First the "analogy", in case that wasn't clear: Any tech (like any myopically
intentional action) has things that it considers and things it ignores. E.g. when
designing an AI powered chatbot, if you ignore that ~1/2 the training material is racist,
you'll get a racist chatbot, no matter how well it passes the Turing test. Similarly, if
you design your government without considering a Gamer like Trump, i.e. assuming
presidents (candidates and elected) play in Good Faith, you'll fail to consider those
edge cases ... fail to harden your technology against abuse. The extent to which
governments *are* technologies, rather than being merely an analogy is sophistry. Culture
is just a superset of technology.
Second the driving toward existential threats: Any intentional action is myopic.
(I'll take the opportunity to plug Wolpert's paper again
<https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362>. Whether you buy his argument are not isn't
necessary. Practically the overwhelming majority of intentional action is myopic.)
That implies there are unintentional consequences to every action. The larger the
(compositional) action, the larger the impact of the unintentional consequences. So
big techs like the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, GAMAM, etc. have
huge impacts that we, almost by definition, can/will not know or understand.
In order for these huge unintended consequences to be non-existential (or
non-threatening), we have to understand them well enough to define their
boundaries ... circumscribe their effects. We can't do that ... or, at least,
we have no political will to do that. Maybe we'll get lucky and all this churn
will simply work out in some beautiful co-evolutionary cauldron of innovation,
ever progressing to a Utopian dream? Or maybe not. But even if it is bounded in
some meaningful sense, that cauldron still produces existential threats, at
least sporadically.
My reaction to Roger's assertion was that "group of self-selected fellow citizens" and
"under no system of governance whatsoever" were either too vague or too idealistic for me
to parse. So I didn't try.
On 8/29/24 10:15, steve smith wrote:
Glen -
Yeah, I'm not much of a fan of Pinker (et al)'s arguments that show dropping
infant mortality, poverty, violent crime, etc. But there is a point to be made
that our governments, as technologies, are making a difference ... at least in
*some* measures. Of course, governments are just like the other technologies
and are pushing us toward existential threats like authoritarianism and climate
change.
Can you elaborate on this: "just like other technologies" and "pushing us toward
existential threats"?
I have my own intuition and logic for believing this but rather than blather it
all out here, I'd like to peek under your assertion and see what you are
thinking on this topic?
Also wondering if you or any of the usual suspects (including REC/DaveW) have thoughts about
Roger's original assertion, given a stronger corollary to "Power Corrupts" stated as
"Power IS Corruption"?
-Steve
On 8/28/24 14:26, steve smith wrote:
There's no system of governance that hasn't been corrupted. They're all the
worst forms of governance ever invented, except for the alternative of dealing
with a group of self-selected fellow citizens under no system of governance
whatsoever.
-- rec --
And being a fan of James Scott (The Art of not Being Governed
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6477876-the-art-of-not-being-governed> and Against
the Grain) I am inclined to respect this POV while on the other end, I also am quite the fan of
Michael Levin's perspective on "what is life?" with all of it's spread across scale
and across complexity and across species (in the broadest sense).
Until we might evolve from a slime-mold with psuedopods searching around and
intruding/interpenetrating into oneanother seeking concentrated resources (like Russia's
into Ukraine and now vice-versa, or Israel/Palestine/Lebanon/???). Might we
(collectively) become something more like a "proper" multicellular creature or
a balanced, healthy ecosystem (or system of ecosystems)?
We have (only) been experimenting with large-scale self-organizing systems of
humanity with lots of technological scaffolding
(lithics/copper/bronze/iron/steel through antimatter, quantum dots, and
nanotech, just to name a few?) and religio/socio/philosopho/politco linguistic
technology for a handful (or two) of millenia, so it doesn't surprise me that
we haven't wandered/mutated-selected our way into anything better than we have
to date.
I am (very guardedly) hopeful that the acceleration of the latter (linguistic
technology) in LLMs and other ML/AI (material technology) will give us the
possibility of rushing this phase forward. PInker might claim we have had
material (and psycho-social-spiritual) advancement over the centuries and
decades and maybe he is right in some sense... but the leap-forward in
collective self-governance/regulation/homeostasis we can all seem to imagine
living under feels beyond our (heretofore?) grasp.
For better or worse, it feels to me that Kurzweil for all his nonsense in
predicting an imminent singularity may be right... we will either self-organize
in a Asimovian Foundation/Psychohistory galaxy-spanning culture (almost surely
not) future or implode in a Mad Max (or grey-goo/planet-krypton) apocalypse.
Maybe even in my lifetime, almost assuredly in my children or grandchildren's?
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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