I’ve done it again! Started a war I don’t have time or energy to pursue, given I am striking my Massachusetts life in preparation for life in Santa Fe.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but my impression is that, with his text Socio biology, Wilson started to move away from the clear implications of his insect book, that might have let him down a path in your direction. But if he zagged in his later writings, please point me toward them, and I will endeavor to catch up.
I still think that the writing of this passage, though, gorgeous, is pretty empty, about as empty as the claim that we are terrestrial animals that live in an age of flight. Or that we have beetle-age music tastes in an age of hip-hop.
But I love you like a brother!
Nick
Sent from my Dumb Phone
On Oct 6, 2024, at 10:57 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.gue...@simtable.com> wrote:
Consider these extensions to EO Wilson:
"The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Precambrian metabolism, Paleolithic emotions, Axial Age religions, Medieval institutions, Victorian Age scientific foundations, and god-like technologies. And it is terrifically dangerous, as we now approach a point of crisis."
I think EO Wilson was on the threshold of "new approaches to evolution" with his research in ants and "super-organisms" - Though he couldn't quite let go of his neo-darwinistic crutch as the fundamental mechanism.
Nick, I add precambrian metabolism to free the assumption that emotion evolved via natural selection if you can accept that early complex metabolism (TCA cycle) might have instead relied on autocatalytic free energy landscapes ala Morowitz, Smith and Kauffman. By Victorian Age science I refer to newtonian, equilibrium, linear and natural selection paradigms of science.
And hopefully there's a more universal mechanism on the horizon that might reframe all 6 of the above. I think it's "terribly exciting" that we may have new paradigms to understanding adaptation, life and consciousness. A new paradigm may be the penultimate lever (ala steve smith) to evolve the world: :-) The ultimate leverage point: All paradigms are wrong, some are useful....
<image.png>
Donella Meadows: Leverage Points
-Stephen
On Sun, Oct 6, 2024 at 9:55 AM steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
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
