[FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

Wed Jan 22 13:04:32 EST 2020

Steve, 

Do you remember “feed the dinosaur”;  I think it was a Marxist trope of sixties. At least one person here argues that human extinction is one viable solution to our problem.   

I understand what an obtuse model, here, although I understand it because I substitute the word “opaque” for obtuse, so perhaps I don’t understand it.  In the extreme, it’s a model that we don’t understand any better than the process it models.  It seems to go back to my argument with Epstein <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/1/9.html>  who asserted that models are unconnected with explanations.  No, not THAT Epstein. 

Can somebody explain to me in Defrocked-english-major-language about parallax and expressibility?   Thanks,

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 9:33 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

Too much (IMO) of our contemporary (public and private?) discourse seems to be high on confirmation bias.   

The ensemble of possible futures (trajectories through?) has exploded (see Kauffman's "Adjacent Possible") both with the growth of technological complexity and with the shift in distribution of communication "distances" (both geospatial and network).   

Confirmation bias I will speculate (if not quite assert) is an important self-protective skill (where self is the individual and possibly collective ego).  

See, see!  I Tole ya!  

(hell in a handbasket OR heaven on a handcart, you pick)

There is a reason it exists and is so ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean it isn't  (yet another) delusion and likely harmful in the long run.  It might be a good way to "get you through the day" but I contend *really sucks* as a long-term thinking strategy.

I appreciate Pinker offering us up lots of anecdotes/factoids and a hopeful narrative to string them together.  I think they are a nice tonic (though not antidote) for murky dismal thinking (awfulizing can be it's own self-fulfilling thing)...   but at least one place he goes too far is to assume that HIS measures of "a good life" are actually universal and complete.   They probably do apply to him and to most/many on this list (middle-class +/- professionals far enough into their careers/lives to have some assets or at least momentum).

Stable Genius in Chief  insists that the "roaring economy" he's managed to pump up on massive environmental and social deregulation steroids and government-debt fueled injections (via huge tax cuts for both wealthy and corporate players in the stock market) adds to everyone's quality of life.  Those without much if any stake in the stock market have to depend on the lower unemployment rates that go with a "boom" which is *some* relief, but if the bulk of the increased employment is in low-pay, no-benefit jobs, it is at best a minor salve for some, and a double-down for others (like the company store in the company town raising prices but increasing everyone's credit limit and offering a wider variety of luxury items most cant really afford in the first place?).

Much if not all of the first-world (at least Anglophonic ) seems to be on the same trip...   

To balance my own "awfulizing",  I have some confidence in anecdotal heuristics like: "darkest before dawn" ; "has to get worse before it gets better" ; "gotta hit bottom before you bounce back up".  Our collective will/consciousness/awareness/???   IS a distribution (the other subthread here of interest) and I wonder at whether it is more usefully characterized as an integral or a superposition?

Mumble, 

- Steve

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefkoff at gmail.com> > wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za> > wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do.  

Marcus

  _____  

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> >
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
> 
>  
> 
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
> 
>  
> 
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ
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-- 

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org> 

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefoff at gmail.com> 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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