[FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)

[glen]

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 <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Monday, August 15, 2022 10:25 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> 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 <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Gary Schiltz
>> *Sent:* Monday, August 15, 2022 9:25 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>> *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 <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> 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.
> 

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