I agree completely with the assertion that there *can be* a complex self. But I
maintain there exists something like an allostatic load on the individual, some
cumulative damage from chronic exposure to information overload. If we continue
following a personalized medicine kindof guide, it's reasonable to suggest that
things like a Dunbar number have a lot of variation to them. Introverts versus
extroverts, openness to new experiences, etc. In other words, some of us can
hold complex self conceptions. Others of us not so much. And it's necessary for
those who experience less allostatic load recognize that the more fragile (or
smaller scoped) selves exist.
One dimension often used to simplify our self is narration, assemble the mostly
luck-based arbitrariness of the world into a story. Mostly, we tell ourselves stories
that serve a purpose, rationalize an action, justify an exploitation, relieve guilt at
failure to act, etc. Sometimes, we tell stories just to escape painful small talk like
"What do you do for a living?" Each story projects from the high dimensional
space down as far as needed for that purpose.
And until we give up on individualism, our allostatic loads will increase in
direct proportion to the population.
On 11/9/24 08:37, steve smith wrote:
Thanks to EricS for translating the question of liberty/alism/tarianism into
the terms of
the situated self in a webwork of relations, groups, obligations, and so
forth.
I appeal to:
Michael Levin's /Cognitive Light Cones/ and the implications for
/multi-scale aggregate entity morphogenesis/...
The_Computational_Boundary_of_a_Self ...
Multicellularity_and_Scale-Free_Cognition
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337930182_The_Computational_Boundary_of_a_Self_Developmental_Bioelectricity_Drives_Multicellularity_and_Scale-Free_Cognition>
While his focus is on bioelectricity as a mechanism is apt for his specifics, I
am intrigued by the implications for collectives such as humans in various
eras. Getting most interesting once aggregation into groups larger than Dunbar
began (co-facilitated by written language, chalco-lithics, agriculture,
domestus, ???).
With personal global communication (starting barely with the merging of
national/regional postal systems, but then time-collapsing with international
telegraph, wireless, landline telephony.
And now the global internet (semi-partitioned by nationalized corporate and
other institutional firewalls) and gawdelpus social media (connecting limbic
systems directly, y passing cognitive layers?)
And then IoT sensors/actuators
And now again some more the current era of ML/AI providing some kind of dynamic glue or maybe
metaphorically like "electrode gel" to improve coupling/match semantic impedance? Or
(?glen's?) reference to "arraying of antennae" recently?
And all cross-cut by Ned Hall's Proxemics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics
On 11/9/24 4:30 AM, Santafe wrote:
;.l;;llk;pl....lp;lk.l;p0k.lo0ahgsThis one is funny (as in odd, not comical).
I understand that Glen is glossing liberalism as a kind of
(trivialized-individual)-indulgentism. But I wouldn’t gloss the word that way.
Liberalism should have been about enabling the possible freedoms, and curbing
the uses of power that we consider exploitative and abusive, which in an
ungoverned system would always be cropping up and entrenching and concentrating
themselves. The core being some notion of freedom that needs to be understood,
and is not immediately conflated with individual concepts.
I do agree that the west, with the US in the vanguard, has departed from the
rather complex and sensible notion of individualism that one finds in Scots
like Adam Smith, toward a quite trivialized notion of the individual and of
freedom somewhat interpreted in those terms (although even what that relation
is would take some thought to try to articulate).
But there can be a complex notion of the self, and the relation of its
development to the social context, without which nothing like a normal human
self can even form. The gloss I gave above for liberalism seems quite
compatible with a complex notion of self, and then it isn’t in an opposition to
syndicalism, or whatever other evocative words one can recruit from the common
language to characterize the situated self in a webwork of relations, groups,
obligations, and so forth.
The splits would then go along somewhat different axes, it seems to me.
Eric
On Nov 6, 2024, at 12:10 PM, Marcus Daniels<mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:
There’s some unstated assumption you must have. For the lefties and righties
to band together, they’d have to have some basis for a coalition. What is it
beyond the price of milk? For example, as a liberal I’m in favor of high gas
taxes. High gas taxes discourage use of internal combustion cars, thereby
reducing CO2 and mitigating climate change. In California, the taxes on gas
and tolls on bridges help to pay to maintain the roads and mass transit. And
I’d say go ahead and phase out natural gas stoves and furnaces too. Other
liberals I know hate that idea because they believe that will drive up the cost
of living which is already high here. Still other liberals just voted out the
local DA because they thought she was soft on crime. Earlier she was voted in
to give young minorities a fairer shot navigating the legal system. Liberalism
is hardly a rigid system of thought.
Being inclined to adopt a political philosophy gives scaffolding for what goals
are important, how to achieve those goals, and considerations of the greater
good where one might put aside their selfish interests. What I see in last
night’s results is just collective selfishness. I should want to work with
such people, so they don’t go ahead and burn everything down? I expect that
many of these folks in the rust belt will need Social Security and Medicare
more than I will. By the time I need it, most of my loved ones will be gone.
Yeah, let’s do this!
Perhaps I am a liberal in your definition and not a lefty because I don’t care about what happens to them as people (they aren’t my friends or family), but I do care about the kind of social systems that can be sustained. Actual conservatives, on the other hand, believe that there is an evolved social system that is not engineered, but nonetheless is of some quality and should be protected. The lefties and righties I think you are speaking of don’t care about regulatory social systems at all. They have diverse goals and values that perhaps could form coalitions, but do those coalitions that have more depth than list of grievances? This is the new world: Not just total social atomization, which would be fine with me, but a lack of modeling of others. None of that cognitive dissonance to deal with if we must march to the same drum of Project 2025.
Marcus
From: Friam<friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of glen<geprope...@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 7:58 AM
To:friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How democracies die
It's funny, actually. The overwhelming majority of my liberal friends either object (through
passive aggressive tactics or outright accusations of "nit-picking") or distance
themselves from my "moralizing". Nick once did this in a vFriAM, suggesting that I'm too
willing to jump to discussing the moral or ethical value/consequence of some sentiment or activity.
My attempts to unpack and demonstrate that their liberalism is *founded* in the assumption of
individuality and organismal agency fall on deaf ears because they'd rather commit to the in-group
and avoid the navel-gazing.
But in order to distinguish between a lefty and a liberal, you have to dig down
into your navel, pry out the lint, and make an attempt at analyzing agency,
where it lies, how it's [de]constructed, etc. My conservative friends are more
willing to do that than my liberal friends, at least to the extent of a
taxonomy of moralized positions. It's right to do this, wrong to do that, etc.
They're less individualist than the liberals. Although the liberals actively
engage with in-groups and disengage with out-groups, they drop moralized issues
like hot potatoes.
The opportunity I see in Trump's 2nd term is for the lefties and the righties
to band together against the liberals. With 8 billion people on the planet,
liberalism is a fantasy, or perhaps just a fossilized ideology we have to grow
out of as the old people die. Of course, we could depopulate the earth and
resuscitate liberalism that way. But that sounds more painful than changing our
minds. Hm. Maybe it is easier to kill and die than it is to change one's mind?
IDK.
On 11/6/24 07:18, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Harris wasn’t a candidate of the left she was a moderate applying the technique
of triangulation to get elected to keep our institutions from being abused and
damaged by an inappropriate candidate. I’m not sure what else she could have
done short of finding a way to push Biden out earlier. As for me, I’m not
shedding any liberal tears. In a way I’m looking forward to how Trump will
betray his voters and the suffering they will feel at his hands. They
certainly deserve it.
*From: *Friam<friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of
glen<geprope...@gmail.com>
*Date: *Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 6:58 AM
*To: *friam@redfish.com<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] How democracies die
Just for reference, my antifa friends don't recognize any difference. Nothing's
changed from yesterday to today. And while that may seem myopic, there's a lot
of truth to it. Harris is fairly right-leaning with her record as a prosecutor
in CA, position on fracking, failure to denounce the actions of Israel, etc.
The local antifa has been active in things like blocking ports of entry
(particularly for Boeing-related shipments and such). DDoSecrets has been
steadily accumulating data from bad actors. Unicorn Riot consistently publishes
about ongoing abuse of indigenous communities. Etc.
W.r.t. deeper changes, a break from status quo *liberalism* (the main boogeyman
of the lefties), could be hastened by another Trump term. I see it as an
opportunity for actual lefty strategists (as opposed to a warmed over righty
like Harris) to design a [de|re]construction plan similar to Project 2025, but
for sane people. Literally *any* of the tactics used by the Trump backers could
be used by an organized effort from the left.
But the problem is that those with the real strategy skills aren't
revolutionaries. As Eric lays out, they're too addicted to the institutional
game to strategize around or to blast through institutions. That's what makes
the tiny antifa efforts like blocking ports (for a tiny few hours) or breaking
windows on main street seem so stupid and indulgent, like the temper tantrums
of an undisciplined child.
And in this regard, I join both my antifa friends and my MAGA friends in
scoffing at the liberal tears. If you actually want change, then buck up and
make it happen. Politics is not a day job you leave at the office at 6pm.
Granted, I'm a tourist in both of those groups - all groups, actually, and
would be happier if Harris had won. But being a tourist allows me to say such
things without too much hypocrisy.
On 11/6/24 02:55, Santafe wrote:
A change that I think can happen, and I don’t know how fully it can change in
four years, which is the time to find out whether the whole electoral system
and federal judiciary can be completely rewired, is that Americans become a lot
more like Russians. Small, localized, and trying to hunker down and get
through one’s own little day and little life, and not be visible enough to
become a target for anything. Everything that is a problem and that needs to
change, is a problem because it brings together a lot of actors. To change, it
needs coordinated commitments. That’s what wasn’t great in the U.S. already,
but gets very very hard in an atomized society. I do expect the bullying and
belligerent behavior from the MAGA faction, which has already been getting
systematically worse over the past 9 years, to undergo a large increase. Maybe
by about the same factor as cannabis use increased when it got legalized, and
for sort of similar reasons. There will continue to be people who don’t like
it, as there are now, and as there are lots of Chinese who still have global
and humane views and don’t like the rise of belligerence being driven in their
society, but aren’t doing anything effective against it.
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
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