[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

Hi Marcus,

All good thoughts.  Thanks!  Just a few things hopefully that can
constructively add to the discussion ...

There is research in this area.


The kind of "rebooting" I am thinking about in this context would not be
chemically or surgically induced.  It would be a Hebbian-oriented *mental
process *by way of "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism
or the desired state.  In a manner of speaking this is a process of
consciously rewiting the brain through a processs of trial and error and
observing how such habitualed thoughts and behavior work as positive
feedback loops to an individual's happiness and as reflected in those in
his social circle. It not a brainwashing or fooling one's self.  It doesn't
result in an army of Jason Bourne types.  It is conscious and logical.
It's the beginning of wisdom.  Or, is it just a fool's errand? Not easy.
Not something I have achieved. But I do think it is possible.  I have a few
more years yet ... and then I die. 😕  It does beg the question, "What's
the point if this can't be perkolated up to the level of society?"  I
suppose we need to ask a devoted Buddhist this same question.

And, so my question is how this can work at the level of a society, beyond
the individual level. An example, perhaps but not sure, is the societal
transformation of profit-oriented, capitalist or stockholder-owned
enterprises into employeed-owned cooperatives. It creates a very different
kind of economy, still very much market oriented.  If habituated, it may
become obvious that this could be a better way. ESOPs under ERISA were an
attempt at this but were abused by the capitalists to gain the tax breaks
provided by a government that saw the wisdom in this. I won't quote Ronald
Reagan again here ... enough said. Many employees in thos ESOPs have asked,
"What's the point?"

With respect to the Thiel, Parrish thing, the answer to a better
society--or even a better lif--will not be to have everyone, or even just
those who can afford it, live longer.  The problem is that they drag their
crappy minds along with them. Living longer does not change the animal. The
same is true with transhumanism.  What gets uploaded?  The same crappy
minds.  Genetic engineering isn't going to get us there either, IMHO. We
don't know where to locate the genes or how to comfigure the so called Hox
circuits to get *better *brains or minds.  Again, better for whom?  Then
there's the Blank Slate debate.  Cue Steven Pinker ...

This "uploading" *is* all kind of a fools errand, if you resonate with the
idea of embodied cognition [again George Lakoff and especially Anthony
Chemero and his Radical Embodied Cognitive Science].  As it turns out, if
you follow this stuff, we can't separate the mind from the body or the body
from the world.  So forget uploading your minds into immortal robotic
contraptions. BTW, that *Nautilus *article I linked on consciousness being
composed of atoms is another look at this. Good luck to Thiel and Parrish.
IMHO, we need to value the lives we have now and try to impriove them while
we have our time in the sun ...

Cheers


On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> *< *In a sense, conscious evolution is a kind of rebooting of a conscious
> organism with a new "morality" program that has the purpose of changing the
> nature of that organism *more *toward altruism and *less *toward
> self-interest, kind of resetting the initial conditions built into our DNA,
> so to speak ... superseding the animal. >
>
>
>
> There is research in this area.
>
>
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763614/
>
>
>
> “Pathological anxiety is thought to reflect a maladaptive state
> characterized by exaggerated fear mismatched with actual environmental
> stimuli.”
>
>
>
> Special case: economic anxiety.
>
>
>
> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-
> where-the-economy-is-weaker/
>
>
>
> “Routine jobs are often defined as those that involve tasks that can be
> accomplished by following explicit rules
> <http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/alm-skillcontent-qje.pdf>.
> A standard definition <http://www.nber.org/papers/w18334.pdf> of routine
> jobs includes manufacturing and other goods-related occupations, as well as
> administrative, clerical and sales occupations; nonroutine jobs include
> professional, managerial and service occupations. For this post, we
> included farming-related occupations in routine jobs since the BLS
> projects <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.nr0.htm> employment
> declines in those occupations over the next decade. The correlation between
> Trump support and the share of jobs that are routine by this definition was
> 0.65.”
>
>
>
> Trump piled on copious amounts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and
> pathological anxiety emerges.
>
>
>
> “So, it's kind of changing the probabilities of the social game, like we
> are discussing in this thread, but on an individual level. On the
> individual level, this is indeed possible by way of Hebbian learning, which
> itself is possible by way of the plasticity of the brain, its
> neural network, so to speak. BUT, how can this be done on the level of a
> society?”
>
>
>
> As super-rich people like Peter Thiel age, I expect he (and others like
> him) will start looking at actually applying gene therapy to himself for
> life extension.   (Thiel is already looking into vampirism.) Elizabeth
> Parrish
> <http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2016/08/01/did-a-biotech-ceo-reverse-her-own-aging-process-maybe/>
> already did apply gene therapy on herself.  With full genome sequencing
> getting cheap and quantum computers able to perform high dimensional
> discrete optimization, I expect multi-SNP signatures will be found for
> improved short and long term memory, even intelligence.   The required
> data, technology, and biological knowledge will likely soon converge.
> When it does, there will be strong economic motives -- the same kind of
> motives that cause parents to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars
> for prep schools and colleges.  These interventions will have to be
> regulated, but then we are in position to weed-out anxiety and personality
> disorders on the germline and to bless various `safe’ enhancements, much
> like vaccines are used routinely on children.   Sure, people will freak out
> about this, but if it extends capabilities or lifespans, it better be done
> in the public interest and not just be confined to making the rich
> richer.   Imagine if the coastal populations bumped their IQs by 10 points.
>
>
>
> “It seems like it needs to be more bottom-up.”
>
>
>
> One way is by making the individual able to learn faster and be more
> adaptive.
>
>
>
> Marcus
>
>
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