What a Panopoly of responses (or is it more of a Plethora?) on this topic here.
I can't begin to respond to the many very interesting and thoughtful points made here. This general topic (the existential implications of the co-evolution of humans and technology, the "extended phenotype" as Dawkins calls it). Heidegger's (1977?) essay on the topic as provided is quite interesting and deserves a complete reading, as do several other references here! Too bad my queue is overfull and my own extended phenotype (mostly my primary use laptop) is over-extended. I'm trying to extend my extended phenotype more into the cloud (typing this in a webmail client, which I normally loathe!) while considering a second backup of my system on Google Drive (not just my in-house Time Capsule)... Our own local player in the game of Singularity, Stephen Kotler, puts a lot of interesting ideas out there in his recent books such as "Abundance" and "The Rise of Superman"... I'm pretty much a luddite myself, or at least "conservative" in the sense of believing that we are outdriving our headlights on many fronts. That said, I think it is inevitable... short of a global shift in consciousness, or perhaps at least in the first world (where most of this tech development is driven from by rampant capitalistic consumerism). To counter this pessimism, I am reminded that many natural processes follow neither a linear nor an exponential growth curve but rather more of a sigmoid which admits into the situation the idea of saturation. The long term growth of many things is less than it's local growth at optimum, as the growth is characterized by a series of piecewise sigmoidal curves, each with perhaps a higher slope at optimum than the last, but never the implied exponential when apprehended before the saturation element takes over. I think the existential threat of loss of meaning is very acute and many who lost their "livelihood" in the 2001 dot.bomb or the 2008 banking/real-estate debacles. Many of these people (self included by some measure) have had to reinvent, not only a career, but an identity. Formal retirement (much of the list here) has the same challenges except that it is socially integrated and something we "plan for". As for myself, while I'm keeping the wolf from the door financially, I can imagine how hard it is for others to keep not only financial integrity but also identity integrity. If I had not started a business larger than myself and had a hand in sfX "back in the day", I might have experienced much more dis-integration of self than I actually experience today. I like the idea of universal support up to the issues so aptly pointed out by REC and others. I like the idea of leaving people *room* to (re)invent themselves as creative human beings without the current (archaic?) constraints of being productive in a consumerist society. *SO* many things have to change roughly at the same time for this to come about, I am not confident we will get there quickly or efficiently. This brings me to a point about "efficiency". Evolution has never been "efficient" by our standards, it seems always to use mass extinctions and frighteningly short life-spans to drive it's own engine of creativity (whatever that means)... so I'm not swayed by arguments that suggest we *can* evolve without outrageous cost to most of the participants. Not intended to be a bummer here, just appreciating the complexity of this discussion as well as (I think) of these times! - Steve > On 06/06/2016 02:22 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > > https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions-f05d84c44f1a > > was interesting, vis a vis what happens when you just give poor people > > money. > > Excerpt: > > So in concrete terms, just how much dumber does poverty make you? > > > > "Our effects correspond to between 13 and 14 IQ points," Shafir says. "Thatâs comparable to losing a nightâs sleep or the effects of alcoholism." Whatâs remarkable is that we could have figured all this out 30 years ago. Shafir and Mullainathan werenât relying on anything so complicated as brain scans. "Economists have been studying poverty for years and psychologists have been studying cognitive limitations for years,â Shafir explains. âWe just put two and two together." > > That is a good read. Thanks. > > > On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote: > > > >> A problem with the > >> "day jobber" approach is the narrowing of substantial things to what > >> happens to be in the interest of dominant organizations. Even in silicon > >> valley, that's a harsh narrowing of the possible. So I would say do it to > >> make the world interesting and not just for humanitarian reasons. > > Yep. We can't be arrogant enough to think we don't need those large hubs of intention, though. I can imagine if there's any truth to the scale-free network concept, then lots of people _should_ sign over their labor to the interests of some large organization. But that's a far cry from the current thinking that everybody should have a "job" and that over simplifies around unemployment stats. When I hear politicians say things like "job creator" or talk about how the people want jobs, I get a little nauseous. The word "job" has always had an obligatory tone to it. Objective-oriented people, in my experience, tend to talk about things like career paths or in terms of dreams, roles, achievements, etc. If they talk about jobs, it's usually in the context of using a job as a stepping stone toward their objective. Jobs are tools, means to an end, not ends in themselves. > > I suppose it's kinda like those motorcycle commercials that say things like "The journey is the destination". No, the destination is the destination and the journey is the journey. Sheesh. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't have fun while using your tool. And some tools are way more fun than others. But anyone who talks about creating tools just for the sake of the tool, is .. well, a bit of a tool. > > -- > ⣠glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > --
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