Nick -
I will try to answer what I think was the core of your question/response
to DaveW's offering of Wilson's aphorism with a nod perhaps to what
might also have been your reaction to my (attempted) witticism comparing
aphorisms to models, with all being wrong, some being useful.
When I recently (weeks before Dave's offering here and years since
reading it in Wilson's original context/voice) encountered the
"paleolithic/medeival/godlike" quote, I found it inspiring,at least on
the surface.
Paleolithic emotions: To whatever extent our emotions arise out of are
are somewhat rooted in our neurophysiology, our neurochemistry, there is
no indication that we could have had enough generations of reproduction
and natural selection to move that much? Is it unreasonable to believe
that our limbic system, our neurochemistry is adapted to anything but
the previous hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of the
conditions of our predecessors?
Medieval Institutions: I can't make a strong argument that our
institutions don't evolve/modify/adapt faster than a half-millenia but I
do believe that change in this domain requires multiple lifetimes
(change at the rate of funerals at best)? I don't know exactly when
Nation States formed (out of growing/merging?) City States, or when
what we recognize as modern Republics and Democracies (USA, France, ???)
emerged but I would suggest that while our technological advances
(modern communication/computation) have facilitated the same fundamental
methods (Mary's son edits bills for the TX legislature, so watches the
sausage get made there) but if they don't seem to have changed
significantly in decades if not centuries (Comstock act anyone?)
Technology of Gods: DaveW's "indistinguishable from Magic" may be no
more than another aphorism, but it carries the spirit. As we know
from my regular Luddite postings here, I am hypervigilant about the
unintended consequences of technology. My fundamental
metaphorical/analogical source domain for technology is "the lever" .
While it's primary/intended function is to multiply force and allow an
individual to move something that would be normally out of scale
(strength). The obvious unintended side-effects include: break the
lever; break the thing you are trying to move; break the fulcrum; start
something moving you can't stop. A little more subtle is that the
force multiplication is achieved at a cost of sensitivity and control
division... sometimes that is a feature (like when I used to use my
heavy boot soles to kick the tongue-hitch of my trailer onto the
not-quite-aligned ball of my hitch-ball) sometimes it is a bug (when I
overdo it and the tongue of the trailer slides into my bumper and
creases my license plate, leading to an unpleasant stop by LEO years
later for a "modified license plate"). Elon Musk throws rockets and
satellites into orbit all the time, every once in a while they punch
holes in the Ozone layer or drop debris on people's houses or interfere
with amateur and professional astronomy with "1000 brilliant
pebbles"? Before Musk's aluminum oxide dispersal in the stratosphere,
our refrigerants (and other chloroflourocarbons) leaked out and lead to
folks (including me in 2000) on the beach in NZ getting sunburned at sea
level with a 5 minute exposure (least of the biosphere's worries, just a
good canary-coalmine indicator)... or let's consider PFAS and
microplastics or ... or ... or ... every damn one of those things
"seemed like a good idea at the time".
So, never ending anecdotes aside, what I find "useful" about Wilson's
observation (aphorism) is that it helps me organize my thoughts about
different scales of things (in time and consequence) just a little
better than if I treat human emotional responses, institutional
mechanisms and technological capabilities/consequences as if they are
all roughly on the same scale? And it might facilitate a conversation?
Or not (apparently).
Glen sometimes suggests that "communication doesn't happen" (poor
paraphrase I'm sure, re-enforcing his point?) and that "what passes for
communication is more about social grooming" (same caveat) but I've of
late come to suspect that "conversation" is the exchange of information
between subsystems which are part of "nearly decomposable" systems which
are simultaneously adapting at their own level of organization/structure
and adapting *to* the larger system they are "nearly decomposable" from
(bad grammar I'm sure).
If human limbic/neurochemical systems are evolving, their coupling to
the institutional contexts we have developed and live in would seem to
be a constrainer/driver of those adaptations, as both would be
responding to the (much faster?) evolving/adapting technosphere?
Mumble,
- Steve
On 10/6/24 8:12 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Steve,
You called on me to steelman the idea that our problems arise from
having antique emotional systems in a very ugly non antique world.
Glen's stern judgement looms over me.
In a general way, the idea that adaptations persist beyond their
sell-by date is absolutely essential to evolution. How else could a
trait be selected-out if it did not occur where it shouldn't be, so to
speak. There are some interesting examples of such persistence from
the research of Richard Coss on prairie dog defensive adaptations
against rattlesnakes. There is a portion of the West (NE California, I
think) where prairie dogs still live ;but rattlesnakes no longer do.
The prairie dogs have no resistance to snake venom; however, they
still have behavioral adaptations against snakes, even though the
population has not been exposed to them for 100 thousand years. So,
it's certainly possible. (I hope I haven't garbled the facts too
much here).
But, returning to my strawmanning, notice how specific the example is,
of prairie dogs retaining a particular a particular response to a
particular set of circumstances that they only encounter when the
experimenter presents them. How much that contrasts with hand waving
about lizard brains and encapsulated emotion modules passed down
through the generations!
Mind you, although you rightly sense my skepticism, I have not ruled
the idea out. I have only asked that somebody put some feathers on it
so I can see if it flies.
Ever your friend,
Nick
On Sat, Oct 5, 2024 at 5:49 PM steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
Nick -
And here I thought *I* was being "pithy", then you call me out
on my lithp?! ;^)
The strawman arguments have started coming out, I wonder if
anyone will gen up a steelman?
- tinman Steve
On 10/5/24 11:26 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
So in what sense and for what purposes is this pithy aphorism
useful? What exactly is the pith?
If a metaphor, what is truth in the metaphor, the positive
analog. Nobody ever said that all metaphors are /entirely/ wrong.
and yes, I am being pissy.
n
On Sat, Oct 5, 2024 at 11:04 AM steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
All /Pithy Aphorisms/ are wrong, some are useful?
On 10/5/24 9:06 AM, Prof David West wrote:
my affection for the quote derives from a metaphorical
reading, not a literal one. Something akin to Steve's
differential rates of evolution. I also would have eschewed
'god like' in favor of 'magical' ala Clarke's dictum about
any sufficiently advanced technology.
davew
On Fri, Oct 4, 2024, at 8:46 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
I think that this way of talking about emotions precludes
careful thought. First of all, neurologizing emotions is
just to hide the pea under the wrong thimble. I don't think
paleolithologizig helps much more. Glen is correct that,
whatever an emotion is, its inputs and outputs are
ontogenetically and culturally determined. So, fear, for
instance, is a relation between something that we take to
be threatening and something that we hope will be
avoidance. Inputs and outputs are everything. The rest is
just arousal.
N
On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 7:01 PM steve smith
<sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
Emotions/Limbic systems evolve at genetic rates,
institutions evolve at
social/cultural rates (maybe the fastest significant
change can
happen/resolve is in multiple lifetimes?) but
technology is advancing at
must faster rates?
Or is this wrong(headed) also?
On 10/4/24 3:43 PM, glen wrote:
> None of that is true, however romantic it might
sound. Depending on
> how one defines "emotion", that smells the most true.
But the
> mechanisms of emotion are as coupled to current
reality as is every
> part of our bodies. To suggest that, say, the Space
Force or methods
> like quantitative easing are medieval is just
nonsense. Technology is
> more democratized than it has ever been. Granted, it
takes (a lot) of
> work to familiarize oneself with something like how
GPS works or how
> to NOT click on that phishing email. But to suggest
that it's
> "godlike" says more about the person than it does
about the state of
> technology.
>
> On 10/4/24 11:16, Prof David West wrote:
>> /"The real problem of humanity is the following: we
have Paleolithic
>> emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike
technology. And it is
>> terrifically dangerous."/ Edward O. Wilson.
>>
>
>
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