[FRIAM] labels
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Oct 10 14:27:14 EDT 2020
Marcus -
(in mild agreement/acknowledgement of your point as I understand it)
I suppose my own biases about human nature are that we are driven along
an internal greed/fear axis which is then "weaponized" by the
politicos. The Right seems particularly adept at both, while impugning
the Left as if they are the ones playing those trump (Trump?) cards...
Other axes such as equality/equanimity, group loyalty/deference to
authority, etc. seem *somewhat* orthogonal..
I suspect the terms "Progressive" and "Conservative" don't really
capture what is actually exhibited/explored by the Left/Right tug-of
war. I know that as I have aged/matured/evolved I've become *much*
more socially progressive whilst feeling much more conservative about
progress itself... not trusting the headlong rush we are on, while
acknowledging that it is (somewhat) inevitable.
Following the arc of SteveG's ideas about collective intelligence,
least/stationary action, bidirectional path-tracing as a paradigm that
eclipses or replaces or maybe subsumes (neo) Darwinism and
Paternalism, I also feel that we are overdue for some fundamental
refactoring of our collective models/paradigms. I'm no more interested
in the style of Pol Pot's Communism than I am in Hitler's Fascism or
Stalin's Fascism-disguised-as-Socialism than I am in Trump's variants on
the same. They seem like they are all aberrant excursions into a
highly compressed (projection) subspace that is at best a *shadow* of
what is really needed/possible.
- Steve
On 10/10/20 11:37 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> My model is that people lean left and right as a developmental aspect
> of personality, and the parties mimic but also manipulate those
> patterns. People really must be gamed and manipulated by
> politicians because even the best-intentioned people are often
> ignorant of the complexity of the population and the practicalities of
> governance. Worse, many people are blamers who have nothing to add
> beyond What’s In It For Me.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 10, 2020 9:55 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] labels
>
>
>
> Nick-
>
> Not trying to ding you personally for this, but this kind of blind
> deference to authority/party/tribe/loyalty is one of the mechanisms
> I'm trying to tease a part with Marcus' reference to the Left/Right
> *dominant* component as an inevitability? And I *think* EricC's
> questioning of that assumption?
>
> How *do* our political parties "precess" in higher dimensional space
> such that the subdominant components can "flip" entirely... how did
> the party of Lincoln Republicans who rejected secession and abolished
> Slavery and their opposition which had a strong component of what
> became formally the Dixiecrats, effectively flip positions? The
> party that accused (accuses?) their opposition of being "tax and
> spenders" has become "print money and spenders". How do deficit
> Hawks become Deficit Doves or Owls, and is there an instantaneous
> "tunneling" between these somewhat oppositional positions?
>
> https://citizenvox.org/2012/02/22/hawks-doves-and-owls-budget-policy-goes-to-the-zoo/
>
> - Steve
>
> Thaniks, EricS for reading and commenting on the Amy Interview I
> am such a benighted, naïve, stupid, optimist. I can imagine that
> if she were an Obama nominee, I would be saying, “We have a good
> one here!”
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 10, 2020 3:47 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com> <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] labels
>
>
>
> Yes, and not only Ugh.
>
>
>
> The two places this bothers me as a category error are:
>
>
>
> 1. It conflates writing the rules of the game and being a player
> in the game. Shubik used to harp on this: that the government’s
> role as the declarer of monetary policy, and as the participant in
> fiscal policy, were roles at different levels, game designer
> versus large atomic player. The category isn’t quite as clean
> here, in that a rule targeting balanced affiliation isn’t exactly
> the same as playing for one side. It is a bit more like certain
> monkey societies, in which the problem-solver steps in on the side
> of whoever is being attacked to lessen the asymmetry.
>
>
>
> But it still feels like it has a related problem, of defining an
> outer law (constitution or statute for structure of the court) in
> terms of a non-legal convention (the particular parties and how
> they are non-formally categorized and weighted in the society at
> this time), and that feels completely unstable against drift.
>
>
>
> A more mechanism-design-y thing would be to revisit whichever
> Federalist Paper it was that talked about the destabilizing role
> of parties, never imagining the technologies for coordination that
> would be available to them 230 years later, and ask what the
> mechanism update is to the constitution in a world where
> instabilities toward consolidation are so extreme. Kind of the
> same spirit as revisiting capitalist property rights laws when a
> warehouser and distributor can come to own the whole economy.
>
>
>
> 2. In the Coney Barrett talk that Nick circulated, she made an
> important point that should be true, even if we could argue that
> it is a smokescreen that isn’t true in reality. She says
> “liberal/conservative” in regard to the interpretation of
> constitutional law are different categories from
> “liberal/conservative” as political affiliations. She probably
> even believes it, though I expect that her SCOTUS decisions will
> magically align with the political axes 100% of the time, and one
> must ask how that happens to always be the case.
>
>
>
> Of course, the question is whether it is all disingenuous. Thomas
> Edsall had a decent article in NYT a few days ago on
> originalism/living-text definitions, that was right on the thread
> we were on. It is interesting that the opponents of each side
> make _exactly_ the same accusation toward it: that the side they
> are criticizing has no real method and is a program for
> rationalizing whatever outcome the judge wanted politically. To
> the extent that that is true in substance, if obfuscated in
> appearance, then Coney Barrett’s claim that they are different
> categories is a falsehood. One wonders then at what level of
> argument one could force her to acknowledge that error.
>
>
>
> Eric.
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 9, 2020, at 11:18 PM, Eric Charles
> <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com
> <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- reconfigure (expand) it from 9 to 15 but
> *balance* the Left/Right ideology (I think he proposed 5/5)
> and then ---------
>
>
>
> Note that one thing both parties agree on is that we should
> conceive politics as utterly and completely a choice between
> the two of them. God forbid that we conceive of judges using
> any other dimensions. In fact, let's enshrine it in law that
> we must forever focus on exactly whether we have a "balance"
> of "left" and "right". Ugh!
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 4:48 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> Ha! I refer to the last bit as "ok fine, TWIST my
> drinking arm!" when
> someone offers to buy me one... the only one to twists
> my drinking arm
> this last six months has been Mary... and Maybe Stephen
> and his circle
> on "ZoomGrappaNight".
>
> I don't like the language around "packing the court". I
> don't think
> "reconfiguring the court" is the same as "packing the
> court". Clearly,
> the (not so) loyal opposition to the Dems *would* pack the
> court... add
> 6 more justices and make sure they are ALL conservative
> leaners. Pete
> Buttegeig was the first to speak of this in my earshot,
> and HIS version
> sounded pretty reasonable... reconfigure (expand) it
> from 9 to 15 but
> *balance* the Left/Right ideology (I think he proposed
> 5/5) and then
> leave it to the Justices themselves to fill the remaining
> 5 (through
> some arcane process?). What the Republicans have been
> building up to
> for decades is "packing the courts".
>
> Checks and balances are tricky, as is depending on social
> norms and
> standards, but I think it might be "as good as it gets",
> at least for
> the time being.
>
> - Steve
>
>
> On 10/8/20 1:36 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> > Ha! That was the essence of one of the 538 panel
> member's phrasing suggestion for Kamala Harris in response
> to Pence's question about packing SCOTUS. The elaborated
> version was: "Because confirming Barrett, NOW, is such a
> horribly wrong thing to do, we have no choice BUT to pack
> the court." ... I.e. now look what you made me do. That
> was my dad's favorite phrase to justify whatever abuse he
> chose to mete out that day. He once ran over my bicycle
> with his truck. I *made* him run over my bike because I
> left it laying in the driveway. It's a running joke with
> my fellow drinkers who *regularly* FORCE me to drink more
> than I should. There is no free will. I live to serve.
> >
> > On 10/8/20 11:28 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> Look what you made me do,
>
>
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