[FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

[glen]

Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to blind you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within several clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he contradicts himself but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.

*If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows further flex and slop between mind and body, that something ... that "muscle" ... will be exercised through generational turnover ... i.e. death. Trying to forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes because I disagree with Haidt so starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to fail.

p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn" is laid out here: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 It takes me longer and longer to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, it's trivial to gauge the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching how they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.


On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of cultural evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition coupling if it is possible to do so?
> What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
> 
> [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
> 
> Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some cross-trophic relation).
> 
> On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
>>
>> But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then memorability/intuitiveness of new ideas will remain unrelated through generations of dead/replaced bodies.
>>
>> My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled to one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think memorability/intuitiveness increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the new bodies are slightly restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it. The only reason we have young kids that understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) better than the old farts did is because the young kids grew into the idea.
>>
>> No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.
>>
>> On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
>>> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from attractors?
>>> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across generations.
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
>>>
>>> What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or attractors where if you start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given iteration. The size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.
>>>
>>> That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's because I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the attractor. On an arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such attractors are mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper bag. >8^D
>>>
>>> On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing your soul” [1]
>>>>
>>>> That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big picture.  For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big picture.  For two it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to disrupt it.  The nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a virion cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain process once embedded.  But what are judgements really informed by if sampling is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset idea.
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ <https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
>>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
>>>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
>>>>
>>>> Marcus -
>>>>
>>>>            Steve writes:
>>>>
>>>>            < 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. “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.” >
>>>>
>>>>              
>>>>
>>>>            Maybe not?
>>>>
>>>>              
>>>>
>>>>            https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4>
>>>>
>>>> I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation in one lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide yet-more tools for facilitating that.
>>>>
>>>> It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that they can be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think it can be, but as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but seeing the myriad ways it can go wrong as well.  This negative ideation is probably a self-referential example of the topic itself.
>>>>
>>>> Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in understanding more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity of "Life Itself", with the human (individual as well as cultural) experience being the one most relevant to my own life, but not exclusively.
>>>
>>>
>>
> 

-- 
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