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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:e0b5394e-bb77-48fc-a646-74868b6e03c8@gmail.com"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/shrinking-economies-dont-innovate">https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/shrinking-economies-dont-innovate</a>
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<p>I am fond of this style of (counter)thinking to the
growth/innovation topic:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a
href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Economics for the Future: Beyond
the Superorganism</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It doesn't really argue the point (natalism and other
quantitative measures of growth?) directly but perhaps transcends
it?</p>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:e0b5394e-bb77-48fc-a646-74868b6e03c8@gmail.com">There's
something about this rhetoric that seems to rely on hierarchical
separation, the separability of levels.</blockquote>
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<p>Also, I'm interested in an expanded/continued discussion about
the role of "levels" and "hierarchy" if anyone else will take up
the task with you/us... <br>
</p>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:e0b5394e-bb77-48fc-a646-74868b6e03c8@gmail.com">
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:e0b5394e-bb77-48fc-a646-74868b6e03c8@gmail.com"> I mean,
obviously, if we draw a hard boundary around "innovation" such
that it only contains things we human organisms care about or
understand, then sure. Innovation halts/slows with birth rate. But
isn't, say, the evolution of our gut biome also "innovative"? Or
totally sans-human, isn't most of earth's history a story of
innovation? What is it about the human-particular level of
(primarily cultural) innovation that makes it so special? If I'm
cynical, it's just navel gazing.
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<br>
But if I'm generous, there's something inherently computational
(or universal, cognitive, translational, or Platonic) about the
kind of innovation Hanson's talking about. I guess it's a
longtermist or transhumanist way of thinking ... that Our
innovations can possibly be stored and percolated more so than the
modest, tightly bound to circumstances, innovations of our less
computational sibling species. I don't buy it. But I'd like to be
able to make the argument anyway.
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<p>My current favorite out-of-my-league thinker about some of these
abstractions is <a
href="https://axispraxis.wordpress.com/2020/08/25/intrinsic-incompleteness-deacon-on-ententional-processes/">Terrence
Deacon</a> (referenced here often) who seems to play both sides
of the fence, implying on one hand that <i>Hierarchy</i> and <i>Levels
of Organization</i> are intrinsic to evolving Complex Adaptive
Systems, yet also coins the somewhat mystical term <i>"Absential"
</i>which might be nothing more than a fancy word for "system
constraints and boundaries" built into the very idea of self/other
(which I know you also often question which is probably highly
related). Another fancy word I've come to like is <i>"Ententional"</i>
which combines the ideas of what something is "about" with what it
is "for".<br>
</p>
<p>This leads me around to Deacon's "Teleodynamics" which might be
obliquely related to your invocation recently of a physics
"Lagrangian vs Eulerian" rather than the Anthropological "Emic vs
Etic" axis of understanding first-third person,
reductionist-holistic, nominal-real perspectives? This also
leads me back around to the (nearly) ineffable discussion of
Stationary Action revisited from time to time here?</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary-action_principle#Disputes_about_possible_teleological_aspects"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary-action_principle#Disputes_about_possible_teleological_aspects</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also worth noting that this is an instrumental part of Ted
Chiang's <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life">Story of
Your Life</a> (2000 novella which was made into the movie
Arrival which I felt obscured some of the best points made in the
story).</p>
<p>It is possible that I channel his Alien Heptapods with my
frequent (ab)use of <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_embedding">linguistic
center embedding</a> and other (awkward?) constructions?</p>
<p><i>I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but
I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
meant.</i></p>
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