OK. I'm in that camp, too. But the issue I'm struggling with is whether to *support* any
given project. A good example is instant-runoff/RCV here in washington. We don't know
what the outcome would be if it were universally (across WA) adopted. It's ironic that
the righties tend to argue against it because *I* expect it would turn WA more purple,
away from the solid blue it is because of the urban centers. (And just to be clear, it
*is* a large infrastructure project just like "last mile", high speed rail,
etc. because it involves changes in behavior and machinery up and down the whole scale.)
The RCV advocates are, I think, delusional in their presumption that they know what would
happen, near-, mid-, or long-term.
So, given that I can't effectively predict the outcome, that I only have hunches, do I
support it or oppose it? The same problem comes from any large project like that. What
does it mean for a "voter" to be *informed*?
On a similar note, a pub-goer last week recommended this:
Homo Deus
https://bookshop.org/books/homo-deus-a-brief-history-of-tomorrow/9780062464347
But this review of Sapiens kinda freaks me out:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari
At what point do we stop dampening our tendency to believe whatever
pseudo-profound bullshit that crosses our path? I'm getting close. They say old
people are like babies. I'm dangerously close, as I age, to believing the
sci-fi nonsense I consumed as a child.
On 8/15/22 10:45, Marcus Daniels wrote:
The public projects I mentioned concern a small subspace of the terms that would go into
a civilization-level objective function. The project themselves are a tool of politics
and subject to politics, so the constituency of the terms in the function is constantly
in flux. Change the habits of people, and their values may change around them. There
is no "natural" notion of success and failure. There's no requirement for
designed ecologies. The artifacts that come out of large public projects often have
unanticipated results. For example, a library or subway station/train that also serves
as shelter for the homeless. Certainly a technologist such as myself sees the artifacts
as a force-amplifier.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2022 10:25 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)
In trying to parse Wolpert's latest contribution <https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03886>, I
hiccuped at this sentence: "In summary, depending on how exactly one wants to define the
word “simulate”, the concerns of Bostrom, et al., properly formalized, strongly suggest that
augmenting our brains can never allow us to fully grasp / cognize / perceive our physical
reality."
I don't normally think seriously about what I actually believe. Dispositionally, I
"believe" most normal things like gravity, brightly colored insects might be
poisonous, etc. And conceptually, I don't really believe much of anything. But the
complexity layering Wolpert lays out in this article finally triggered me to ask what I
do believe. I don't think I actually believe any form of Church-Turing. All reductive
systems are false. Aka, all reduction is abstraction. Reality is *special*.
Beyond mere "complicatedness" skepticism about, say, building an urban environment capable of
expressing an ecology, there's something deeply inadequate about "built environments". Of course,
stigmergy raises an interesting point. That no built environment is either completely controlled or built
tightly to specifications, which is why I enjoy older neighborhoods that are a bit run-down, where e.g.
children play on grass perforated concrete as if it is the natural world. Evolution happens everywhere.
Everything is likely a mix of built and grown. But I can't tell if this argues *for* or *against*
Church-Turing. What does it mean for a (large, complicated, perhaps complex) conceptual structure to be the
implicit objective function for a collective? Aren't all these large projects doomed to "fail" in
some not insignificant way?
On 8/15/22 09:40, Marcus Daniels wrote:
The largest public infrastructure project I remember in New Mexico was the
Railrunner train track installation, and even that involved decades of public
debt.
Population-dense regions are interesting to me because big projects are
possible because there is a tax base. Bay bridge, BART, high voltage power
distribution under the bay, bike paths around the bay, 10 gigabit networking,
etc. Someday there may need to be desalinization rigs in the bay. All of
this is conceivable with millions of people to pay for it. Being spread-out
means more crude oil for asphalt.
*From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Gary Schiltz
*Sent:* Monday, August 15, 2022 9:25 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)
I wonder what proportion of people worldwide, like me, see "urban" places as
mainly, at best, necessary evils. Maybe it's mainly an American phenomenon, maybe a
bourgeoisie idea for only those who can afford land.
On Mon, Aug 15, 2022 at 8:23 AM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
At the top of my LIFO stack of dystopian things has been "The Line":
https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
<https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline>
Pushed by a ruthless monarchy, funded by fossil fuels, bulldozing
indigenous lands, ... yikes.
But I now have a new one on the stack:
https://www.mojo.vision/mojo-lens/ <https://www.mojo.vision/mojo-lens/>
Unlike bin Salman, these guys seem well-intentioned. But sheesh. I can't
even imagine wearing that.
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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