[FRIAM] /Topic Latent in: Latent Topics was: enough sleep?

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus -
> Glen writes:
>
> "What mechanism is responsible for these patterns of expectation, given (what seems to me) a co-evolutionary milieu far from equilibrium?  Is it simply Hebbian/reinforcement learning, an embodied type of (false) induction?  I'm skeptical because of your (Steve) question about the unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in modeling the world. Your mention of negentropy in this thread seems spot on."
>
> Parents, educators, religious and political leaders and prison guards all lower the dimensionality of the space of the possible.   To confront a complex world without a map or a rule book is a distraction and a drain.  I  doubt many people take a different route to work every day just for the fun of it.   Likewise most people don't change their friends or their church every week.    I could go to several different coffee shops but I really just go to one per vicinity.   I could go to dozens of cultural events, some where I would blend-in and others where I would not. 
I think this helps resolve my difficulty with this in my last post.   It
seems like an elaboration of "constraint provides form"?
>   Let a hundred flowers blossom but I'll have my Benadryl tablets nearby.  
>
> People want to believe their life and tribe is worth something.   To doubt that is to doubt every thought and action.   (Which they should do, but simply cannot.)

Both points nicely profound.  I think the "scoping of identity" is the
core issue in how well this plays and how well it plays among different
groups. 

The admonition that liberals engage too much in "identity politics" is
probably an exposure of this difference.  Taking up the cause of those
who are *superficially* different from me in *similar ways* is one way
for me to expand my scope of identity and empathy.   Speaking/thinking
of my black/brown/yellow/red brothers/sisters *as* brothers and sisters 
is just a matter of expanding my sense of self-concern to include a
broader set, along with their (relatively) unique set of issues.   Is
the complement (identifying groups so as to anti-identify?) always a
negative, xenophobic response?  Is there anything like common
ground/compromise/alternative perspective to unite those in each camp?

- Steve