Eric, your link didn't work. Could you please re-send. Thanks. On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 12:01 PM glen <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:
> At first, I struggled to see how this mapped to health care logistics. But > on 2nd read, it clearly does. > > The question that now dominates is a) shared values - even if it's > overshoot and we know it's overshoot, do the exploiters (and their > rhetorical victims) care at all about the same things the ... "earthists" > or "humanists" or "biodiversisists" might care about? And b) nonlinear > exploitation power - orthogonal to shared values, is it possible the > space/landscape has changed so radically that the tiny produce we now > exploit might have a huge impact going forward? (Or, maybe vice versa, > every Joule we squeeze out now has a much smaller impact than the Joules we > extracted in the '60s?) > > Those questions translate to health care in the form of motivation > comparison between, e.g., pharma employees. Some are in it for the science. > Some are in it for the money. Some are humanitarians. Etc. Do the > executives share the values of their employees? A little? A lot? The same > with insurance undewriters, financialists at hospitals and offices, etc. > > Technically, it's completely reasonable to NOT implement bootstrappable > systems, systems "written in" themselves. We've talked a lot on this list > about self-reference and if/where we use the words "tautology" or > "degeneracy". Even if we assume the shared value that earth is just the > initial *seed* for life and that seed will be a dried up husk when we > diaspora into the galaxy, *when* will we have to solve the sustainability > question? Perhaps we should solve it for our 2nd planet? Or maybe we > iterate slowly from our current non-bootstrapping algorithm of "growth" > toward an algorithm of sustainable? > > The same argument goes for the Big Software argument proffered By Dr. > Coon. Sure open source packages developed by some kid in Iowa shouldn't > found the entire Java-based infrastructure. But, similarly, not every piece > of crypto or opsec needs to come from Israel or the NSA. Can we move > between and within Big Software and hacking? Can we move between Growth and > Sustainability? > > And more importantly, should we all agree on values, like some fascist > state? Or is there room for reasonable disagreement or meandering > non-equilibria? > > On 1/21/22 13:00, David Eric Smith wrote: > > Some of the condensations in this thread, as causal interpretations of > social dynamics, are real gems. They are much more interesting as claims > than the endlessly recycled platitudes that seem to be all I am seeing in > punditry. > > > > I have wondered about sending the following to the list, but this is > probably a good thread in which to do it: > > https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v14y2021i15p4508-d601755.html < > https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v14y2021i15p4508-d601755.html> > > > > The claims are about important things. They say that the sustainability > rhetoric is so riddled with pie in the sky that it is not clear that an > analysis of what we can actually do would even support goal-setting along > the lines that are currently practiced. For certain apps built on the > libraries of sustainability, like the rhetoric of Green New Deal, the > most-central aspiration (not curtailing population and energy consumption, > and just replacing their sources) may actually be impossible in the sense > that perpetual motion machines are impossible. The other important factor > is that we don’t get the dodge “but in the long run”, because the claim is > that in a relatively short run we are all dead (or at least a great many of > us, and the rest have greatly reduced options for what to do about > anything). > > > > The important thing about the article (I know the author Rees) is that > it tries to back up its claims with analysis where possible. Some of the > citations I consider a bit dodgy, but others are probably sound. That does > _not_ mean I am claiming the conclusions of the paper are right. I haven’t > done any shred of the work it would take me to backfill that tree of > citations and take responsibility for deciding which of them I understand > to be right. > > > > It is also important (to me, for my own reasons) to say that I do not > mean _any_ blame for hypocrisy or bad faith toward a lot of the serious > sustainability people, or even the GND advocates. They work partly in a > realm of human persuasion, and they are trying not to let the perfect > undermine doing _something_ that might be good, or at least a little > better. I don’t know how many of the GND rhetoricians even have a detailed > understanding of our current situation, and among those (if there are > any), how many would agree that it is as bad as Rees asserts. There might > be some, who would still do what persuasion they can because they don’t > have ideas for what might be more helpful. > > > > I should also add that there is a lot not covered in this particular > paper, where I have listened to claims of large unavoidable cascading > failures. Climate change leading to failure of Himalayan snowpacks that > are the headwaters of rivers that supply drinking water, sanitation, > irrigation, and hydropower to something like 1/4 of the world’s population, > through infrastructure that has been built over a century, and can’t simply > be moved or replaced. That stops working and people start moving, and then > all the stresses we already see around migration get amplified to much > higher levels. etc. Those, too, I have not tried to either evaluate or > get sources I can trust blindly. But if they are real, they belong in view > as well. > > > > Finally, I want to distance myself a bit from the affect and some > overall impression in this piece, or by these authors. I have no interest > in whether something is heterodox or any other kind of dox. The > misanthropy that comes through in their scornful delivery in places, but > also their claim that there are “graceful” exits with so little as 1-child > policies, are to me departures (understandable, but still departures) from > the thing that makes the article valuable, which is the substance of its > claims about what exists and what can be assembled into systems. I think > one can keep the claims as important questions and let the other stuff go > its own ways. > > > > Anyway, more than I know how to chew on, > > > > Eric > > > > > > > >> On Jan 21, 2022, at 11:47 AM, glen <geprope...@gmail.com <mailto: > geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote: > >> > >> Well, except that this solipsism betrays a profound similarity between > the cheerful billionaire exploiter and the unfixable deplorables. It's > almost psychotically self-centered. I can imagine a slow, corrupting > process where I would if I could, as well. But that transformation would > have to be complete closure to prevent any light of empathy or sympathy > from peeking in and popping the boil. > >> > >> I suppose people like Gates are more interesting than Musk, shambling > about extruding money according to an opaque template ... less > transparently ideological than Musk's profiteering. All philanthropy smacks > of this sort of thing, though, Effective Altruism being the worst of the > bunch. Power corrupts. It's not a lesson the non-powerful can actually > learn, though. So it's a good thing to keep around a nicely scaled > gradation of the super rich and the destitute poor, with some walkability > up and down the scale. That way we can, as a collective, re-learn the > lesson that power corrupts on a steady basis. The assumption of equality > prevents that lesson from being re-learned. The absurdity of philanthropy > and poverty are "collateral damage" in service of the latent trait, spoken > as a well-off white man born into a racist patriarchy, anyway. > >> > >> On 1/21/22 08:31, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >>> If anything, Musk is suspicious because he is not overtly apocalyptic. > Some criticisms of Don’t Look Up were along the lines that it fails to > try to persuade a change of course in favor of being condescending. That > was the whole point of the movie: Comic relief among the reasonable who > must suffer those who are just unfixable. Musk is amusing because he is > cheerful going about his billionaire life as it all comes crashing down. > Doing what he can to profit from insane energy policy of the last several > generations and making what contingency plans he can. I certainly would if > I could. > >>>> On Jan 21, 2022, at 7:48 AM, glen <geprope...@gmail.com <mailto: > geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> This video essay concludes with the same point: > >>>> > >>>> The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk > >>>> https://youtu.be/5OtKEetGy2Y <https://youtu.be/5OtKEetGy2Y> > >>>> > >>>> Perhaps a better title would have been "Muskian Futurism is > Eschatological". But there's some deeper stuff there in the middle of the > video about the appeal of geezers like Sanders to "the youth", perhaps > dovetailing with our prior discussion of the [opt|pess]imism vs > hope-despair plane. The mistake the Muskians seem to make is conflating > Musk's "apocalyptic help the rich survive the end times capitalism" with > the good old fashioned future orientation of classic science fiction ... > and, perhaps, even the optimistic glossing of the present by authors like > Steven Pinker. While Pinker seems to be a hypnotized neoliberal cultist, > his views still retain some sense of "shared values" in the Enlightenment, > where something, vague as it is, like equality founds the whole > perspective. Egalitarian utopias like Star Trek were, it seemed to me, > standard fare for classic sci-fi. Gibson, Blade Runner, et al turned that > dark and brought us (perhaps correlated with the rise of Hell and > >>>> Brimstone Christianity) to Muskianism. > >>>> > >>>> But this is all just from my nostalgizing as a dying white man. It > would be interesting to see a disinterested historian present the plectic > arcs. > >>>> > >>>>> On 1/20/22 14:33, glen wrote: > >>>>> Even if there are multiple paths to nearly equivalent optima, each > unit (human, hospital, corporation, state) has to share some values with > the others in order for the the optima to be commensurate. > >>>> > > -- > glen > Theorem 3. There exists a double master function. > > > .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: > 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA mobile: (303) 859-5609
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