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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Or is it the </span>SSRIs?<span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><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 <friam-bounces@redfish.com> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp <pieters@randcontrols.co.za><br><b>Date: </b>Friday, June 6, 2025 at 10:07 PM<br><b>To: </b>The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com><br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [FRIAM] A deranged circle of hell<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Thank you, Steve.<br><br>I’ve been thinking... Do I really choose to have a positive outlook on life?<br><br>We’ve discussed free will before, and I’ve shared my thoughts. But recently I came across a few new ideas on the topic, and it got me wondering again.<br><br>What is free will, anyway? Honestly, I have no clue.<br><br>What I do know is this: over time, I’ve learned a few things that help me feel better. Not from any grand philosophy, just from reading, listening, watching others—and, well, trial and error.<br><br>One weird example: cold showers. They make me feel good. Not while I’m in them, obviously—that part’s awful. But afterward, I feel great. And then I do other useful things, like tackling boring tasks I’ve been avoiding.<br><br>So here's the question: when I take a cold shower, is that my free will at work? Or is it just my inner AI reacting to good reinforcement?<br><br>And if I do have free will when I choose to suffer under icy water... then does an AI trained to do hard things for rewards also have free will?<br><br>I’ll let you know once I figure it out. Probably from inside the next cold shower.<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'>On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 at 18:06, steve smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Pieter -<br>> Wow, that's quite a dark view of the future with the capitalists <br>> running the show!<br>><br>> I just want to repeat what I said before — nobody knows the future. <br>> And we also don’t know what will happen if we try different policies now.<br>><br>> Maybe I am living in a bubble, and maybe I’m totally wrong — but I’m <br>> honestly glad that my view of the future is still bright.<br>I will grant you that there is significant upside to being optimistic <br>and able to appreciate and hope for the future... it is difficult to <br>manifest something you can't imagine.<br><br>At times I'm the one chided for being optimistic. I think the phrase <br>was "hope in one hand and sh*t in the other and see which one fills up <br>first". The image was mildly sobering but it didn't make me any less <br>fundamentally optimistic in spite of my ability (propensity) to conjure <br>"worst case scenarios" with my frontal lobes tied behiind my back. It <br>is probably an addiction, the dopamine channels fueled by cynicism.<br><br>I take this crue here to be intrinsically technoUtopian, to have a bias <br>and live in confirmation bias around "every problem has a technical <br>solution". It is what took me into science and then diverted me into <br>more technological roles... the idea that I could outthink every <br>problem, preferably with a large crew of like minded folks nominally <br>working on the same problem and possibly with the economic might of the <br>US Science and Engineering budget to provide resources. At home I'm a <br>hopeful tinkerer who pats the device or the garden on the head every <br>time I have applied a little "common sense" to it and try to "hope" it <br>into returning to the homeostatic mode it was "designed" to operate <br>in. This works often enough that I still do it most of the time. I <br>rarely give up on things and throw them away. I tend to take over other <br>people's "lost causes" and try to outsmart the gremlins inside of them.<br><br>So my tendency to *piss in the punchbowl* around grand technological <br>solutions is probably at least half dopamine self-medication to make up <br>for the *bizarre* self-destructive behaviour of our government and <br>industry... especially that of the USA, notably throughout *my* lifetime <br>but acutely more numbskulled in the last 10...<br><br>In closing, I want to acknowledge the value of your positivity and my <br>own (ab)use of that as a foil to feed my addiction to technoCynicism.<br><br>- Steve<br><br>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></blockquote></div></div></body></html>