[FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
Frank Wimberly
wimberly3 at gmail.com
Wed May 31 10:26:26 EDT 2023
Our 2 year old granddaughter is at our place frequently. It's
inconceivable that she could live independently.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Wed, May 31, 2023, 8:13 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent"
> humans at around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That
> seems extreme. Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year
> olds used to be much more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better
> developed cortex? I thought there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I
> suppose, just like height and other features, that pruning spike might move
> around depending on environmental pressure.
>
> On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.
> >
> >> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting and
> cooking, say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of the Corn were
> older than 2. 8^D
> >>
> >>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
> >>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of
> modern industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to,
> mostly, independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other
> large mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and
> bears and large cats,12 months for a host of other species.
> >>> davew
> >>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> >>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of
> Ötzi, the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
> >>>>
> >>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears
> up to chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on
> the infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging. Of course he drops
> the kid off with the first available woman he meets.
> >>>>
> >>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub>, the samurai with a baby
> carriage. But as I remember, the cub became part of the lone wolf's
> arsenal.
> >>>>
> >>>> So, when you posit a de-domesticated human, what happens to the
> extended juvenile development of humans? Babies and toddlers are going to
> remain domestic concerns no matter how much bourgeois mediocrity you eject
> from your morality, no? And I guess burnt out philosophers with mental
> health issues will be domestic issues, too, even if they were once supermen?
> >>>>
> >>>> -- rec --
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:04 AM Marcus Daniels <
> marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> "What do I think the saving remnant will be? I imagine people
> who lost all the epigenetic marks associated with domestication, and took
> on hormone profiles more like chimps. Or “born this way” to PTSD."
> >>>>
> >>>> In stories like Elysium, the saving remnant survives. Why
> doesn't popular science fiction consider the future in which only Elysium
> endures? We have lots of experience on earth making sure that
> communities are partitioned by socioeconomic status. All of the saving
> remnants I see around here are homeless or hovering near death due to use
> of heroin and fentanyl. The deer, however, happily munch on my front yard
> plants.
> >>>>
> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:
> friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
> >>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 7:27 AM
> >>>> To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> >>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> >>>>
> >>>> "Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think
> first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might even
> be true for the first-nationers, since they are also from a milder time by
> a lot than a large extinction."
> >>>>
> >>>> IDK, man. Are wild animals different from us in any significant
> way? Are they actually never lazy, never unvigilant, etc? Or, perhaps, is
> the attribution of vigilance (and hence never unvigilance) an illusion born
> of othering? A standard whipping post for me is this "Are you a cat person
> or a dog person" cocktail party ice breaker. Admitting the false dichotomy,
> dog people tend to think of cats as non-social, selfish, blahblah. Cat
> people tend to think of dogs as slobbery, vapid, etc. It's complete
> nonsense born of arbitrary delusions.
> >>>>
> >>>> But of course, there is something to be said of the built
> environment. It would be difficult for a human reared in a city to navigate
> the Mongolian desert. But is that difference any greater than plopping a
> city dweller 13,000 years in the past? Are office or political games
> significantly different from the "games" wild babies play under the
> vigilant eye of their den mother? Yeah, I know. I'm putting too much weight
> on "significant". Obviously, everything's different from everything else.
> (I regret not being able to engage more with Jon's exploration of Deleuze.)
> But my conservatism tells me that objective othering would rely solely on
> coherent traits, fingers vs. claws, hair vs. fur, cortex or no cortex. A
> human now would be insignificantly different from a human then. If the
> apocalypse doesn't transform us into something other than human, whatever
> is rebuilt will be strikingly similar to what we have now.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 5/28/23 11:29, David Eric Smith wrote:
> >>>> > I’m not sure elitist, Steve,
> >>>> >
> >>>> > That’s one bad habit that I don’t think they have.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > More along the line, I suspect, of “out of ordinary people who
> mostly get mowed down, here and there will be some pockets that started to
> pay attention and got lucky enough to have time to make a culture of it, of
> sorts”
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Wes Jackson likes the term “saving remnant”.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > I happen to be in Sweden just now, and it has me thinking about
> sci-fi futures, ad also Nietzsche’s “last man” etc.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Also on this theme is the very interesting SFI lecture “living
> with distrust”, which signals things I have seen (Ernst Fehr?) and others
> say about the Ache and Machiguenga and other groups.
> >>>> >
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Take any wild animal, and contemplate just how _different_ they
> are from us. Never lazy. Never un-vigilant. Or read Jonathan Shay’s
> Achilles in Vietnam.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Suppose all the people who remain have survived only because
> they are that. Unwind not only the past 70 years of developed-world
> tranquility, but the history of human domestication since at least the
> younger dryas. Maybe a lot longer ago than that.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > What is it like to have your Time Machine and go spend a
> weekend with those guys in their home? Jared Diamond would be jealous.
> Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think
> first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might even
> be true for the first-nationers, since they are also from a milder time by
> a lot than a large extinction.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > I wish I had the imagination to be interesting. It would be
> invigorating to read someone who could really imagine a different world,
> and a different us, and take you there in some convincing way.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Eric
> >>>> >
> >>>> >
> >>>> >> On May 28, 2023, at 6:55 PM, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> Eric -
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> Thanks for passing this link around here. I suspect most
> here have the background to appreciate/parse this < insert Steve Martin's
> "hear me now and believe me later" SNL skit> but maybe not an "affordance
> to know" the more acute implications of it.
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> One of the things I find (most) interesting in the RGND
> rhetoric is
> >>>> >> their (appropriate) invocation of Complex Systems ideas as
> well as
> >>>> >> the convergence of human consciousness (mostly from a
> neuroscience
> >>>> >> perspective) and the complex systems which are the
> >>>> >> techno-social-economic systems that are our energo-materio
> culture
> >>>> >> which is the engine that is spinning the earth-systems out of
> the
> >>>> >> orbits they were in pre-anthropocene (150 or 15000 years?)
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> I may be reading them wrong, but this feels like "yet another"
> elitist trope, this time on (nanotech?) steroids:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> /In short, we think it’s probable that MTI civilization
> will
> >>>> >> collapse catastrophically but that pockets of people with a
> rising
> >>>> >> level of consciousness and awareness of our eco-predicament
> will
> >>>> >> survive and act as the seeders of a new world.///
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> I particularly appreciated your pithy observation:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> /But here, we can maybe somehow combine the capitalists
> and the
> >>>> >> GNDers. The concentration in the rate and provision of
> services, and
> >>>> >> of the ownership of the proceeds by whoever the rulers turn
> out to
> >>>> >> be, leaves the rest of us free to die off in peace, and not
> carry on
> >>>> >> the guilt of being ecological criminals. It’s a win-win./
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> /
> >>>> >> /
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> Thanks to Sabine (as Cassandra) and Eric and Marcus for
> raising this to my attention... queing it up to provide background for my
> read lead me to her Collective Stupidity episode <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25kqobiv4ng <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25kqobiv4ng>>.
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> I am left wondering if/how LLMs reflect/relate to
> Wisdom/Stupidity of Crowds? Seems like LLMs are literally the
> encapsulation of collective knowledge.
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> Sabine's invocation of "Information Cascades" was interesting
> in contrast with entrainment and canalization. Will LLMs in some way help
> us avoid these short-circuits/shunts? Or aggravate them?
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> - Steve
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> On 5/28/23 2:46 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> >>>> >>> This comment leads to an interesting angle that I haven’t
> heard.
> >>>> >>> Bill Rees, whom you can find here:
> >>>> >>> <d8f080_78c1ab7b00b045ff9bbc01a273b00173~mv2.jpg>
> >>>> >>> Home | The REAL Green New Deal Project
> >>>> >>> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org>
> >>>> >>>
> %2f&c=E,1,s4xLfGynLIjkrUt9NbN7gTjzG9OOoaJe64vBX3p4819H6jFz9AJSSe-qv9
> >>>> >>> yDN4qwXF8gSayAREexT0axFnHBthp_EmNYm91Bl5Edsist24GG&typo=1>
> >>>> >>> realgnd.org <http://realgnd.org>
> >>>> >>> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org>
> >>>> >>>
> %2f&c=E,1,mLU-zLi9KLRqdV1LCSsLf4xAqRPWhhLSvzK0ajNxs-Bl31f_tDo3AuTO8F
> >>>> >>>
> ftJArhBwcEpVAtKd58f8Nn8HWN8QWG-poN1K4CsHllfzctVyYuePFkCMo,&typo=1>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org>
> >>>> >>>
> %2f&c=E,1,ui2uypSQ13uMOEz7hzM4YulUakJ2dduLZEW4fMauG5gh85fLSDmPC9mu3s
> >>>> >>>
> aCYT5TA1zSp3f4E7hrdi7Iu-Yxbt88L44PzeI9TxTtDQBN6mNsS-h87nJxhCE,&typo=
> >>>> >>> 1> writes numerous papers about how 90% of us need to die, or
> that
> >>>> >>> this is just what will happen whether we articulate such a
> need or not. I won’t go so far as to say that Rees “wants” 90% of us to
> die (see the smiling grandfatherly bearded ecologist photo in the pages),
> but after a long life of writing Jeremiads and not seeing the world change
> its ways, he seems so defeated by frustration that I read in him a deep and
> now constitutive misanthropy.
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> (btw: the Real GND website is best read while listening to
> Sabine
> >>>> >>> Hossenfelder’s song My Name is Cassandra, Prophet of the Dark.
> >>>> >>> Thanks Marcus for making me aware of her oeuvre, I had never
> noticed
> >>>> >>> it.)
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> Usually, the problem with the bait-and-switch of new
> technologies is “look, it will save so much labor we will all have leisure
> to be creative while still having comfortable levels of consumption”, when
> what actually happens is classic Marx: the few who can enclose the new
> services, either because they are exclusive or just through
> market-gravitational effects, now own an even larger sector of all income,
> and the expanding remnant is made increasingly desperate.
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> But here, we can maybe somehow combine the capitalists and
> the GNDers. The concentration in the rate and provision of services, and
> of the ownership of the proceeds by whoever the rulers turn out to be,
> leaves the rest of us free to die off in peace, and not carry on the guilt
> of being ecological criminals. It’s a win-win.
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> I worry that that story is probably incomplete, and maybe
> thereby wrong. The concentrating advantage of advanced autocomplete
> services might only be a transient while our current stock of primary
> knowledge is “enough” and “not fully mined”. Maybe all the inefficient
> activity of ordinary people is somehow a diffuse source that actually
> expands the primary base. Certainly my impression of ecological
> organizations is that, below any small population of charismatic megafauna,
> there is a whole pyramid that goes down to an astonishing number of
> nitrogen-fixer bacteria.
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> But I don’t know, what organizations are necessary by
> physical, mathematical, and biological laws, and which might be possible
> that we just haven’t ever seen before.
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>> Eric
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>>> On May 28, 2023, at 7:27 AM, Marcus Daniels <
> marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> >>>> >>>>
> >>>> >>>> Looking at the recent rapid release of open source LLM
> systems like Falcon and Mosaic ML, Llama, etc. there is more going-on than
> titans like Microsoft, and Google battling it out with giant closed
> systems. These are human know-how crystalized into open-source
> deliverables. Why not share knowledge representations in this way?
> Consider the cost and time that goes into medical or legal training.
> Sure the energy requirements of digital systems are high, but so are the
> energy expenditures of a planet full of humans.
> >>>> >>>>
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> >>>> >>>> ----------------------------------------------------
> >>>> >>>> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:
> friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Steve Smith
> >>>> >>>> <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> *Sent:*Friday,
> May 26, 2023 2:06 PM
> >>>> >>>> *To:*friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com><
> friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> >>>> >>>> *Subject:*Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> >>>> >>>>
> >>>> >>>>> My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they
> think babies are disgusting. I hope they change their minds. In any case,
> what does a shortage of babies have to do with AI?
> >>>> >>>> Babies *are* (can be) disgusting, but same for puppies,
> kitties, and garden-soil from the right (wrong) perspective!
> >>>> >>>> Maybe the point is "nobody left for the AI overlords to lord
> over" ?
> >>>> >>>> I think the key is "existential threat"... I didn't look
> for Schmidt's statement anywhere, so I'm just speculating that maybe he's
> doing a mild echo of Musk's idea that a collapsing (first) world population
> is somehow a *bigger* existential threat?
> >>>> >>>> With my techhead hat on I am inclined to imagine that AI
> will help me (well, not ME anymore, but people vaguely like who I once
> thought I was or wanted to be) solve micro-techonomic problems like the
> ones that lead to Teflon(tm) and Velcro(tm) and higher
> density/faster-charge EV batteries, and higher density/dynamic range
> pixel-displays, and neural lace to wire (grow?) into my brain/ganglia, and
> microbes that can convert moon/mars-dust to Soylent/Huel/Water/??? etc.
> >>>> >>>> My PsychoHistory hatted self (Asimov - Foundation <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)>>and
> thenon-fictional variant <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory#:~:text=Psychohistory%20is%20an%20amalgam%20of,stated%20intention%20and%20actual%20behavior
> <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory#:~:text=Psychohistory%20is%20an%20amalgam%20of,stated%20intention%20and%20actual%20behavior>.>)
> is inclined to imagine that AI *can* help with the "big problems", the ones
> nominally too large, too interdisciplinarian, too obtuse, too "wycked" (In
> Complexity Science jargon), possibly too counter-intuitive for most (any?)
> human or group of humans to grasp.
> >>>> >>>> My Ned Ludd (very tight by definition?) hat has me thinking
> more down the rabbit holes of worst-case scenarios where all the arrogant,
> narcissistic @$$h0ii3z of the world (starting at the top with those whose
> names start with Pu Tr Be Zu Mu(r/s) Ne De ... and staggering down the
> hierarchy of potency and scope to most of us here most of the time) think
> they "know what is best" and put their resources to using the AI lever to
> "make it so"...
> >>>> >>>> Even (especially) me, I constantly imagine that "if they
> made ME King" (or to the point, if *I* was the/wormtongue/in the AI
> Overlord's ear) that I would "make the world safe and happy for everyone,
> ever after with no unintended consequences or unpleasant side effects".
> >>>> >>>> One *might* guess that the smartest thinkers in the most
> grounded, thoughtful, gentle think-tanks (e.g. in a Tibetan Lamasary or
> the "Club of Rome" or SIPRI or CESR or the Justice League of America or the
> people who task "jewish space lasers" or ??? ) would be practicing their
> AI-whispering skills right now. Maybe tasking Marcus' Quantum Computer with
> "the hard problem of universal consciousness"?
> >>>> >>>>
> >>>> >>>> An up-to-date version of Asimov's9 Billion Names of God <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God>>?
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>> ---
> >>>> >>>>> Frank C. Wimberly
> >>>> >>>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> >>>> >>>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>> 505 670-9918
> >>>> >>>>> Santa Fe, NM
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>> On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org
> <mailto:rec at elf.org> <mailto:rec at elf.org <mailto:rec at elf.org>>> wrote:
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>> Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune
> today. It's headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what
> will save it from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says". The
> headline is accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric. Nice try,
> Google, but you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole.
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>> Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the
> rationality of disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years
> ago in Catalan. The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is
> available in English translation and as an ebook onoverdrive.com <
> http://onoverdrive.com> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2foverdrive.com&c=E,1,qiLuQHPdYM-73PUnxLjrSTzI76V8rfL6yb0_zHcdufFpFa1_kCTZkOyfYIh_N_0ysaWtjxXmwlL7kj8mmwGK2wfSP_01M-8QKT_yUEwBhHUL1Wuk-x_ACQBsspQ,&typo=1
> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2foverdrive.com&c=E,1,qiLuQHPdYM-73PUnxLjrSTzI76V8rfL6yb0_zHcdufFpFa1_kCTZkOyfYIh_N_0ysaWtjxXmwlL7kj8mmwGK2wfSP_01M-8QKT_yUEwBhHUL1Wuk-x_ACQBsspQ,&typo=1>>at
> your local library. The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to
> check on his mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval
> monastery high in the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with
> stories while awaiting the resolution of the first war
> >>>> of entertainment. Lots of stories about themselves and their
> friends and acquaintances.
> >>>> >>>>>
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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