Maybe the trick is that we ("we" being the universe) don't know (i.e. there is no master
equation) what's redundant and what's not? EricS' idea that there's a level of redundancy that
might be healthy and our [under|over]shoot might be a search method seems to assume a flattening
evaluation procedure/calculus. What if we go further and speculate that there is no *possible*
evaluation procedure? I.e. every single organelle, from the tiniest to the largest, from the
stupidly algorithmic to the novel creative, is unique and there is no such thing as redundancy?
Sure, branches of the soapy plume fizzle out and others bubble up, perhaps according to some
non-analytic, heterogeneous energy meta-function. But that doesn't imply there exists a singular
formulation of that meta-function and the "landscape" being settled into by the foam.
I.e. we ("we" being the universe) have no choice but to re-[under|over]shoot in
every possible combination of circumstances we ever realize. It's the lesson of
simulation writ large. Those who can't think, act.
And, FWIW, the point about the vampires is a good one. I'm just happy I got to
participate at all, even if my little neighborhood of foam fizzles out, marked as
"unhealthy neoplasm".
On 2/16/22 22:49, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Humans, some having the mental apparatus to design, say, error correcting
codes, might recognize tradeoffs like agility vs. stability vs. cost vs.
entropy in social matters but go ahead and accept one point in that space, for
themselves, while not denying it is a space. One might imagine individual
humans would rationalize their own place and those around them using heuristics
they learned or invented, and sometimes compare notes about their conclusions
and their premises. And they might ask themselves, “Well how did I get here?”
Or maybe it is better to honk the horn of that large automobile. Could they be
less wise than their cells which do have ways to identify when enough is enough?
On Feb 16, 2022, at 1:31 PM, David Eric Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
The reply to that may be an ecological perspective.
From some tangled history of other concerns, I was thinking last week that in
a healthy society, there isn’t really any role for heroes. And if the society
isn’t healthy, it is not likely heroes are going to help, because lack of
health is an entropy problem — populating the wrong parts of the state space in
huge numbers — and heroes aren’t the kind of sweepers that address that kind of
problem. Too Newtonian.
That doesn’t say how one gets to health. And it could be that there aren’t
healthy wholes if the number of redundant parts is too high. But I can
conceive that there is some size, and some structure, in which redundant
action, local over various scales but suitably regulated and coordinated, is
the mechanism of preserving and propagating the healthy state.
Not everything in a large multicellular organism fits this model, but it seems
that for a vast majority of cells in the soma, it is about that. And I’m not
sure there is anything, perhaps apart from germ cells, or certain eutelic cells
in very small organisms (lobster stomatogastric ganglion, fly brain), that
departs so far from that stochastic-redundant model.
Don’t know how to make that psychologically helpful, but that is what death is
for. Nothing has to be worried about forever, which makes a great many more
things bearable for a while. Why Thiel and others want to give that up escapes
me.
Eric
On Feb 16, 2022, at 3:52 PM, Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> wrote:
How is it people manage to believe in their distinctness with access to
libraries, the internet, twitter, etc.
Isn't the overwhelming conclusion to draw that people are an expensive
proliferating redundancy? I don't just say that about others, I struggle
daily with it myself.
Apparently not everyone does?
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 11:49 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Alien Crash Site, Complexity, Future Fossils and Jim Rutt
Podcasts
My jury is still out. But this is similar to my evaluation of the Consilience Project, in
particular this concept of "human sovereignty":
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fconsilienceproject.org%2fthe-digest-issue-9%2f&c=E,1,vXXhmWk7z9gVYFpsILhZYR79dZYsKQ_5dZE_G1tMeHKLqNc5HSaGMEEGZ3aZeoBr70qS48Jyl3AEsC5gVMm4wuNMoyc2vuHgmTWITe0VM7oZBx_6jQJ95g,,&typo=1
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fconsilienceproject.org%2fthe-digest-issue-9%2f&c=E,1,3mD2yFXZ65lOrP-oy9Fj_dUNVkzhwDRO17WcZuichw723c-scSjo4XxiHoVBPw00ZDUPoZ61MCiAGZb2T-5eteQZGc3zW7NJ4_9lex4c07lOZ9RwXWEwflnuy6o,&typo=1
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fhighexistence.com%2fjordan-greenhall-humanity-global-collapse-survive%2f&c=E,1,dRtpDMqkBvIpr64Nfus66G_8FfwAsZd2crq_hr-rqUYJidMnqnP05Q1IWTJ32glzj9VXUhYzKsLTLWnOkqjDyuPpOZWLhR7tQ_U6fELGksr136aZ&typo=1
And I can't put my finger on precisely what's unsettling about it. It is similar to Rogan's
dissonance, where with so much Rogan "content", you can easily cherry pick both good and
bad stuff. But at least with Rogan, in spite of frequent bouts of arrogance, he's really just some
dude yapping with people. Stein, Hall, Shmachtenberger, et al [⥀] have something akin to the fevered
gaze of zealotry. I get this feeling from all the Eastern mystic-friendly people (present company
excluded of course, Dave & Kim). What started my worry was Shmachtenberger's (apparent) alma
mater:
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.miu.edu%2f.&c=E,1,KsTxsb3IoVoEWqi69Lmr5jOS62YKXu0vvPySDpQvAXq1__9ly7MMBWU_ZHx-fh9A3tD20eSWefhteFokQxi1NoLeUN4tm0r6NRRz9oZH1Bhps_jqqFVa&typo=1
But backing out of my Pyrrhonian tendencies, my real worry is their idealism, seemingly
fueled by eschatological thinking. Putting so much emphasis on concepts like "human
sovereignty" seems anthropocentric and a bit arrogant to me. It's directly in the
transhumanist tradition, I guess, but more utopian and less Blade Runner/Neuromancer. The
stylistic difference coheres a little bit when comparing their feverish narrative(s) with
posts by Robin Hanson or Eliezer Yudkowski.
I don't know. I'd appreciate any opinions offered here.
[⥀] Rutt is of a different category. His affinity for anti-Woke rhetoric, constant F-bombs, and
Weinstein-style alt-right ideas makes me worry there's also an affinity with the right's obsession with the
anti-vaxx "bodily sovereignty" and maybe even the whackadoodle "sovereign citizens"
thing. Both Rutt and Weinstein are listed as advisors:
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fconsilienceproject.org%2fteam%2f&c=E,1,dute_iOAc2Ls7_X2YdKfw0ed-KLDFlxLeV5gaaZS7heW0WxHofu0iu3GACmW9Cac0zPl-DhSWZ-qZrYJAfQbY0kdGpzkqFxCCopzhv6gLQivXsFZN1uFr38,&typo=1
But I'm obviously OK with cafeteria style idea farming. Even a broken clock's right twice per day, right?
[[⥁]]
[[⥁]] Of course NOT! Clocks are mechanisms, maybe even the canonical mechanism. And, as a
mechanism, a stopped clock cannot be a clock at all. So "stopped clock" is
self-contradictory ... from which, classicaly, we can derive any theorem at all. So
stopped clocks are either always right or never right, which means they can't be right 2
times per day. Pffft.
On 2/16/22 10:32, Steve Smith wrote:
I kinda gave up on Rutt... he's not exactly Joe Rogan, but there was something
in his PlanB stuff that left me feeling like he was snookering me (all of us),
even if he himself didn't know it? Maybe reading too much Rebecca Solnitt has
made me hypersensitive to (other's not my own) mansplaining.
--
--
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
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