Steve,

 

[ph] So we see many of the same historic signs of explosive acceleration,
it's just a fact, and how it's been accumulative (till last month anyway.
:-) )

 Look at how vastly each generations life experience has been from the last,
going back as many generations as we have any personal knowledge of.
People have declared the "sky is falling" and the "end is near" endlessly it
seems too. 

There are plenty of other times and places when the sky WAS/IS falling
compared to today.  I am usually in the position of arguing your point.

[ph] Oh, I'm not saying the 'sky isn't falling', but observe that when
people thought so the real part of it just fell on the half the world that
was replaced by the multiplications of the other.     I think part of that
persistent illusion was that it wasn't an illusion for the part of the world
the rest of us stopped caring about. or something vaguely like that.   I
suppose we could now be being fooled the other way, by trusting that the
appearance of danger isn't dangerous.    In personal terms the continual
acceleration of change has just seemed to mean excessive generation gaps and
people with rich life experience not having much to teach the next
generation.whizzing along in somewhat of a daze it seems. 



  I think when I set about to find the answer to that question, to see if I
could validate some of feelings of expectation, I asked some of the useful
questions and narrowed it down quite a bit.   The question though, is what
question would you ask to tell if a feeling of impending grand
transformation was real or not?

There are two key, qualitative differences having to do with human scale.
One is that by having longer productive periods in life, under accelerated
change, most adults have to endure several important changes in their
lifetime.  The other is that much of our technology is becoming
life-extending and personal capability enhancing.   There may be thresholds
we have already crossed or on the verge of crossing which are pivotal.



 

I don't think "magic" is what we're talking about.     One would not have
any way of confirming a "premonition" of magic.  


I don't know that "magic" is relevant, if I understand your point.   What I
think is important is positive feedback loops and time constants dropping
below certain thresholds.   

[ph] right, the time constants, or in my focus, the learning response lag
times



What I don't know I can agree with is  the following:

 I do think quite sincerely and confidently that foresight about real
complex system transformations, approaching 'water shed moments' is very
likely to be verifiable if they're real.

I think that precisely the opposite is true.  I think the best we can do is
avoid regimes where such change is likely to be precipitated, not precisely
when the system will go through a phase transition or what the phase it is
transitioning to looks like.

[ph]I didn't mean to suggest that one can't be caught by surprise when
crossing unobserved  and unsuspected thresholds or 'trip wires' in a
changing world.   The main one of those may be psychological, being fixated
on our stereotypes for things and not paying attention to the independently
changing and behaving things of the world they represent.   What  I'm saying
is that if you do "feel something coming" it should be possible, using my
approach of identifying developmental continuities anyway, to tell whether
you know enough about it to be referring to something real or not.     

 

At one point I felt that same general acceleration of change and saw how it
gave us the power to decide things with ever more far reaching effects with
ever less thought, and it seemed suspicious.   I then did dig to the bottom
of it I think, and found very substantial reason why acceleration would
continue until we were blindsided by errors of judgment resulting in
cascading failures due to faults no one would have thought to look for.
I got it down to continuous growth being a direct violation of the
conservation laws actually, because the complexity of it's response demands
would naturally exceed the learning lag times of its unchanging parts, and
instantaneous responses require infinite forces.    That our world is now
indeed collapsing for essentially that reason isn't what proves the theorem.
It's examining the reasoning, perhaps aided by the example of in happening
before our eyes, to see that there are no other options.       It's a
fascinating puzzle. 

 

Others have seen the same radical acceleration of change and imagined a sort
of 'convergence' in other areas like in computing power, and imagined other
previously unimaginable things must be quickly approaching, like the
machines of the world gaining consciousness.     In that case I'd just say,
well point to it, and show me where it's developing.   That's the *sign* of
a valid premonition to me, being able to point to the substantial leading
signs showing where it's actually happening, not just some projection or
theory.    I, myself, don't yet see computers becoming very good at learning
at all, especially not about things *they* are interested in.   So if
someone can show me how the stages of that are in fact developing, and
likely to continue, then maybe I'd see the premonition of it coming to
fruition as real too.   

 

I guess I think humans and all other animals survive on the validity of what
amounts to their 'premonitions'.   They sense danger, an approaching change
in weather or feeling hungry or someone near looking for fun, all
'premonitions' of something abut to happen.     We have hunches and
questions about things, and then we go poke around and look to find
something real about them.     It's just another way to say how it seems the
'wet ware' is programmed to learn, by prompted searches, that may then
prompt searches...etc.   

 

That's one of the characteristics of natural learning perhaps an ABM might
try to emulate.

 

Phil

- Steve

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