-- rec -- wrote:
Science week before last, mixed in with the telomere-to-telomere human
genome, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo0713 discusses
Thompson /et al./ (/3/
<https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo0713#core-R3>)
describe taking an experimental approach to the question of how
opportunities to selectively learn from successful role models can
favor the spread of more adaptive, but less intuitive, cognitive
heuristics over more intuitive and memorable alternatives.
which is https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn0915.
Old age is the revenge of the memorable over the adaptive?
Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and transformation...
/“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” Musk//recently told Insider <https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-interview-axel-springer-tesla-war-in-ukraine-2022-3>//. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.”/ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/11/elon-musk-on-avoiding-longevity-research-i-am-not-afraid-of-dying.html And A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth. — Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97I like to challenge young(er) people with the idea that they (and/or their children) might *have to* live forever.
In my youth (pre-50) I had a hard time honestly contemplating senescence, much less mortality. It was as-if I thought I would live (without diminished capacity) forever. Every challenge (I thought) made me stronger, and every wound was to become a scar that would in some way be useful later. In spite of that, I believe I would have lived my life much differently had I honestly believed I would "live forever".
There are all the regrets people have about how they would have treated their bodies better had they known they would be stuck struggling with various conditions resulting from neglect and abuse in their later years. There are also the regrets people have about not living their lives as fully in the period where their appetites and naivetes allowed for a sort of hedonism that often fades with age (and experience). /Youth being wasted on the young/, as we often note.
The regrets I am now most focused on are those of how one learns and builds/manages one's world-view(s), one's ontology(ies). I think this relates to a tangent I won't indulge inline of code-switching vs mode-switching.
Following Galen Strawson's thesis <http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf> on the /Episodic/ vs the /Diachronic/ (nod to Glen), I suppose I might like to have experienced life more /Episodically/ than I have, to have allowed myself a less continuous narrative of self to have been experienced. I certainly can recognize the benefit of *breaks* in what I can call a piecewise narrative life, punctuated by geographical moves, graduations, marriages and divorces, job and career changes. Each of those events allowed me to rethink my own narrative, but fundamentally, each new persona that emerged from the rubble left from the dismantling of the artifacts of the last one was essentially the same. Since I don't identify strongly as an Episodic "Self", I don't know if that sort of inside-outism from Diachronic (if that is even a fair description) is more free to *discover* itself, rather than (re)*invent* itself? Or is there a hidden diachronic-self obscured to the episodic-selves, by the fundamental conceit of not believing in an underlying continuity-self? This is likely a mis-reading/understanding of Strawson whose examples are taken from his own self-proclaimed Episodic self-experience vs my own self-diagnosed Diachronic.
Returning to the ideation of "living forever" (or at least much longer than planned for), I wish for my grandchildren (still in formative stages at 4 and 10) that they be prepared much more fundamentally for self-re-discovery/invention than I was/am and than my own grand/parents, and very likely their own parents who are somewhat (naturally?) shaped a bit too much after me and mine.
Following RECs original posting, How to prepare these human-be(com)ings to be adaptive at a scale in their own lives, formerly achieved only by generational adaptivity?
~~ sas --
-- rec -- .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
OpenPGP_0xFD82820D1AAECDAE.asc
Description: OpenPGP public key
OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
