals in question affect their outcomes. >> >> And, of course, none of that is closely related to whether the cost of tree >> trimming is made cheaper by there being more than one person offering such >> services (a basic free market issue), nor whether or not a wealthy baron of >> industry should support random moocher relatives in luxury when it doesn't >> even make him happy to do so (a classic Rand example) - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
