[FRIAM] Breaking Bad

[Steve Smith]

Re: Glen's response to Jochen's reflections on WW and BB...

I am currently trying to ingest more of Robert Sopolsky's perspective on 
"Free Will", starting by studying his previous work "Behave" 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behave_(book)>. He does a pretty good job 
IMO of teasing the hair of the nature/nurture debate <insert troll doll 
image with hair teased>

I'm acutely torn between being very loyal to my physics-culture of 
causality and determinism (QC aside) and my very strong personal sense 
of "free will" and "agency".   What others call (revile?) as the Hard 
Problem of Consciousness I am trying to revel in the mystery of.

And regarding Privilege (capital P) and Entitlement (E), I suspect I'm 
"getting it wrong" again here but I am trying to embrace (wallow) in my 
own (P and E) based on the implied "inevitability" of it all.    I was 
raised to believe that my intentions mattered as much as my actions and 
the consequences of my actions... that all three play, tied together by 
estimates of risk, etc.    I believed that Character (C) was on a 
spectrum and willpower was involved in developing and maintaining and 
applying it.   Sopolsky's arguments *seem* to imply otherwise, or more 
to the point perhaps, that at best all of this is an illusion, though 
I'm not clear on whom/what is the inner "I" having the illusion.

At least for the moment, I continue to (try to) behave as if C matters 
and that owning my own E and P as best I can is an important part of 
that.   E and P seem to carry their own blind-spots, so go figure?  My 
modern (most of my adult life) experience is that the 
progressive/enlightened amongst us lean toward the idea of having any E 
and P represent character flaws that should be at least concealed if not 
stifled in some way. I'm hooked on this myself.  I don't like having the 
scarlet E or P branded on my forehead, even (because?) the brand fits my 
circumstance.   Maybe it is more accurate to say the fact of P leads to 
an illusion of E which when exercised (free-will assumed) is where the C 
flaw resides?

I *do* feel very Privileged to even have the 
background/opportunity/perspective to even be thinking about these 
things... yet those who do not, are not, cannot...  are also 
enviable.... my dog and cat and grandchildren seem to be in that 
category...  this entire discussion is parallel to other maunderings I 
have have shared on the topic of (non-religious) Grace and the Return to it?

I'm curious how others pick at these gordian knots?  Here is DALL-E's 
(prompted by GPT4 based on a discussion with Bard) issue on the topic.  
At best, I consider this image to be an "oracle" in the vein of 
haruspicy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex>, not an actual 
"creative issue" of a "sentient or conscious entity".



On 1/15/24 11:36 AM, glen wrote:
> I have a friend who calls himself a "virtue ethicist". He means it in 
> some jargonal sense. But if I hear him with charity, what he means is 
> something like moral intuitionism. And it's simply another rendering 
> of nature v nurture, the false dichotomy to end all false dichotomies. 
> Rather than ask *can* "good people" turn "bad", we might want to 
> particularize "people", "good", and "bad", then ask "what does it take 
> to turn type T_0 people into T_1 people?"
>
> Despite my abstract re-wording, it applies to Walter White in the arc 
> of the show. He never turned "bad". He exhibited the same tribal 
> character throughout, retaining loyalty to those in his group. But the 
> group definition changed through the arc. The group boundary 
> permeability hardened (and softened). The Other became Us and vice 
> versa. Etc. To some extent, we might say the show is less about 
> breaking bad and more about breaking *out* ... out of the entitled 
> stupor our standard lives, built on implicitly assumed bureaucracy, 
> put us into. Were I a betting person, I'd bet that what many in the 
> media are calling "polarization" can be well-understood as a "waking 
> up". Some of us are waking up and realizing our democracy is fragile. 
> Others are waking up and realizing they're losing autonomy one 
> "freedom" at a time. Etc. When we make a posterior value judgement 
> about these transformations, it's difficult to make a charitable one. 
> And what most of us seem to want is to hide in that comfy stupor of 
> entitlement, to minimize surprisal.
>
> It is a fantastic show.
>
> On 1/15/24 09:45, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> The TV series Breaking Bad was created 10 years ago, but I only 
>> recently was able to watch it on Netflix. As you know it is about the 
>> question how a good man turns bad. The story starts with a tragedy, a 
>> lung cancer diagnosis for the main character Walt(er) White. Life has 
>> not been kind to the underpaid and overqualified chemistry teacher 
>> who has a disabled son and a pregnant wife. The cancer diagnosis 
>> pushes him over the edge and after it he seems to driven by the 
>> question "if life has been so bad to me why should I be good?". The 
>> episodes that follow describe how he "breaks bad" and turns toward 
>> crime.
>>
>> What do you think, did you like the TV series created in Albuquerque? 
>> Is the story accurate from a psychological perspective, i.e. can good 
>> people turn into bad ones if life refuses to be kind to them? In a 
>> way this story of a person who turns into a villain is the opposite 
>> of Joseph Campbell's classic story of a person who turns into a hero, 
>> isn't it?
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20240115/e1847462/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DALL?E 2024-01-12 22.07.02 - An abstract representation of the interplay between consciousness, free will, qualia, and subjectivity. The image should visually symbolize the comple.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2434676 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20240115/e1847462/attachment-0001.png>