[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

As a neo-socialist of sorts, I would not invest money in anything
looking for a monetary return.   I would invest what "excess resource" I
might command in things that I believed would make a better world
according to my best idea of such.  This "best" would include plenty of
thoughtful care about unintended consequences, etc.  (and still be
fraught with such risks).  

When I was young, I felt strongly in favor of "because it is there" as
an excuse to climb a mountain or pursue the answer to various questions
about the (presumably) objective world and how it works.  I was also in
favor of "progress for progress' sake".  I was a bit of a technotopian,
believing that the very simple fact of increasing human's ability to
manipulate the physical world, was equivalent to providing for "better
living" or "the greatest good for the greatest number" or somesuch.   I
understand that to have been naive in many ways.  This does not make me
fundamentally a technophobe, but to the average technophile it may seem
so. 

My daughter works on the deeper mechanisms of flavivirii (e.g. w nile,
dengue, zika), partly because the molecular machinery at this level is
what she knows well, but also because she believed (going into it) that
relieving some of the most acute health-challenges in the third world
was a worthy cause to dedicate her life to. These diseases are not
acutely challenging to first world peoples with modern medical support. 
From what I know of Sci/Tech salaries, her income as a senior researcher
is roughly half what I am used to seeing in the world of hard(er)
sciences and technology development.   *She* is investing at least that
amount in making a better world (by her view of that).   She came to the
awareness at some point that while her work is meaningful and important,
it perhaps pales in comparison to "yet softer" remedies to the suffering
in these places.   First off, I think she told me that the money
dedicated (via NIH?) to flavivirus research far exceeds the cost of
providing mosquito nets to the people who suffer the most from these
mosquito borne viruses...  and that the demand always exceeds the
availability in spite of costing roughly $2.50 each and lasting 3-5
years.  Her personal lab budget might not buy everyone a net, but it
sounds as if her whole lab's budget in this area might.  I think she
*does* send her own personal "tithe" in that direction (nets).

Age/experience and also an exploding sphere of scientific and technical
frontiers has lead me to realize (now that I no longer feel I can scale
the highest mountains of that landscape,  even in a highly supported
expedition) that it was never up to me (or any one individual) to focus
on the highest mountains, but that the deepest value includes the
mundane of gently exploring and documenting the whole landscape, and
remaining open to appreciating the smallest of grottos to be found
there, rather than only seeking or valuing "the highest summits".   The
summits will be pursued as a consequence of any gradient ascent strategy
coupled with a certain amount of random walk driven by pure curiosity.

No longer a technophile, assertedly not a technophobe, but maybe a
techno-meh?

- Steve


> I wouldn’t invest it in research, I’d invest it in development and
> then hire a team that understood research.   There is $5k spent per
> person (all persons) by venture capital in San Francisco alone.  
> That’s not like the ~ $500k per person at a DOE government lab, but
> the total amount in the region is about like the combined DOE and NSF
> budgets, of which only a fraction goes to research anyway.
>
>  
>
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson
> <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:07 AM
> *To: *'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake
>
>  
>
> Steve,
>
>  
>
> If you had money to invest on research, and were hoping to make 5
> percent on your money, would you give it to an nsf vetted project, or
> to a random project?  The former, surely.  Yet, if everybody invests
> that way, all the money ends up being piled up in the middle and
> nothing novel is ever tried.  We need the loonies, and we need some
> crazy people who have faith in loonies.  They are the equivalent to
> “sports” in a breeding program.  Without loonies and their cronies,
> there is no variation for selection to work on.  Unfortunately, most
> people who bet on loonies loose.  Yes, a few win big, but most lose. 
> So, on average, it doesn’t pay to be a loonie-croney.  That’s the
> paradox.  This leads me to the conclusion that madness is a form of
> altruism. 
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>  
>
> *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Steven
> A Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 18, 2019 11:35 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake
>
>  
>
> Dave -
>
>
>      
>
>     It seems like the ideas that seem to capture my imagination -
>     Sheldrake, quantum consciousness among them - tend to be labeled
>     as "pseudo." This is annoying, first because my hermeneutical
>     hackles bristle whenever anyone tries to  assert their
>     interpretation as privileged over someone else's; and because
>     there seem to be so many cross-connections that afford all within
>     the net to gain plausibility simply from being in the net.
>
>      
>
> Thanks for making this point and sharing this predilection.   I find a
> duality in this experience myself which can be a challenge to manage. 
> I deeply share your suspicion/resentment of "privileged
> interpretation".   I also am deeply suspicious of persuasive modes of
> communication (NLP as an extreme example, bad but conventional
> rhetoric second to that).  I have been a direct "victim" of this in my
> life from time to time, but more chronically I have *observed* others
> being persuaded to believe things for which there is either shaky
> evidence or which is highly contradicted by the evidence available.  
> My judgement of this can sound or feel like my own positioning with
> "privileged interpretation" which is what makes manipulative rhetoric
> so insidious.   I agree that all that is labeled "pseudo" is not false
> or flimsy, or is only *contingently* so. 
>
> On the other hand, one of the common tools I've seen in this type of
> manipulative rhetoric is to *claim* that dismissal by the mainstream
> is nearly "proof" of truthiness.  For example, Climate Denial,
> AntiVax, ChemTrails, UFOlogy, etc.  seem to hold up as their prime (or
> at least significant) evidence the simple fact that the "mainstream"
> or the "establishment" dismisses them.   The apparent bias of many to
> believe anything wrapped up in the trappings of a "conspiracy".
>
> On the other other hand, new or changing or revolutionary paradigms in
> knowledge are *naturally* strongly or fundamentally counter to the
> common/standard "truth".   Copernicus and Galileo and their move from
> geocentric to heliocentric astronomical models.
>
> You use the phrase "capture my imagination" which I find *also* holds
> a dualism for me.   On the one hand, I believe that intuition is a
> critical element in my own understanding and knowledge of the world. 
> On the other, I find that my "imagination" is vulnerable to "whimsy"
> and a carefully constructed "whimsy" can be as compelling in it's own
> way as the biases of "conspiracy".   The carrot to go with the stick.
>
> Being trained formally in Science and Mathematics, I have a deep
> respect for the methods and sensibilities of those domains.   Working
> in "Big Science" among a broad cross-cutting set of disciplines (27
> years at LANL) also gave me a deep suspicion of "received wisdom".  
> While the largest portion of the work I observed stood on it's own
> merits, the largest portion of the *funding* for the work seemed to
> follow the biases of "privileged interpretation" and "received
> wisdom".   I also felt that *publication* of scientific work went
> through a similar but not as extreme biased filter.   Peer review and
> reproduction of results are central to scientific progress, so this
> can be problematic. On the other, other, other hand, irresponsible
> publication of "hooey" without proper peer review seems somewhat
> pervasive and corrupts the process in it's own insidious way.
>
> <ramble off>
>
> - Steve
>
>
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