[FRIAM] Enlightened Self Interest: was Help for texas

[Marcus Daniels]

Steve writes:


"In the thread I bent/hijacked here, I would cynically claim that Marcus was trying to find relief in some of these paradoxes by gerrymandering "selfness"...  and Glen holding the line on a more holistic view of systems."


I do gerrymander my definition of worthwhile ideas around the universe of ideas that I know about.   I don't see why that is a cynical interpretation.   For example, I always vote, as far as seems winnable, to the left.   I don't really have any selfish motive for that.   I have various sorts of insurance and the kind of redistribution of wealth I would get behind mostly would never benefit me in any material way.  It might even put me at a disadvantage.   Of course, like anyone, my situation could change and I suppose one could argue I'm advocating collective funding for a vague sort of government insurance policy -- just for me!    Well, if you must see things this way, guilty-as-charged!


As far as out driving our headlights, yes please.  That's all there is, in the end:  Figuring stuff out.   Everything else is just marking time.


Marcus

________________________________
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2017 1:28:41 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Enlightened Self Interest: was Help for texas


Glen/Marcus/et alia -

I have of late, been trying to understand a little more deeply the concept of "Enlightened Self Interest", mostly as it applies to me personally, but by extension how it applies to my identity groups (family, neighbors, region, culture, nation, species, sapients-at-large, life-that-plays, life in all it's forms, pan-conscious matter, et/ad, cet/naus).

In Out of My Life and Thought Schweitzer wrote:

The most immediate fact of man’s consciousness is the assertion "I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live"

— Albert Schweitzer
I find this particular observation/assertion by Schweitzer nicely poetic in it's self-referentiality, but also quite apt toward my apprehension of "what is life?" and just how far must/might I extend my "self-interest" to be properly enlightened.

Since the beginning of the Holocene (by definition), we humans have been adapting our environment to our (presumed) liking at a monotonically increasing (and concave up if not precisely geometric nor exponential?) rate.   I'm not needing to invoke Singularian concepts to suggest that we are (and have been for some time) out-driving our headlights.   For all of our abilities in predictive science and constructive engineering, there are always "unintended consequences".   Even in a clockwork universe, we must live with "the halting problem" whence the only way to know for sure how things are going to turn out is to watch them evolve into their fullness over time.

It is not surprising (to me) that at every turn our "best ideas" turn out to have "hidden gotchas".... that building a global civilization predicated on a constant expansion of resource exploitation (first forests and prairies, then clean water sources, then coal, oil, and gas deposits) eventually hits a limit.   Hubbert's "Peak Oil"<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil> didn't even consider (or was aware of?) the consequences of greenhouse gas buildup and climate change.   Hubbert's predictions seem to have borne out pretty well in the US until we figured out "hydraulic fracturing" (see upturn in green line)
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Hubbert_Upper-Bound_Peak_1956.png/220px-Hubbert_Upper-Bound_Peak_1956.png]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil>

It is also not surprising (to me) that Free Markets and Capitalism and even Representative Democracy are loaded with unintended consequences and that we are very naturally faced with the possibility that they are fundamentally flawed in ways we might only be starting to understand.   I'm not advocating a return to *earlier* flawed systems (e.g. autocratic/fuedal/fascist/???) but rather a *continued* reflection and refinement on WHAT MEANS "enlightened"?  And what are the boundaries of "self".

In the thread I bent/hijacked here, I would cynically claim that Marcus was trying to find relief in some of these paradoxes by gerrymandering "selfness"...  and Glen holding the line on a more holistic view of systems.

A great deal of our problems in the world seem to arise out of shifting definitions of "self".  The populism in the first world that recently exhibits as xenophobia, whitelash, etc.  is precisely that.     I think it is built into us as humans/mammals/vertebrates/life-itself to be self-centered, to look after our own personal well-being before we look to that of others.   Our tribal/clan dunbar-number-scale affinities may cause us to be locally altruistic at times and look after family/friends/neighbors/tribe before ourselves, but beyond that our instincts are xenophobic.   It takes more careful thought to extend one's enlightenment very far I suspect.

In this globally connected world we have built (it has always been a single whole, but with transportation and communication, we have short-circuited a lot of the existing feedback loops in "nature" with our own) it is likely that our instincts aren't even close to being on-mark.   At best, we need to be very careful (IMO) at how we define "self" as we pursue "enlightened self-interest".    We have collectively shown a great amount of disregard for the subjects of our exploitation and colonization over the centuries, and in some cases, that is coming back to bite us hard with terrorism, but maybe more significantly in the form of mass refugee movements.    In a yet-larger scope, our abuses/exploitation of other species and even the very geology of the planet have lead to unintended consequences (local diversification and ecological collapses, and now global climate change),  yet one common response is to just "push harder".

Perhaps that is all we are geared to do...   if something isn't working... push harder?    History suggests that this (almost) works for (a subset of) the population which survives today.   Maybe there will be a Muskian civilization on Mars or in the Asteroid Belt or even the Moon or LEO space habitats.  Maybe there will be bubbled cities on the ocean floor or underground or even on the surface, where the ultimate in "gated communities" survive.   And some vestigal collapsed ecosystem which, if our lucky bubble-people can leave it alone will return to some kind of robust and diverse equilibrium over some (long by human attention standards) time.

Looking more closely for the first time at Carbon Footprints and per-Capita budgets... I'm appalled to realize that the USA and the first world in general are at 10-20x what is considered sustainable for the planet and that even the least developed (China/India) are over the limit and heading toward our standard as fast as possible.

Here is a very accessible (and I hope not too naive or inaccurate) resource that provides an interesting summary:
    http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/carbon-targets-for-your-footprint

with a 4 ton footprint (1/4 our average but 4x what might be needed) we see estimates like:


Housing: 1.04 t = 1500 kWh of US grid electricity

Travel: 0.94 t = 2000 miles driving at 20 MPG

Food: 1.1 t = a mostly vegan diet with limited food waste

Products: 0.51 t = $1000 worth of products

Services: 0.4 t = $2000 worth of services

Which only a truly homeless person today can beat by much?   Maybe the demi-wealthy (read most of us here, even if you think you aren't) can game this a little by installing PV on our homes, replace our ICE vehicles with EVs (hybrids in the interim) that double or quadruple our vehicular travel range, grow some of our own food (I think most of the 1.1 t is commercial farming techniques and transportation) and pick and choose the products and services we feel we need to match our ethical ideals.


I've rambled enough here...

Carry on,
 - Steve




On 9/10/17 12:05 PM, ┣glen┫ wrote:

On 09/10/2017 10:12 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:


It is not necessarily the case that `we' are a whole and must look after one another.  The population can be partitioned into compartmentalized subsets.



You're conflating willing payment with unforeseen consequences.  When we don't look after one another purposefully, we end up "looking after one another" in the form of systemic damage to the whole system.  So, while you're right that we don't have to pay attention, purposefully, to risk pools, the costs will always be present.  By paying attention to it, the argument goes, we lessen the overall damage, at the cost of the "redistribution wealth" the right wingers are so afraid of.

So, you're wrong in the naive assertion.  It is not merely necessary, it is THE CASE that we are a whole and always "look after one another", in the end.  The question is about when to do the looking ... before or after bad things happen.



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