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<p>I am appreciating Russ's inlining observations/questions of
Glen's 5points.</p>
<p>Supernatural: <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think Russ's and DaveW's points about the role of the
Super/Supra Natural in any human project is important and may
well be the fulcrum that balances our never-ending
Metaphor-Flogging. I'm still on the other side of the fulcrum
from Glen (as I understand it) but I feel like all of that is
getting more clear as we stir the already muddy water (yay for
floculants!)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Constraints: <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Two "truisms" I operate by: <br>
</p>
<p>1) Constraint Provides Form; <br>
</p>
<p>2) When a problem seems intractable, add another degree of
freedom (e.g. level of indirection)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Engineering vs Evolution:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>As technophiles (Engineers, aspiring Engineers, latent
Engineers) it is natural for us to hold up Engineering as the
Ultimate and in fact often to believe that that is our ONLY
toolkit.</li>
<li>As complexicists (practicing, groupie, aspirant, acolyte,
etc.) we have a more sophisticated toolkit which "adds a level
of indirection" which reduces in some sense to "attempting to
design the elements in a complex-adaptive-system" and
(perhaps) apply the Scientific Method in that context.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>Class:</p>
<blockquote>Class is a cultural construct. We can (maybe)
eliminate it, or at least it's overt indicators. As Glen
gestures at, gradients of ability and relevance of abilities exist
in any cultural context. We can choose to arrange for these
gradients to be enhanced or suppressed. If "the Rich get Richer"
is a truism when expressed in terms of any rational conception of
"money", we can *still* change the *rate-at-which* the
Rich-get-Richer and/or the Asymptote of Wealth that constrains
that truism. (e.g. I believe in the Mondragon Communities Wages
are constrained to remain under 3:1).<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Structure-at-all-scales: "The spectral signature of
organizational size..." nature, etc. Hear Hear! If we *must*
engineer everything from the top-down then we should *at-least*
inspect the spectral signature in several dimensions to see if it
even begins to approach natural systems which *might* be
recognizeable similar enough to compare (if not actually
inspire). Is Biomimicry an Engineering Discipline or Tool
yet? I'll have to look back into the publishing record and see
if/when it might have become more than a neologism.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Carry On,</p>
<p> - Steve<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/10/21 1:58 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a6ede94f-a902-bf17-7e0a-314b2db4ea55@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
On 5/10/21 12:10 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
</pre>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
• civilization is already a cooperative enterprise, it's just a matter of cooperation's extent/ubiquity
Agree. That's one of the reasons Trump's norm-breaking was so destructive.
• there's nothing supernatural, so all solutions have to be built on science
Agree there is no supernatural. I don't see that implies that "all solutions have to be built on science." Most of our norms are not science-based.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
That's a reasonable point, as was Dave's w.r.t. belief in the supernatural being an encoding for norms. But norms aren't good enough. What's needed is more like what EricS invoked way back when in the context of economic mobility. We need an (maybe more than a few) error correcting mechanisms for when the norms are shown inadequate or obsolete. And it seems to me that scientific knowledge is the most stable kind of knowledge. Not "stable" in the sense of never changing, but stable in the sense of being *founded* ... on solid ground. A constitution is pretty good. But, again, our current problems with "originalism" and "living document"-ism show explicitly how that can fail.
</pre>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> • innovation, technology, culture, etc. are limited only by nature; so in principle the things we build (including governments) can be as big and complex as the natural world
Is this controversial?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Yes. On the one hand, there are credible arguments that the technology "stack", as it were, increases degrees of freedom versus decreases degrees of freedom. So, perhaps in the vein of von Hayek (and Pieter), any bureaucracy we put in place might be, necessarily, a limiting structure rather than a freeing structure. It would be arrogant to assume an engineered structure does a better job at some objective than a "natural" structure. This principle takes the stance that our structures can increase the degrees of freedom.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> • class is a cultural construct; we create it; hence we can eliminate it
Is this controversial?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Yes. There is a significant number of us who believe in meritocracy, where poverty can be an *indicator* for something you deserve ... even to the extent that some people seem to believe you might have done that in a *past life* or somesuch nonsense. This principle attempts a kind of "blank slate" or "universally capable" conception of initial conditions. The principle isn't well-worded, though, like the rest of these. It partly implies that, e.g., if you're born blind, the world and our society are complex enough so that you can be just as, if not more, productive and meritorious as a sighted person.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> • the spectral signature of organization sizes is present in nature and should be mirrored in society (e.g. power laws for org sizes, small-world networks, etc)
Not sure what you mean by this. If you mean that it's important to be aware of advances in our understanding of complex organizations, I certainly agree.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Yeah, I don't like the wording of that, either. What I'm going for is a generalization of "to each according to need, from each according to ability", which I don't like at all. I'd like to formulate more like the definition of an "ecology", where the waste of one is the food for another ... or along the lines of the eukaryotic perspective on trees Roger forwarded.
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