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<p><br>
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<blockquote>
<p>Hope: "<i>doing the right thing, no matter how you think it
will turn out</i>"</p>
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<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/8/23 2:21 PM, Marcus Daniels
wrote:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I would
center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction.
If value is about a set of lived experiences, is it a
detached reflection on something special that was
discovered, or more because of membership in that ecology –
because of an investment?<br>
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about
discoveries and to move on to making other discoveries.
Generally attaching to one value system means not attaching
to another value system. For example, adopting the value
of tolerance logically is at odds with policing intolerance,
e.g., one Jewish neighbor remarked this morning he drove
past a home with a Hamas flag on it and was scared.
(Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing
tolerance.)<br>
<br>
It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things
that don’t work don’t have power. It is reasonable to be
skeptical about investment in ideas that may require years
or decades of investment and not result in a return.
Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist as
to why there could be a return is deconstruction not
devaluation.<br>
<br>
I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT
or Bannon and I don’t really get it. Democracy isn’t a
value system; it is a way to avoid (violent) conflict in a
pluralistic society. There’s a case to be made for the
merits of such societies, and a case to be made for limiting
violence. They should make those cases, not just throw out
a placeholder word like nihilism to judge the people who
don’t value those types of societies. (Apparently many
people in North America.)<br>
<br>
Marcus<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> on behalf of David Eric
Smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:desmith@santafe.edu"><desmith@santafe.edu></a><br>
<b>Date: </b>Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM<br>
<b>To: </b>The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Zang! I had
not made that connection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Hmmh.
What do I think? I seem to have viewed uninterpreted
models much as I view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in
the world for doing a certain job (in this case, a job of
perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor
there w.r.t. questions of nihilism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Where then
would I try to center nihilism? (It’s being a topic I
haven’t spent a lot of time on historically). Maybe if I
had to choose one phrase, it would be “the devaluation of
values”. Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is
old and standardized. Don’t know if it came from
Nietzsche or Weber, or is much older than either of them.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">How would
I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not
want to go into support of bombs? I think my current cast
of mind is that there is a large class of “discovered
thing”, meaning that they are not willed into existence,
but are brought into existence (if there is even any
bringing) through lived experience, and “noticed” after
the fact. Or maybe given in the ineffable from the start,
and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, the
rest of “the self”, and much else). It seems to me that
there is room for aesthetics to be given much more and
better attention than perhaps it has had in philosophy (or
whoever is in charge of this question). Aesthetics
certainly not being the only domain from which discovered
things can originate, but useful in that we can recognize
it as a source, but not have the impulse to conflate it
with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to
drift into.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Hmm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Eric<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">On
Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:marcus@snoutfarm.com"><marcus@snoutfarm.com></a> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt">Eric writes:<br>
<br>
“Bears on how many things make up the
machinery of nihilism, extending well beyond
relations I recognized as part of an
integration, though mentioning many things I
rail against in daily life.”</span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><br>
The willingness of physicists to use
uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum mechanics,
seems like nihilism to me. I don’t mean that in
a judgmental way, nor do I mean it in an
admiring way. On the other hand, there are many
people, I reckon most people, that provide their
beliefs as both explanations and
justifications. Bombs follow soon after.<br>
<br>
<br>
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Marcus</span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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