< But even if we gave up on the idea that there's an, in principle, set of values to start with, we can still arrive at an attractor so strong that the system will never leave it. >
If what you mean is that there are consequences to indifference to the environment and to each other, I don't see a lot of evidence of such attractors. If there are no principles and we are merely beings that notice attractors and naming them, there's not much point in ideology, religion, and so on. Perhaps they were always delusions, and it was only the Musk's, etc. that have found, through their wealth, the autonomy to come to grips with that. Counterexamples like Putin come to mind, where it does seem to be a reinforcement issue. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of glen <geprope...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2022 12:41 PM To: friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] health care logistics Scaled need for entropy: It's not clear to me why we'd believe smaller orgs need less entropy. I agree they have smaller *stores* of "energy". And, to some extent, I can see that some ways entropy manifests could dissipate those stores more than they accumulate them. (Regarding meeting objectives as one kind of store ... e.g. using money to achieve some objective is a - perhaps inefficient - transfer from one store to another -- since Tom posted about SysDyn.) But I could easily argue that small orgs need *more* entropy than large orgs. Semantics of Corruption: Well, I agree that one can't be corrupt if one has no principles from the start. This is, I think, a fundamental part of the arguments in favor of open-ended evolution (and extending into metaphysics like parallel worlds). But even if we gave up on the idea that there's an, in principle, set of values to start with, we can still arrive at an attractor so strong that the system will never leave it. The argument against Growth and the need for a "paradigm shift" is exactly such an argument. We're so brainwashed by that paradigm, even those of us who see the engine's headlight at the end of the tunnel can't think any differently. So ... how could I say it so you agree with it? Power is self-reinforcing even when it becomes obsolete? On 1/24/22 11:30, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Employees in a large organization are in one sense cells, but in another > sense parasites. (The largest parasite being the CEO.) Nevertheless, the > organization needs the diversity of these agents -- whatever one calls them > -- to innovate and survive. Without the entropy, the organization is just a > machine, and the people can be replaced with simple robots. It is small > organizations, where there is less ability to take on debt and tolerate > waste, where shared values can help keep focus in a situation of limited > resources. > > I don't really buy your claim that power corrupts. One could just as well > say that being weak makes one rationalize their weakness. If there isn't a > shared value system, there is no reason to say that it has been corrupted. > Perhaps rather that once entropy is eliminated, then death will soon follow. > Entropy could still be high and inter-group violence common. > > Marcus > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of glen > <geprope...@gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, January 24, 2022 12:00 PM > *To:* friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] health care logistics > 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> >> <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 <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 <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> >>>>> <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. .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . 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