[FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Tue Apr 12 17:26:36 EDT 2022

This japanese toddlers put me in mind of Ten Meter Tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2AvkKA4kM.  Is he going to jump?  Is she
climbing back down?

 -- rec --

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 4:48 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> If there is something essential about turnover, then it seems like the
> rate would be informative.  Why 75 years and not 25 or 1000?  Why should
> every kind of life form conform to about 75 years?
> Is there a universal logical depth that explains the need for cognitive
> death, and thus death?    If we change the processor rate to be 100 times
> faster than a human, should those gizmos or organisms expire more quickly?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 1:38 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
>
> Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to
> blind you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within
> several clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he
> contradicts himself but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.
>
> *If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows
> further flex and slop between mind and body, that something ... that
> "muscle" ... will be exercised through generational turnover ... i.e.
> death. Trying to forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes because I disagree
> with Haidt so starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to
> fail.
>
> p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn"
> is laid out here:
> https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 It takes
> me longer and longer to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often
> used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, it's trivial to gauge
> the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching
> how they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for
> effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.
>
>
> On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of
> cultural evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition
> coupling if it is possible to do so?
> > What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
> >
> > [1]
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
> > To: friam at redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >
> > Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like
> chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We
> can use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for
> the philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some
> cross-trophic relation).
> >
> > On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> >> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
> >> To: friam at redfish.com
> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >>
> >> But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics,
> *if* our minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking
> more polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to
> see the memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion
> of mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then
> memorability/intuitiveness of new ideas will remain unrelated through
> generations of dead/replaced bodies.
> >>
> >> My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly
> coupled to one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think
> memorability/intuitiveness increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die,
> the new bodies are slightly restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a
> fake-it-till-you-make-it. The only reason we have young kids that
> understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) better than the old farts did
> is because the young kids grew into the idea.
> >>
> >> No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.
> >>
> >> On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >>> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live
> thousands of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems
> related..
> >>> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away
> from attractors?
> >>> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can
> explore a large space -- if there is communication between individuals and
> across generations.
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> >>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
> >>> To: friam at redfish.com
> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >>>
> >>> What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?)
> always present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are
> gravity wells or attractors where if you start insisting on a security
> detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, or Sanders,
> surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go
> with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or
> ability to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation
> manually doesn't interfere in a substantial way with my ability to do the
> manual labor in any given iteration. The size of the computation can
> interfere, but not the attractor.
> >>>
> >>> That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever
> professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's
> because I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the
> attractor. On an arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in
> such attractors are mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a
> paper bag. >8^D
> >>>
> >>> On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >>>> Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you
> start going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for
> losing your soul” [1]
> >>>>
> >>>> That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an
> important part of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.
> Just attach to whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations
> and the big picture.  For one thing, it is rare that one can really change
> the big picture.  For two it is necessary to get in the critical path of a
> process to disrupt it.  The nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to
> impose a narrative before going on excursion.  Too much evaluation and
> reflection and one’s action as a virion cannot move forward!   There is
> plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain process once embedded.  But
> what are judgements really informed by if sampling is based on an
> outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset idea.
> >>>>
> >>>> [1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ <
> https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/>
> >>>>
> >>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> >>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
> >>>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> >>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >>>>
> >>>> Marcus -
> >>>>
> >>>>            Steve writes:
> >>>>
> >>>>            < Arguments for generational rather than
> Individual/personal growth and transformation...
> >>>>
> >>>>            “I don’t think we should try to have people live for a
> really long time,” Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation
> of society because the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They
> just die. So if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society
> wouldn’t advance.” >
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>            Maybe not?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>            https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  <
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4>
> >>>>
> >>>> I do think there is plenty of room for individual
> growth/transformation in one lifetime and perhaps Psi research will
> (continue to) provide yet-more tools for facilitating that.
> >>>>
> >>>> It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that
> they can be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think
> it can be, but as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but
> seeing the myriad ways it can go wrong as well.  This negative ideation is
> probably a self-referential example of the topic itself.
> >>>>
> >>>> Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in
> understanding more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity of
> "Life Itself", with the human (individual as well as cultural) experience
> being the one most relevant to my own life, but not exclusively.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
> --
> Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>
>
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