Yea, sort of like teaching creationism for science is teaching determinism for life..
Phil Henshaw From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 12:37 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] In Praise of Doubt, and ... Good find Russ... Freeman Dyson is quoted as saying It is better to be wrong than vague When Juxtaposed with Feynman's It is perfectly consistent to be unsure I think we are reaching the heart of the problem with human nature. We want to be correct and we want to be precise and we want to be sure. Human nature, on the other hand, doesn't care and would generally rather have simple, easy, clear answers, even if they are dead wrong. On Modeling and Human Nature: In my own work with scientists and engineers and decision makers I constantly find them wanting me to help them find simple, clear, absolute answers and only the best of them are delighted when the find I can only help them with the simplest answer of all - "it depends" and then clarify (somewhat) with "and this is what it depends on and how". I too feel Doug's pain (or chronic irritation) but mine extends beyond the bounds of fundamentalist religion to wide swaths of our population who are not religious and if they are to be called fundamentalist, their fundamentalism is in their unerring belief in things like their own privelige, their own entitlement, the rightness of the systems they participate in or perhaps the rightness in the ones they would replace the ones they are trying to tear down. It is easy to be a critic, an armchair quarterback. As a youth, I was attracted to Science for the open-minded inquiry it represented. I was attracted to technology for the miracles it could wring out of Science. I was attracted to Democracy for the implied social fairness and egalitarianism. I was attracted to free-markets for the opportunity afforded hard, smart work. I was attracted to capitalism for the seeming rightness (in an industrial economy at least) that capital resources facilitate productivity and those who create and maintain such resources should also be rewarded along with those who provide labor/talent/etc. On Liberal vs Conservative: There is an old saying which I cannot attribute: If you are not liberal when you are young, there is something wrong with you. If you are not conservative when you are old, there is something wrong with you. I think this is well motivated and intended but I find otherwise. At 51 many of you will find me still "young" but I only remember being "younger" and now feel quite "old", and at least by today's terminology, find I am going the "other way" toward a more "Liberal" viewpoint. The point, however, is that in you youth I was quick to adopt idealisms which were happy and bright and promising which is where the Democrats/Liberals might tend to err, while over time and the enduring of hard-knocks, I have learned that the world is often somewhat less than cooperative with such idealism and pragmatism calls for a certain kind of pessimism or at least very careful optimism. This might in fact, be the basis of the prescribed swing from liberal to conservative with age, but in our current mapping of liberal (to Dems) and conservative (to Repubs), I have not been able to maintain this track so well. There is something amiss (or aright) here. I find myself more aligned *against* the Republicans than ever and more aligned *with* the Democrats than ever. On introspection, I think that education through experience helped me a lot. I think that I learned a lot about what *really* happens when you apply the ideals of either side to the real world. I still find all (most) politicians suspect of hypocrisy and Dems erring on the Pollyanna side but the neoCons at least seem to be nothing but a big ugly wad of hypocrisy and short-sighted selfish stupidity. I don't like the implied axis of Left/Right or Liberal/Conservative. I think that these can be applied roughly to social and economic issues ( I'm liberal socially, but conservative economically is a common statement in my circles ). The term "Progressive" has been used often in place of "Liberal" and in many ways it fits better. Progressives seem to be interested in looking for ways to change our society to improve the human condition while non-Progressives (Conservatives) can be seen to be trying to preserve the aspects of society which maintain the current better qualities of the human condition while trying to avoid the (un)intended consequences of progress. I am very sympathetic with both points of view however, I find a good deal of what we call "progress" blind faith that "change is good" with opportunists stirring change for changes' sake so they can "take advantage". Similarly I find that resistance to change is often motivated by those holding power not wanting to risk trying to keep it in a shifting landscape. On Power: So the central theme turns out to be "opportunism" or "power". Power Corrupts.... A friend of mine insists Power is Corruption. I tend to agree, recognizing that it is not only a consequence of having power that one becomes "corrupt", taking advantage (because advantage is there to be taken, in the same sense that nature abhors a vacuum), but also that to *obtain power* corruption is involved. What is "power" anyway? In this diatribe, I use it to mean influence over others and in particular, non-commutative but transitive influence. It could be based in economics, physical threat, persuasion, social acceptance... Barter societies roughly operate in commutative exchanges... it is hard to hoard and it is hard to take advantage when material goods must be exchanged in-person between people who live near each other. Usury and hoarding become obvious and adjust the relative value of goods or services. The power of physical threat and violence is also fairly limited in small groups. Hunter Gatherers who followed herds adopted the way of herd animals, often with a single chief who kept power by being more physically capable/threatening than any other male in the group. As a good chief aged, he became more experienced and wise which made him both (potentially) better at winning any challenge-fights but also more valued by the group as a leader. While one or more young men might have a significant chance of bringing him down in a direct confrontation, many might defer this until later when he might be yet weaker (with age) and they more prepared to truly be a good leader in his place. This simple kind of hierarchy was the beginning of transitive power... if the group grew larger or engaged with other related groups, it is not surprising that a deeper hierarchy of power might emerge. The big chief might maintain power over sub-chiefs by the same mechanism while the sub-chiefs did the same with their own groups... to get to be big chief, you had to fight your way past his lieutenants, who didn't get there themselves by being slackers. The women and feminists in the group will notice that women are missing from this discussion except implicitly as those subjugated (and protected) by a male. I don't applaud or glorify this, but do think it is a natural consequence of the main mode of power expression being physical violence in such societies. This is a raw form of "meritocracy" I suppose. But the salient feature is the transitivity of power and the aggregation it implies. A single human, capable of dominating any other in his group might hold power by this "merit" and presumably must maintain a level of fairness to avoid having two or more others gang up on him. But once this goes recursive, an arbitrarily large power base can be created through the transitive application of power. We didn't rise up and pull Dubya out of office (partly) because he had a whole gang of lieutenants who had their leiutenants who ... right down to the cop on the street or the FBI or secret service man who would have used his own personal power (his personal will and ability) and his inherited power (his equipment, his peers, the specialized SWAT teams and snipers standing by, etc.) to stop us. Under what other circumstances would the village have tolerated the idiot they had raised to power? As soon as we defer any power to another, we start this heaping/piling of power game. We have been trained to think this is the only way to live, that we must always give our power to another. This Tuesday, I believe many of us will be giving our power to a member of the electoral college to pass that power on up to Obiden (or McPalin in many cases) who will in turn use that power in our interest (or not) as he/she sees fit. The whole campaign process is about arguing over how the power we pass up to them is going to be used. Come April 15 when you send in your taxes, we will be doing the same thing. Many of us on this list are entrepreneurs, at least in spirit. I would hazard that most of us are in some sense self-employed, even if that is through the mechanism of semi-retirement. This indicates (to me) that many of us prefer not to give up too much of our power to an individual or organization. We might have only one client or customer, but in principle, we are free agents many of us. And those who do work at companies or institutions likely have an inordinate amount of freedom derived from our ability or natures. We understand that we do not want to freely give up all of our (economic/intellectual) power for others to (ab)use. I am obviously an Anarchist in my ideals. The pragmatist in me is willing to play in a Democracy, since it seems a much more common and workable approach for reasons I don't completely understand. But I'm not surprised so much when I pass my power off to others and it comes back and bites me (like the last 8 years). I don't believe that Democracy works in principle, even though it sometimes kinda works in practice. Perhaps "oppression of the minority by the majority" is a significant lesser of evils. Governments are simply ways of aggregating power, the better ones have relatively good mechanisms for doing the aggregation and fairly good mechanisms for checking and balancing power to avoid runaway abuses. Ours has (nearly) broken down, I hope that this election turns that around, and those who are elected have the *enlightened* self interest to reinforce the checks and balances wisely and carefully. - Steve PS. Yes, I clearly must be avoiding something important if I'm going to continue to write these missives. Thanks to anyone reading this far... I know it gets dense and tedious.
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