[FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

[Steve Smith]

On 4/14/22 9:05 AM, glen wrote:
> I certainly hope I'm not winning you over, accidentally or otherwise. 
> Your use of the word "fetish" is spot-on, in that such paraphilia is, 
> ultimately, unhealthy 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paraphilias> ... I guess 
> barring the "everything in moderation" principle [⛧].

That was bait.  The "winning over" is more about softening my hardline 
neo-luddite knee-jerk instincts, and all such shifts are transient and 
contextual in any case.

>
> In fact, to be "won over" implies imprisonment, convicted to one's 
> convictions. However, I also think it's unhealthy to, say, be so 
> Luddite that you prefer "natural immunity" to vaccination ... or 
> prefer your wood burning fireplace to natural gas heat ... or to 
> demand to "talk to a person" rather than interacting with the phone 
> tree. That hyper-traditionalism is *also* an unhealthy fetish and it's 
> why, despite my conservatism, the neoreactionaries are so repulsive to 
> me. As a conservative, I constantly find myself defending the Now 
> against the fetishists of both the Yesterday and Tomorrow. Does that 
> mean I have a Now fetish? Maybe. But it's more like a reaction to the 
> non-Now fetishes around me.

I have an ideation about power-laws in this context, including the "Now" 
with the bulk of my attention going toward the here/now (thank you Alan 
Watts) but long tails into the past/future and out into the further 
reaches of the Universe that Webb is just now starting to give us a 
deeper eye on.

If I prefer to add the extra bit of comfort-heat to my house that my 
(mostly passive) solar home design doesn't afford by burning 
hydrocarbons, the "here-now" preference is toward biomass (woody 
materials) grown and gathered in my immediate environment (where I can 
modulate how much is too much) over rotted dinosaur farts gathered from 
thousands of feet underground and piped hundreds of miles to me.    
Others don't have that kind of biomass begging to be cleared and 
combusted, or they prefer to have someone else gather it and haul it off 
and then pipe those dino-farts in.   The former is messy in many ways 
and requires various kinds of attention while the latter is clearly 
hugely more convenient for most.   Attention AND convenience each in 
moderation...

>
>
> [⛧] The interpretation of "everything in moderation" depends on where 
> you put the parentheses. (Everything) (in moderation) implies you 
> *should* do just a little bit of everything ... a little sky diving 
> ... a little body modification ... a little Christianity ... a little 
> crack cocaine, etc. But (Everything in moderation) implies that 
> whatever it is you choose to do should be in moderation.
>
> On 4/13/22 12:05, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I think you are (accidentally?) winning me over to the 
>> post/trans-humanist fetish.   Just your talk of "play" and realizing 
>> how much I *already* play with automatons in the form of (see driving 
>> anecdotes) other drivers and roadway systems and (smart or dumb) 
>> traffic-lights, etc and bureaucracies.   I admit to always being 
>> taken in by (modern) science fiction stories with robot/android - 
>> human relationships... playing what might amount to a continuous, 
>> infinite game of Turing Test with them.   The same kind of "play" I 
>> currently engage in with dogs, cats, horses, watercourses, etc.   As 
>> a good animist, I can't see how I could reject the opportunity to 
>> "Play" with machine intelligences!
>>
>> When I get a full-body prosthetic to make up for my slowly failing 
>> organic musculo-skeletal system, I will probably find great enjoyment 
>> in "playing" with it the way I currently "play" with my bicycle and 
>> other vehicles, testing (softly these days) their performance 
>> envelope and response modes.
>>
>> Jump cut to Ridley in her  Space-Mining-Waldo-Exoskeleton  with or 
>> without an Alien opponent.
>>
>
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