date:20220412

Today, humans go to some length to record history, to preserve companies and 
their assets.  But for some reason preserving the means to do things -- the 
essence of a mind -- this has this different status.  Why not seek to inherit 
minds too?  Sure, I can see the same knowledge base can be represented in 
different ways.   But, studying those neural representations could also be 
informative.   What if neural structures have similar topological properties 
given some curriculum?  What a waste to create that neural structure over and 
over..

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 7:22 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

On 4/12/22 5:53 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I am not saying such a system would not need to be predatory or parasitic, 
> just that it can be arranged to preserve the contents of a library.

And I can't help knee-jerking that when a cell attempts to live forever (and/or 
replicate itself perfectly) that it becomes a tumour in the
organ(ism) that gave rise to it, and even metastasizes, spreading it's hubris 
to other organs/systems.

Somehow, I think the inter-planetary post-human singularians are more like 
metastatic cells than "the future of humanity".   Maybe that is NOT a dead-end, 
but my mortality-chauvanistic "self" rebels.   Maybe if I live long enough I'll 
come around... or maybe there will be a CAS mediated edit to fix that pessimism 
in me.

>> On Apr 12, 2022, at 4:29 PM, glen  wrote:
>>
>> Dude. Every time I think we could stop, you say something I object to. >8^D 
>> You're doing it on purpose. I'm sure of it ... like pulling the wings off 
>> flies and cackling like a madman.
>>
>> No, the maintenance protocol must be *part of* the meat-like intelligence. 
>> That's why I mention things like suicide or starving yourself because your 
>> wife stops feeding you. To me, a forever-autopoietic system seems like a 
>> perpetual motion machine ... there's something being taken for granted by 
>> the conception ... some unlimited free energy or somesuch.
>>
>>> On 4/12/22 16:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> That meat-like intelligence could live forever with the right maintenance 
>>> protocol.
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 4:11 PM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>>> heuristics Ha! 8^D But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* 
>>> heuristics generated by an autonomous car capture the high-dimensional 
>>> opportunity I believe meat organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent 
>>> evolution of the ANNs and the stereotyped out-group are more concrete than 
>>> most synthetic minds. But my claim, were I to actually hold it and try to 
>>> state it more clearly, is that meat, living in meat space, is more open 
>>> than those 2 examples. It's the openness that provides the meat with the 
>>> opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous car are more fixed, more closed.
>>> However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. 
>>> But it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's 
>>> already looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years 
>>> ago. And if we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen 
>>> sooner than I, this meat bag, thinks.
 On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:
 Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like 
 GPT3 and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a 
 baseline and take divergent paths from different training.
 None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars 
 even know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
 https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/

 -Original Message-
 From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
 Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
 To: friam@redfish.com
 Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
 heuristics

 Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" 
 infoscape) fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) 
 particulars. Even if we have one 400 year old vampire telling funny 
 stories to a 30 year vampire about a now-exploded vampire from 700 years 
 ago, the sheer *number* of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year 
 lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... some leaving out of important 
 detail.

 And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
 journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading 
 and learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the 
 arrival at, emergence

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Last Friday I was waiting to take a left across traffic.  There was a Muni 
train coming in my direction that was going to block my turn for a few seconds. 
 Rushing it was possible, but I had a passenger.  Also, I remembered the 
obscured downhill right lane I'd be entering had some row houses along it, and 
some street parking.   Accelerating hard into that lane could spook a 
pedestrian or someone getting into their car.  I could see this short delay was 
going to happen so as I slowed to a stop, while signaling, I tucked as close to 
the center as I could, with enough margin to avoid getting clipped by the wide 
Muni.  I did this so people behind me that wanted to go straight or take a 
right could do so if they were cautious to shimmy through.  But that wasn't 
good enough, and the person behind me started waving their hands and yelling at 
me. [1] In this case I thought the person behind me couldn't possibly miss the 
huge approaching Muni and would estimate the few seconds they could wait.   
Somehow, there are drivers that really can't imagine that another driver is 
trying to help them or visualize even simple mechanics of a few moving objects. 
   They can only lay on their horn.My dog has way more finesse in herding 
and pursuit situations.So, yeah, there are things that will be tricky for a 
ML system to model that are semi-cognitive, but the bar for human drivers is 
pretty low.  A subset of city drivers are about as smart as insects -- all 
signaling, no lookahead, and no modeling.   At least autonomous driving systems 
will get far more scrutiny than your typical 16 year old and a DMV test.

[1] Now I am a little ashamed to admit it, but in such circumstances, I have 
been known to take another block just to avoid holding anyone up, and then 
doubling back.   As I get older I see these situations as opportunities to 
frustrate people that deserve to be frustrated.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 7:07 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

On 4/12/22 5:10 PM, glen wrote:
> Ha! 8^D
>
> But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated 
> by an autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I 
> believe meat organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of 
> the ANNs and the stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most 
> synthetic minds. But my claim, were I to actually hold it and try to 
> state it more clearly, is that meat, living in meat space, is more 
> open than those 2 examples. It's the openness that provides the meat 
> with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous car are more fixed, more 
> closed.
>
> However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat 
> intelligence. But it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence 
> to do so. It's already looking a lot more like meat intelligence than 
> it was even 10 years ago. And if we stay at this supralinear rate (or 
> higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this meat bag, thinks.

As a "meat bag" driving a car, I find myself *regularly* imagining what a 
driverless car would do in the current/instantaneous moment as I interrupt my 
own automatic driving instincts to run a supervisory analysis consciously to 
make sure that my instincts are doing "the right thing" which usually yields 
something like an infinite regress of second guessing which only 
ends/completes/halts because the clock runs out... 
the race condition converges between my reactions/instincts/conscious-review 
and the events-of-the-world.

As I've had *very* few (but not-zero) out-of-control moments in a vehicle and 
as I write this, I feel like I should (if I could) collect up my most authentic 
memories of those moments and do some kind of meta-analysis of them.   What I 
have done in the moment (after the chaotic events returned to somewhat linear 
in my apprehension) is usually to peg some overly conservative heuristic over 
the top of my more regular suite of heuristics that seem to keep me on my own 
side of the road and maintaining appropriate speeds and yields in most 
contexts.   With time, the precedence of those heuristics fade or get papered 
over by "yet other" heuristics for various other competing goals (hurrying, 
staying entertained, testing my abilities, etc.).

In any case, I have no trouble imagining the car I'm driving (with the mildest 
of safety features like sonar proximity alarms in bumpers for parking and "your 
turn-signal is on, dipshit" and automatic
driving/headlamps) incrementally getting better and better at helping me drive 
until *I* am either letting it do the driving and running my "supervisory 
heuristics" as I observe and consider intervening, OR even just putting on my 
VR goggles and watching a movie or playing a game or hacking lamely at some 
code while the car drives me off a cliff. Chances are the ability of my car 
will exceed my abil

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics



On 4/12/22 5:53 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I am not saying such a system would not need to be predatory or parasitic, just 
that it can be arranged to preserve the contents of a library.


And I can't help knee-jerking that when a cell attempts to live forever 
(and/or replicate itself perfectly) that it becomes a tumour in the 
organ(ism) that gave rise to it, and even metastasizes, spreading it's 
hubris to other organs/systems.


Somehow, I think the inter-planetary post-human singularians are more 
like metastatic cells than "the future of humanity".   Maybe that is NOT 
a dead-end, but my mortality-chauvanistic "self" rebels.   Maybe if I 
live long enough I'll come around... or maybe there will be a CAS 
mediated edit to fix that pessimism in me.




On Apr 12, 2022, at 4:29 PM, glen  wrote:

Dude. Every time I think we could stop, you say something I object to. >8^D 
You're doing it on purpose. I'm sure of it ... like pulling the wings off flies 
and cackling like a madman.

No, the maintenance protocol must be *part of* the meat-like intelligence. 
That's why I mention things like suicide or starving yourself because your wife 
stops feeding you. To me, a forever-autopoietic system seems like a perpetual 
motion machine ... there's something being taken for granted by the conception 
... some unlimited free energy or somesuch.


On 4/12/22 16:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:
That meat-like intelligence could live forever with the right maintenance 
protocol.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 4:11 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
Ha! 8^D
But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated by an 
autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I believe meat 
organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of the ANNs and the 
stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most synthetic minds. But my 
claim, were I to actually hold it and try to state it more clearly, is that 
meat, living in meat space, is more open than those 2 examples. It's the 
openness that provides the meat with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous 
car are more fixed, more closed.
However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. But 
it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's already 
looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years ago. And if 
we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this 
meat bag, thinks.

On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like GPT3 
and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a baseline and 
take divergent paths from different training.
None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars even 
know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. Even if we have 
one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year vampire about a now-exploded 
vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year 
lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.

And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and 
learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival 
at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete detail 
is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. Each learner 
is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.

What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that the 
concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're 
getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space vs time 
tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a sequential system can 
simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give it the time to do so ... and the 
amount of time it takes to do it is related to the amount of space the parallel system 
uses. Another way to think of it is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, or 
good. But those are low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world 
is high-dimensional.

On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:

Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics



On 4/12/22 5:10 PM, glen wrote:

Ha! 8^D

But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated 
by an autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I 
believe meat organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of 
the ANNs and the stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most 
synthetic minds. But my claim, were I to actually hold it and try to 
state it more clearly, is that meat, living in meat space, is more 
open than those 2 examples. It's the openness that provides the meat 
with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous car are more fixed, more 
closed.


However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat 
intelligence. But it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence 
to do so. It's already looking a lot more like meat intelligence than 
it was even 10 years ago. And if we stay at this supralinear rate (or 
higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this meat bag, thinks.


As a "meat bag" driving a car, I find myself *regularly* imagining what 
a driverless car would do in the current/instantaneous moment as I 
interrupt my own automatic driving instincts to run a supervisory 
analysis consciously to make sure that my instincts are doing "the right 
thing" which usually yields something like an infinite regress of second 
guessing which only ends/completes/halts because the clock runs out... 
the race condition converges between my 
reactions/instincts/conscious-review and the events-of-the-world.


As I've had *very* few (but not-zero) out-of-control moments in a 
vehicle and as I write this, I feel like I should (if I could) collect 
up my most authentic memories of those moments and do some kind of 
meta-analysis of them.   What I have done in the moment (after the 
chaotic events returned to somewhat linear in my apprehension) is 
usually to peg some overly conservative heuristic over the top of my 
more regular suite of heuristics that seem to keep me on my own side of 
the road and maintaining appropriate speeds and yields in most 
contexts.   With time, the precedence of those heuristics fade or get 
papered over by "yet other" heuristics for various other competing goals 
(hurrying, staying entertained, testing my abilities, etc.).


In any case, I have no trouble imagining the car I'm driving (with the 
mildest of safety features like sonar proximity alarms in bumpers for 
parking and "your turn-signal is on, dipshit" and automatic 
driving/headlamps) incrementally getting better and better at helping me 
drive until *I* am either letting it do the driving and running my 
"supervisory heuristics" as I observe and consider intervening, OR even 
just putting on my VR goggles and watching a movie or playing a game or 
hacking lamely at some code while the car drives me off a cliff.  
Chances are the ability of my car will exceed my ability as a 
highway/urban driver sometime before *I* become a radical hazard as a 
driver (NM DMV just allowed me to renew my DL for 8 years sight unseen).


If my car emulates *my* style of driving (because it trains on my actual 
driving?) somewhere down the road (pun recognized but not intended), I 
can't even imagine what it would mean for it to have a subjective, 
conscious experience like my own, even if somehow there is a monitor 
running that layers in heuristics uncannily like the ones *I* paste up 
in my imagination. Of course, I *know* that a proper self-driving 
vehicle will be trained on some maximal ensemble of *good drivers* and 
not on my personal ideosyncratic style.  It might be different if it 
were training for Stock Car racing on a dirt track where my 
ideosyncracies might be somehow useful (or more likely entertaining).


I don't know if anyone else has these kinds of self-reflective episodes 
about who we might (already) be becoming as the boundaries between our 
phenotypic selves and our techno-extended selves blur.   I have been 
riding a bicycle since I was about 4, a motorcycle since I was about 15, 
and driving a car since soon after that.   My entire CN system all the 
way out to the fine-structure is co-evolved with those activities, even 
though those devices didn't even exist until about 200 and 130 years 
respectively.  Yesterday I fumbled my newer, more manageable bicycle (as 
of 4 months ago) into a spill and though it has been a couple of decades 
since I fell off of a bike, it seems my CNS/muscle memory remembered how 
to fall yet better than it remembered how to not-fall.  Neolithic (or 
even mesolithic) hunters probably had an even more acute merging with 
their various tools than I have with my own (esp. vehicles, keyboards, 
tracking devices, hammers, chainsaws, alexa, siri ... ).





On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net 
like GPT3 and run it in two places at once or have different 
instances use a baseline and take divergent paths from different 
training.
None of that is possible for humans, at leas

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

I am not saying such a system would not need to be predatory or parasitic, just 
that it can be arranged to preserve the contents of a library.

> On Apr 12, 2022, at 4:29 PM, glen  wrote:
> 
> Dude. Every time I think we could stop, you say something I object to. >8^D 
> You're doing it on purpose. I'm sure of it ... like pulling the wings off 
> flies and cackling like a madman.
> 
> No, the maintenance protocol must be *part of* the meat-like intelligence. 
> That's why I mention things like suicide or starving yourself because your 
> wife stops feeding you. To me, a forever-autopoietic system seems like a 
> perpetual motion machine ... there's something being taken for granted by the 
> conception ... some unlimited free energy or somesuch.
> 
>> On 4/12/22 16:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> That meat-like intelligence could live forever with the right maintenance 
>> protocol.
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 4:11 PM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>> heuristics
>> Ha! 8^D
>> But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated by an 
>> autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I believe meat 
>> organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of the ANNs and the 
>> stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most synthetic minds. But my 
>> claim, were I to actually hold it and try to state it more clearly, is that 
>> meat, living in meat space, is more open than those 2 examples. It's the 
>> openness that provides the meat with the opportunity. The ANNs and 
>> autonomous car are more fixed, more closed.
>> However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. 
>> But it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's 
>> already looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years 
>> ago. And if we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen 
>> sooner than I, this meat bag, thinks.
>>> On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like 
>>> GPT3 and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a 
>>> baseline and take divergent paths from different training.
>>> None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars 
>>> even know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
>>> https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/
>>> 
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>>> heuristics
>>> 
>>> Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
>>> fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. 
>>> Even if we have one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year 
>>> vampire about a now-exploded vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* 
>>> of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year lifespan *forces* some 
>>> abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.
>>> 
>>> And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
>>> journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading 
>>> and learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the 
>>> arrival at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that 
>>> concrete detail is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn 
>>> it all. Each learner is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.
>>> 
>>> What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that 
>>> the concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", 
>>> you're getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of 
>>> the space vs time tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism 
>>> theorem. Sure, a sequential system can simulate a parallel one perfectly, 
>>> but only if you give it the time to do so ... and the amount of time it 
>>> takes to do it is related to the amount of space the parallel system uses. 
>>> Another way to think of it is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, 
>>> or good. But those are low-dimensional. The space being balanced by 
>>> organisms in the world is high-dimensional.
>>> 
>>> On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:
 Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have 
 more intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the 
 heterarchical/holarchical connection/communication you suggest.   Or so my 
 "just so" story relates.
 
 The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
 communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


Dude. Every time I think we could stop, you say something I object to. >8^D 
You're doing it on purpose. I'm sure of it ... like pulling the wings off flies 
and cackling like a madman.

No, the maintenance protocol must be *part of* the meat-like intelligence. 
That's why I mention things like suicide or starving yourself because your wife 
stops feeding you. To me, a forever-autopoietic system seems like a perpetual 
motion machine ... there's something being taken for granted by the conception 
... some unlimited free energy or somesuch.

On 4/12/22 16:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:

That meat-like intelligence could live forever with the right maintenance 
protocol.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 4:11 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Ha! 8^D

But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated by an 
autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I believe meat 
organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of the ANNs and the 
stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most synthetic minds. But my 
claim, were I to actually hold it and try to state it more clearly, is that 
meat, living in meat space, is more open than those 2 examples. It's the 
openness that provides the meat with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous 
car are more fixed, more closed.

However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. But 
it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's already 
looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years ago. And if 
we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this 
meat bag, thinks.

On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like GPT3 
and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a baseline and 
take divergent paths from different training.
None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars even 
know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. Even if we have 
one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year vampire about a now-exploded 
vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year 
lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.

And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and 
learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival 
at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete detail 
is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. Each learner 
is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.

What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that the 
concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're 
getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space vs time 
tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a sequential system can 
simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give it the time to do so ... and the 
amount of time it takes to do it is related to the amount of space the parallel system 
uses. Another way to think of it is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, or 
good. But those are low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world 
is high-dimensional.

On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:

Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have more 
intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the heterarchical/holarchical 
connection/communication you suggest.   Or so my "just so" story relates.

The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for that 
in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.

I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class experience of 
frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" (pub/tavern/saloon) in the way Glen 
seems to enjoy (cultivate). My oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy would be over 110 
today (he died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related illness) and until about 5 years 
ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing interlocutors.  I blame COVID, bu

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

That meat-like intelligence could live forever with the right maintenance 
protocol. 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 4:11 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Ha! 8^D

But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated by an 
autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I believe meat 
organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of the ANNs and the 
stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most synthetic minds. But my 
claim, were I to actually hold it and try to state it more clearly, is that 
meat, living in meat space, is more open than those 2 examples. It's the 
openness that provides the meat with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous 
car are more fixed, more closed.

However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. But 
it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's already 
looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years ago. And if 
we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this 
meat bag, thinks.

On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like 
> GPT3 and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a 
> baseline and take divergent paths from different training.
> None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars 
> even know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
> https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
> 
> Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
> fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. 
> Even if we have one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year 
> vampire about a now-exploded vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* 
> of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year lifespan *forces* some 
> abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.
> 
> And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
> journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and 
> learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival 
> at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete 
> detail is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. 
> Each learner is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.
> 
> What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that 
> the concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're 
> getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space 
> vs time tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a 
> sequential system can simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give 
> it the time to do so ... and the amount of time it takes to do it is related 
> to the amount of space the parallel system uses. Another way to think of it 
> is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, or good. But those are 
> low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world is 
> high-dimensional.
> 
> On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have 
>> more intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the 
>> heterarchical/holarchical connection/communication you suggest.   Or so my 
>> "just so" story relates.
>>
>> The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
>> communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for 
>> that in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.
>>
>> I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class experience 
>> of frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" (pub/tavern/saloon) in the way 
>> Glen seems to enjoy (cultivate). My oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy 
>> would be over 110 today (he died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related 
>> illness) and until about 5 years ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing 
>> interlocutors.  I blame COVID, but the reasons are probably larger and more 
>> nefarious.
> 
> 

-- 
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙


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 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_re

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


Ha! 8^D

But neither the ANN clone, nor the *stereotyped* heuristics generated by an 
autonomous car capture the high-dimensional opportunity I believe meat 
organisms experience. Yes, the subsequent evolution of the ANNs and the 
stereotyped out-group are more concrete than most synthetic minds. But my 
claim, were I to actually hold it and try to state it more clearly, is that 
meat, living in meat space, is more open than those 2 examples. It's the 
openness that provides the meat with the opportunity. The ANNs and autonomous 
car are more fixed, more closed.

However, I do believe machine intelligence *will* reach meat intelligence. But 
it'll have to look a lot more like meat intelligence to do so. It's already 
looking a lot more like meat intelligence than it was even 10 years ago. And if 
we stay at this supralinear rate (or higher), it'll happen sooner than I, this 
meat bag, thinks.

On 4/12/22 15:58, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like GPT3 
and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a baseline and 
take divergent paths from different training.
None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars even 
know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. Even if we have 
one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year vampire about a now-exploded 
vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year 
lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.

And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and 
learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival 
at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete detail 
is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. Each learner 
is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.

What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that the 
concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're 
getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space vs time 
tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a sequential system can 
simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give it the time to do so ... and the 
amount of time it takes to do it is related to the amount of space the parallel system 
uses. Another way to think of it is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, or 
good. But those are low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world 
is high-dimensional.

On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:

Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have more 
intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the heterarchical/holarchical 
connection/communication you suggest.   Or so my "just so" story relates.

The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for that 
in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.

I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class experience of 
frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" (pub/tavern/saloon) in the way Glen 
seems to enjoy (cultivate). My oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy would be over 110 
today (he died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related illness) and until about 5 years 
ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing interlocutors.  I blame COVID, but the reasons 
are probably larger and more nefarious.





--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙


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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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archives:
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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Now it is entirely possible to take a massive pre-trained neural net like GPT3 
and run it in two places at once or have different instances use a baseline and 
take divergent paths from different training.
None of that is possible for humans, at least yet.Some autonomous cars even 
know enough to be afraid of the police!  (Regarding concreteness.)  
https://electrek.co/2022/04/10/gm-cruise-autonomous-taxi-pulled-over-by-police-in-san-francisco-without-humans-bolts-off-u-cruise-responds/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:47 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape) 
fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. 
Even if we have one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year 
vampire about a now-exploded vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* of 
anecdotes required to capture a 400 year lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... 
some leaving out of important detail.

And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD 
journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and 
learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival 
at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete detail 
is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. Each learner 
is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.

What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that the 
concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're 
getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space vs 
time tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a 
sequential system can simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give 
it the time to do so ... and the amount of time it takes to do it is related to 
the amount of space the parallel system uses. Another way to think of it is the 
project management triangle: cheap, fast, or good. But those are 
low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world is 
high-dimensional.

On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:
> Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have more 
> intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the 
> heterarchical/holarchical connection/communication you suggest.   Or so my 
> "just so" story relates.
> 
> The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
> communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for that 
> in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.
> 
> I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class experience 
> of frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" (pub/tavern/saloon) in the way 
> Glen seems to enjoy (cultivate). My oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy 
> would be over 110 today (he died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related 
> illness) and until about 5 years ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing 
> interlocutors.  I blame COVID, but the reasons are probably larger and more 
> nefarious.

-- 
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙

.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Exactly. Both of these (low turnover wisdom propagation & "flat" infoscape)
fail in my conception because they lack the concrete (definit) particulars. Even if we have
one 400 year old vampire telling funny stories to a 30 year vampire about a now-exploded
vampire from 700 years ago, the sheer *number* of anecdotes required to capture a 400 year
lifespan *forces* some abstraction ... some leaving out of important detail.

And even if the concrete details of why, say, Galileo was such an OCD
journaling nerd can be found in biographies or whatnot, actually reading and
learning about all the persnickety nonsense that was *crucial* to the arrival
at, emergence of, any given inflection point, ... even if that concrete detail
is logged/documented out there somewhere, nobody can learn it all. Each learner
is forced to take an abstracted slice through it.

What the commitment to meat space interactions is, is a way to ensure that the
concreteness remains ... at least within *some* small "open ball", you're
getting a high-dimensional opportunity. I think of it in terms of the space vs time
tradeoff and (yes, broken record) the parallelism theorem. Sure, a sequential system can
simulate a parallel one perfectly, but only if you give it the time to do so ... and the
amount of time it takes to do it is related to the amount of space the parallel system
uses. Another way to think of it is the project management triangle: cheap, fast, or
good. But those are low-dimensional. The space being balanced by organisms in the world
is high-dimensional.

On 4/12/22 14:19, Steve Smith wrote:

Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have more
intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the heterarchical/holarchical
connection/communication you suggest. Or so my "just so" story relates.

The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global)
communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for that
in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.

I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class experience of
frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" (pub/tavern/saloon) in the way Glen
seems to enjoy (cultivate). My oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy would be over 110
today (he died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related illness) and until about 5 years
ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing interlocutors. I blame COVID, but the reasons
are probably larger and more nefarious.

--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙

.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:
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1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

I'm not really convinced that digital ML won't reach human intelligence.   
Progress is by leaps and bounds.  It seems impossible to keep up with that 
literature.
Digital would be live forever.Sure, media would degrade and need periodic 
replacement.   How is it obvious that is impossible?   Fault tolerant QC would 
be a trickier case to make, but not clear at all that is relevant to cognition.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:29 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

But what *is* the distribution of deaths for brain/cns animals? with or without 
scaling? Is it 75 years for humans? Is it Gaussian? Surely not. Does it differ 
if you base it on biomass instead of number of organisms?

I can't help but think of behavior like Gödel's ... starving because you only 
trust one person to give you food ... or all the "geniuses" who went insane ... 
or all the teenagers that die from stupidity or recklessness. I also can't help 
but think about the role, if there is one, of all the ancient people who serve 
no role other than maybe as some sort of focus or semantic hook for their 
family/friends. If we believe in evolutionary pressure, surely we believe in 
some multidimensional front, of which biological death is only a sub-front. But 
I guess anything made up of dna and cells with nuclei would accumulate cruft at 
about the same rate.

As for decoupling cognitive power from bit rot, *if* the gizmos had a "healthy" 
garbage collector, then the faster rate might help. But if the overhead of GC 
is somehow pegged to the processor rate (or the kind of instructions being 
executed), then it might not.

On 4/12/22 14:26, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> This japanese toddlers put me in mind of Ten Meter Tower 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2AvkKA4kM 
> .  Is he going to jump?  Is she 
> climbing back down?
> 
>   -- rec --
> 
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 4:48 PM Marcus Daniels  > wrote:
> 
> If there is something essential about turnover, then it seems like the 
> rate would be informative.  Why 75 years and not 25 or 1000?  Why should 
> every kind of life form conform to about 75 years?
> Is there a universal logical depth that explains the need for cognitive 
> death, and thus death?    If we change the processor rate to be 100 times 
> faster than a human, should those gizmos or organisms expire more quickly?
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  > On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 1:38 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
> heuristics
> 
> Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to 
> blind you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within 
> several clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he 
> contradicts himself but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.
> 
> *If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows 
> further flex and slop between mind and body, that something ... that "muscle" 
> ... will be exercised through generational turnover ... i.e. death. Trying to 
> forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes because I disagree with Haidt so 
> starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to fail.
> 
> p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my 
> lawn" is laid out here: 
> https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 
>  It takes me 
> longer and longer to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often used 
> for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, it's trivial to gauge the 
> authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching how 
> they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for 
> effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.
> 
> 
> On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>  > For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of 
> cultural evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition 
> coupling if it is possible to do so?
>  > What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
>  >
>  > [1] 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
>  
> 
>  >
>  > -Original Message-
>  > From: Friam  > On Behalf Of glen
>  > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
>  > To: friam@redfish.com 
>  > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adapt

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

But what *is* the distribution of deaths for brain/cns animals? with or without 
scaling? Is it 75 years for humans? Is it Gaussian? Surely not. Does it differ 
if you base it on biomass instead of number of organisms?

I can't help but think of behavior like Gödel's ... starving because you only trust one 
person to give you food ... or all the "geniuses" who went insane ... or all 
the teenagers that die from stupidity or recklessness. I also can't help but think about 
the role, if there is one, of all the ancient people who serve no role other than maybe 
as some sort of focus or semantic hook for their family/friends. If we believe in 
evolutionary pressure, surely we believe in some multidimensional front, of which 
biological death is only a sub-front. But I guess anything made up of dna and cells with 
nuclei would accumulate cruft at about the same rate.

As for decoupling cognitive power from bit rot, *if* the gizmos had a "healthy" 
garbage collector, then the faster rate might help. But if the overhead of GC is somehow 
pegged to the processor rate (or the kind of instructions being executed), then it might 
not.

On 4/12/22 14:26, Roger Critchlow wrote:

This japanese toddlers put me in mind of Ten Meter Tower 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2AvkKA4kM 
.  Is he going to jump?  Is she 
climbing back down?

  -- rec --

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 4:48 PM Marcus Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:

If there is something essential about turnover, then it seems like the rate 
would be informative.  Why 75 years and not 25 or 1000?  Why should every kind 
of life form conform to about 75 years?
Is there a universal logical depth that explains the need for cognitive 
death, and thus death?    If we change the processor rate to be 100 times 
faster than a human, should those gizmos or organisms expire more quickly?

-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> 
On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 1:38 PM
To: friam@redfish.com 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
heuristics

Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to 
blind you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within 
several clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he contradicts 
himself but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.

*If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows further flex and slop 
between mind and body, that something ... that "muscle" ... will be exercised through 
generational turnover ... i.e. death. Trying to forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes 
because I disagree with Haidt so starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to fail.

p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn" is laid out 
here: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 
 It takes me longer and longer to 
learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, 
it's trivial to gauge the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching how they 
induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for effort" in most contexts, 
where I try anyway.

On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
 > For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of 
cultural evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition coupling 
if it is possible to do so?
 > What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
 >
 > [1] 
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

 >
 > -Original Message-
 > From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
 > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
 > To: friam@redfish.com 
 > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
heuristics
 >
 > Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like 
chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can use 
the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the 
philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some cross-trophic 
relation).
 >
 > On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
 >> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
 >>
 >> -Original Message-
 >> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
 >> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
 >> To: friam@redfish.com 
 >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selectiv

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

2022-04-12 Thread Roger Critchlow

This japanese toddlers put me in mind of Ten Meter Tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2AvkKA4kM.  Is he going to jump?  Is she
climbing back down?

 -- rec --

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 4:48 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> If there is something essential about turnover, then it seems like the
> rate would be informative.  Why 75 years and not 25 or 1000?  Why should
> every kind of life form conform to about 75 years?
> Is there a universal logical depth that explains the need for cognitive
> death, and thus death?If we change the processor rate to be 100 times
> faster than a human, should those gizmos or organisms expire more quickly?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 1:38 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
>
> Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to
> blind you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within
> several clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he
> contradicts himself but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.
>
> *If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows
> further flex and slop between mind and body, that something ... that
> "muscle" ... will be exercised through generational turnover ... i.e.
> death. Trying to forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes because I disagree
> with Haidt so starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to
> fail.
>
> p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn"
> is laid out here:
> https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 It takes
> me longer and longer to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often
> used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, it's trivial to gauge
> the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching
> how they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for
> effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.
>
>
> On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of
> cultural evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition
> coupling if it is possible to do so?
> > What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
> >
> > [1]
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
> > To: friam@redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >
> > Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like
> chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We
> can use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for
> the philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some
> cross-trophic relation).
> >
> > On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
> >>
> >> -Original Message-
> >> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> >> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
> >> To: friam@redfish.com
> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
> heuristics
> >>
> >> But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics,
> *if* our minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking
> more polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to
> see the memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion
> of mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then
> memorability/intuitiveness of new ideas will remain unrelated through
> generations of dead/replaced bodies.
> >>
> >> My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly
> coupled to one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think
> memorability/intuitiveness increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die,
> the new bodies are slightly restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a
> fake-it-till-you-make-it. The only reason we have young kids that
> understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) better than the old farts did
> is because the young kids grew into the idea.
> >>
> >> No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.
> >>
> >> On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >>> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live
> thousands of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems
> related..
> >>> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away
> from attractors?
> >>> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can
> explore a large space -- if there is communication between individuals and
> across generations.
> >>> -Original Message-
> >>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> >>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
> >>> To: friam@r

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics



On 4/12/22 12:19 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
attractors?
If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
generations.


I have an obsessive-but-under-motivated belief in 
complexity/diversity/heterarchy as the solution to everything. It 
evidences itself here by thinking that our modern "way of being" suffers 
from a lack of multi-generational households-neighborhoods and too often 
even, a lack of interest in the voices of generations past/future.  Your 
hypothetical vampire-culture would seem to offer longer time-scale 
connections and (perhaps) attendant perspective and ?wisdom?   I don't 
know vampire-culture beyond a guilty Bram Stoker and  Anne Rice reading 
or two, but the latter definitely seems to reference this nicely...  
offering a certain mentorship role by the long-lived to the 
yet-more-mortal (armatured around blood and other lusts, of course).


Generations past (and under-mobile near-subsistence cultures today) have 
more intergenerational households and neighborhoods providing the 
heterarchical/holarchical connection/communication you suggest.   Or so 
my "just so" story relates.


The expansive breadth offered by global (near-instantaneous, global) 
communication/publication/relationship connections possibly makes up for 
that in the large, a major refactoring of problems and solutions.


I personally suffer from the lack of cross-cultural, cross-class 
experience of frequenting a neighborhood "watering hole" 
(pub/tavern/saloon) in the way Glen seems to enjoy (cultivate). My 
oldest regular drinking-philosophy buddy would be over 110 today (he 
died over 20 years ago from alcohol-related illness) and until about 5 
years ago I had a small cohort of 30ish imbibing interlocutors.  I blame 
COVID, but the reasons are probably larger and more nefarious.





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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

If there is something essential about turnover, then it seems like the rate 
would be informative.  Why 75 years and not 25 or 1000?  Why should every kind 
of life form conform to about 75 years?  
Is there a universal logical depth that explains the need for cognitive death, 
and thus death?If we change the processor rate to be 100 times faster than 
a human, should those gizmos or organisms expire more quickly?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 1:38 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to blind 
you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within several 
clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he contradicts himself 
but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.

*If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows further 
flex and slop between mind and body, that something ... that "muscle" ... will 
be exercised through generational turnover ... i.e. death. Trying to forcibly 
graft "our" (in scare quotes because I disagree with Haidt so starkly) 
nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to fail.

p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn" is 
laid out here: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 
It takes me longer and longer to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is 
often used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own perspective, it's trivial to 
gauge the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by watching 
how they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for 
effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.

On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of cultural 
> evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition coupling if 
> it is possible to do so?
> What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?
> 
> [1] 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
> 
> Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like 
> chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can 
> use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the 
> philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some 
> cross-trophic relation).
> 
> On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>> heuristics
>>
>> But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
>> minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
>> polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
>> memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
>> mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then 
>> memorability/intuitiveness of new ideas will remain unrelated through 
>> generations of dead/replaced bodies.
>>
>> My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled 
>> to one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think 
>> memorability/intuitiveness increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, 
>> the new bodies are slightly restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a 
>> fake-it-till-you-make-it. The only reason we have young kids that understand 
>> quantum coherence (or Instagram) better than the old farts did is because 
>> the young kids grew into the idea.
>>
>> No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.
>>
>> On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live 
>>> thousands of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems 
>>> related..
>>> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
>>> attractors?
>>> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
>>> large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
>>> generations.
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>>> heuristics
>>>
>>> What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always 
>>> present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity 
>>> wells or attractors where if yo

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


Yeah, that article is typical Haidt, full of just enough good evidence to blind 
you to the sanctimonious doctrinal pedantry that surrounds it. Within several 
clumps of postulates, one clump as small as 2 sentences, he contradicts himself 
but somehow thinks the narrative stays coherent. Pffft.

*If* there is something structural about brain/CNS animals that allows further flex and slop 
between mind and body, that something ... that "muscle" ... will be exercised through 
generational turnover ... i.e. death. Trying to forcibly graft "our" (in scare quotes 
because I disagree with Haidt so starkly) nostalgia onto the evolving culture is guaranteed to fail.

p.s. An important element directly contradicting Haidt's "get off my lawn" is laid out 
here: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-algospeak-dialect-74961b4803b7 It takes me longer and longer 
to learn new lingo. And facility with a lingo is often used for gatekeeping.  But, from my own 
perspective, it's trivial to gauge the authenticity of an in-group's commitment to their gestalt by 
watching how they induct/indoctrinate proximal outsiders. I can still land an "E for 
effort" in most contexts, where I try anyway.


On 4/12/22 11:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:

For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of cultural 
evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition coupling if it 
is possible to do so?
What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?

[1] 
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like 
chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can 
use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the 
philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some 
cross-trophic relation).

On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then memorability/intuitiveness 
of new ideas will remain unrelated through generations of dead/replaced bodies.

My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled to 
one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think memorability/intuitiveness 
increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the new bodies are slightly 
restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it. The 
only reason we have young kids that understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) 
better than the old farts did is because the young kids grew into the idea.

No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.

On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:

The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
attractors?
If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
generations.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always present ability 
to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or attractors where if you 
start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, 
or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go 
with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability 
to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given iteration. The 
size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.

That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's because 
I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the attractor. On an 
arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such attractors are 
mindle

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

For example, this article [1] speaks to the potential fragility of cultural 
evolution.  Wouldn't it make sense to loosen the mind/cognition coupling if it 
is possible to do so?
What is uniquely useful about human animals as an adaptive vehicle?

[1] 
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:50 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like 
chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can 
use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the 
philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some 
cross-trophic relation).

On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
> 
> But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
> minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
> polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
> memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
> mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then 
> memorability/intuitiveness of new ideas will remain unrelated through 
> generations of dead/replaced bodies.
> 
> My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled 
> to one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think 
> memorability/intuitiveness increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the 
> new bodies are slightly restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a 
> fake-it-till-you-make-it. The only reason we have young kids that understand 
> quantum coherence (or Instagram) better than the old farts did is because the 
> young kids grew into the idea.
> 
> No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.
> 
> On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live 
>> thousands of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems 
>> related..
>> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
>> attractors?
>> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
>> large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
>> generations.
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>> heuristics
>>
>> What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always 
>> present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells 
>> or attractors where if you start insisting on a security detail everywhere 
>> you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly 
>> impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go with the flow" 
>> non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability to) 
>> prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't 
>> interfere in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any 
>> given iteration. The size of the computation can interfere, but not the 
>> attractor.
>>
>> That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
>> professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's 
>> because I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the 
>> attractor. On an arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such 
>> attractors are mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper 
>> bag. >8^D
>>
>> On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
>>> going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing 
>>> your soul” [1]
>>>
>>> That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part 
>>> of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
>>> whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big 
>>> picture.  For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big 
>>> picture.  For two it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process 
>>> to disrupt it.  The nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose 
>>> a narrative before going on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection 
>>> and one’s action as a virion cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time 
>>> to wake up a judgmental brain process once embedded.  But what are 
>>> judgements really informed by if sampling is based on an outsiders’ view?

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


Well, I'd argue that cultural evolution is a higher order language like 
chemistry to physics, biology to chemistry, sociology to biology, etc. We can 
use the higher order language agnostically, leaving the metaphysics for the 
philosophers (until/unless practical demands force us to solve some 
cross-trophic relation).

On 4/12/22 11:39, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then memorability/intuitiveness 
of new ideas will remain unrelated through generations of dead/replaced bodies.

My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled to 
one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think memorability/intuitiveness 
increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the new bodies are slightly 
restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it. The 
only reason we have young kids that understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) 
better than the old farts did is because the young kids grew into the idea.

No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.

On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:

The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
attractors?
If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
generations.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always present ability 
to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or attractors where if you 
start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, 
or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go 
with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability 
to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given iteration. The 
size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.

That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's because 
I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the attractor. On an 
arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such attractors are 
mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper bag. >8^D

On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing your 
soul” [1]

That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part of 
productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big picture.  
For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big picture.  For two 
it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to disrupt it.  The 
nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going 
on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a virion 
cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain 
process once embedded.  But what are judgements really informed by if sampling 
is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset 
idea.

[1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ 


*From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
*To:* friam@redfish.com
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Marcus -

  Steve writes:

  < Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth 
and transformation...

  “I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long 
time,” Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because 
the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t 
die, we wi

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Or to put it another way, what good is cultural evolution?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:36 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then memorability/intuitiveness 
of new ideas will remain unrelated through generations of dead/replaced bodies.

My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled to 
one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think memorability/intuitiveness 
increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the new bodies are slightly 
restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it. The 
only reason we have young kids that understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) 
better than the old farts did is because the young kids grew into the idea.

No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.

On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
> of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
> Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
> attractors?
> If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
> large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
> generations.
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
> 
> What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always 
> present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells 
> or attractors where if you start insisting on a security detail everywhere 
> you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly 
> impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go with the flow" 
> non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability to) prefer 
> writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
> in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given 
> iteration. The size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.
> 
> That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
> professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's 
> because I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the 
> attractor. On an arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such 
> attractors are mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper 
> bag. >8^D
> 
> On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
>> going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing 
>> your soul” [1]
>>
>> That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part 
>> of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
>> whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big 
>> picture.  For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big 
>> picture.  For two it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process 
>> to disrupt it.  The nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a 
>> narrative before going on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and 
>> one’s action as a virion cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to 
>> wake up a judgmental brain process once embedded.  But what are judgements 
>> really informed by if sampling is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind 
>> of ties into Glen’s local reset idea.
>>
>> [1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ 
>> 
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
>> *To:* friam@redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
>> heuristics
>>
>> Marcus -
>>
>>  Steve writes:
>>
>>  < Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth 
>> and transformation...
>>
>>  “I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long 
>> time,” Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society 
>> because the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So 
>> if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t 
>> advance.” >
>>
>>
>>
>>  Maybe not?
>>
>>
>>
>>  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  
>>

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


But going back to less memorable/intuitive communicated heuristics, *if* our 
minds/cognitions are loosely coupled to our bodies (I'm thinking more 
polyphenism and robustness, not dualism), then we should be able to see the 
memorability/intuitiveness increase. But if there's a large portion of 
mind/cognition embedded/embodied in our flesh, then memorability/intuitiveness 
of new ideas will remain unrelated through generations of dead/replaced bodies.

My claims that communication is illusory and all thought is tightly coupled to 
one's body reject the former. I.e. I don't think memorability/intuitiveness 
increases as ideas age. Rather, as bodies die, the new bodies are slightly 
restructured to better fit those ideas. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it. The 
only reason we have young kids that understand quantum coherence (or Instagram) 
better than the old farts did is because the young kids grew into the idea.

No dead bodies ⇒ no cultural evolution.

On 4/12/22 11:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:

The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
attractors?
If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
generations.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always present ability 
to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or attractors where if you 
start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, 
or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go 
with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability 
to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given iteration. The 
size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.

That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's because 
I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the attractor. On an 
arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such attractors are 
mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper bag. >8^D

On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing your 
soul” [1]

That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part of 
productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big picture.  
For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big picture.  For two 
it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to disrupt it.  The 
nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going 
on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a virion 
cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain 
process once embedded.  But what are judgements really informed by if sampling 
is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset 
idea.

[1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ 


*From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
*To:* friam@redfish.com
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Marcus -

 Steve writes:

 < Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth 
and transformation...

 “I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” 
Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the 
truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t 
die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >

   


 Maybe not?

   


 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  


I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation in one 
lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide yet-more tools for 
facilitating that.

It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that they can 
be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think it can be, but 
as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but see

Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

The contrast between fewer replication cycles of vampires that live thousands 
of years vs. many generations of short-lived mortals seems related..
Is the walk deep and informative, or is the key thing to stay away from 
attractors?   
If there are truly billions of individuals, then short trips can explore a 
large space -- if there is communication between individuals and across 
generations.
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:05 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always 
present ability to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or 
attractors where if you start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, 
you'll end up like Trump, Romney, or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly 
impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go with the flow" 
non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability to) prefer 
writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given 
iteration. The size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.

That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's 
because I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the 
attractor. On an arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such 
attractors are mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper 
bag. >8^D

On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
> going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing your 
> soul” [1]
> 
> That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part 
> of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
> whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big 
> picture.  For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big 
> picture.  For two it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to 
> disrupt it.  The nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a 
> narrative before going on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and 
> one’s action as a virion cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to 
> wake up a judgmental brain process once embedded.  But what are judgements 
> really informed by if sampling is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of 
> ties into Glen’s local reset idea.
> 
> [1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ 
> 
> 
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive 
> heuristics
> 
> Marcus -
> 
> Steve writes:
> 
> < Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth 
> and transformation...
> 
> “I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long 
> time,” Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society 
> because the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So 
> if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t 
> advance.” >
> 
>   
> 
> Maybe not?
> 
>   
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  
> 
> 
> I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation in 
> one lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide yet-more 
> tools for facilitating that.
> 
> It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that they 
> can be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think it can 
> be, but as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but seeing the 
> myriad ways it can go wrong as well.  This negative ideation is probably a 
> self-referential example of the topic itself.
> 
> Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in understanding 
> more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity of "Life Itself", 
> with the human (individual as well as cultural) experience being the one most 
> relevant to my own life, but not exclusively.


-- 
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙


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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

On 4/12/22 11:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you
start going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word
for losing your soul” [1]

That sounds plausible. However, I have long thought that an important
part of productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits. Just
attach to whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations
and the big picture. For one thing, it is rare that one can really
change the big picture. For two it is necessary to get in the
critical path of a process to disrupt it. The nihilistic episodic
personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going on
excursion. Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a
virion cannot move forward! There is plenty of time to wake up a
judgmental brain process once embedded. But what are judgements
really informed by if sampling is based on an outsiders’ view? This
kind of ties into Glen’s local reset idea.

[1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/

Thanks for this reference! It lead me to try to learn more about the
crypto-idealism-fork of Buterin-Hoskinson touched on here:

https://decrypt.co/72824/vitalik-buterin-takes-swipe-at-cardano-charles-hoskinson-strikes-back

and now I have Laura Shin's "The Cryptonians"
on my to-read pile.

I just finished Isaacson's"The Code Breaker"
on
CRISPR and Doudna's life-story. With all the chatter here about
post/trans-humanism, I had expected to see others reporting on this book
here?

*From:* Friam *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
*To:* friam@redfish.com
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
heuristics

Marcus -

Steve writes:

< Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and
transformation...

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,”
Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the
truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t
die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >

Maybe not?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4

I do think there is plenty of room for individual
growth/transformation in one lifetime and perhaps Psi research will
(continue to) provide yet-more tools for facilitating that.

It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that
they can be re-created yields healthy growth as such. I'd like to
think it can be, but as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't
help but seeing the myriad ways it can go wrong as well. This
negative ideation is probably a self-referential example of the topic
itself.

Following RECs original subject: I'm interested I suppose in
understanding more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of
adaptivity of "Life Itself", with the human (individual as well as
cultural) experience being the one most relevant to my own life, but
not exclusively.

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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


What always seems to be missing in these discussions is the (my?) always present ability 
to [re]parse the world at will. Yes, there are gravity wells or attractors where if you 
start insisting on a security detail everywhere you go, you'll end up like Trump, Romney, 
or Sanders, surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane that disallows authentic "go 
with the flow" non-consciousness/non-deliberation. But my tendency to (or ability 
to) prefer writing a script/macro over doing some computation manually doesn't interfere 
in a substantial way with my ability to do the manual labor in any given iteration. The 
size of the computation can interfere, but not the attractor.

That's what makes me episodic, the lack of stickiness to whatever 
professionalization I've engaged in before. On a humble day, I claim it's because 
I'm just too stupid and lazy to really invest in building the attractor. On an 
arrogant day, I claim those who build and get stuck in such attractors are 
mindless automatons who can't think their way out of a paper bag. >8^D

On 4/12/22 10:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
going down that way, /professionalizing/ is just another word for losing your 
soul” [1]

That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part of 
productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big picture.  
For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big picture.  For two 
it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to disrupt it.  The 
nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going 
on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a virion 
cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain 
process once embedded.  But what are judgements really informed by if sampling 
is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset 
idea.

[1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ 


*From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
*To:* friam@redfish.com
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Marcus -

Steve writes:

< Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and 
transformation...

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” 
Musk recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the 
truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t 
die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >

  


Maybe not?

  


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4  


I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation in one 
lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide yet-more tools for 
facilitating that.

It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that they can 
be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think it can be, but 
as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but seeing the myriad ways 
it can go wrong as well.  This negative ideation is probably a self-referential 
example of the topic itself.

Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in understanding more-better 
the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity of "Life Itself", with the human 
(individual as well as cultural) experience being the one most relevant to my own life, 
but not exclusively.



--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙


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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics


Glen -
Your use of "regret" is a dead giveaway to your narrativity. A regret 
operator (even in formal settings) is only useful in contexts that 
assume both free-will and narrativity. 
I don't know that *I* experience a lot of regret, mostly because I 
recognize that anything I might "regret" in my own life fits squarely in 
the realm of "it seemed like a good idea at the time", even if my 
imagination/memory might be prone to frame it as something I might have 
decided/felt/acted otherwise on.   I *do*, however, recognize that the 
use of the "regret operator"  is pretty pervasive in common discourse 
(codes) and therefore likely in world-view (modes).  Your (constructive) 
criticism of these modes and codes continues to be helpful (if I have 
any free will which seeks or accepts help in it's actions).
Marcus' link citing our oft-discussed use of psychedelics to raise the 
"heat" in our "annealing" minds also targets that narrativity and 
regret operators. There's no reason to have a regret operator *unless* 
you can change your ephemeris with interventions like, say, a massive 
dose of LSD or a 3 day stay in an isolation tank.


I believe the (imagined?) utility of a regret operator fits squarely in 
the camp of "free will".  And in it's application in the present-future 
decisions one might make.  I certainly consider it in the present all 
the time, even if I don't so much in the past?  I find myself thinking 
"I seem to have a spectrum of alternative choices to make right now and 
some of them seem like they would lead to regrets" so will likely avoid 
them out of hand, even if I never get around to experiencing regret as 
such. Various interventions (alcohol, meditation, discussion with an 
adversary etc) might reduce the set of "avoid out of hand" 
contemplations, some through your "heat of annealing" analogy and some 
more through more deliberate hill-climbing.  Again, free-will.  Maybe 
what I percieve as deliberate hill-climbing is just the natural 
consequence of "heat" in an obscured dimension? The language of Physics 
and Chemistry lie entirely there if the language of Biology and 
Sociology seem to admit/assume will and free-will.


   one of my more favorite tautologies:  "Life is that which wills to
   live amongst that which wills to live" (my misquote of Albert
   Schweitzer).

But Nick, EricC, Jon, and I have discussed (ad nauseum) the difference 
between pragmati[ci]sm, where Peirce (vs the other American 
Pragmatists) still carries some sort of 
anti-nominalist/foundationalist idealism. I think the existence of a 
regret operator in your reflective thought may depend on that deeper 
structure more than it depends on conceptions of free-will and 
narrativity.
I could probably use more help unpacking this...  Or maybe I just 
haven't read these conversations astutely enough (no regrets though!).
In a *very* open context, where not only the machinery changes as it 
chunks along, but the objective[s] change[s] through the iteration, 
regret can become locally scoped ... e.g. rather than an octogenarian 
regretting what they did when they were 20, one might only regret what 
one did 10 minutes ago but not regret the events of years ago. With 
such a tightly scoped regret, we can approach self-identified episodic 
personalities without being anti-nominalist/foundationalist. The 
foundation of that locally coherent self is simply "smaller" ... more 
particular, less general, more context dependent than full narrativity.


I think this is a good (temporal) expose of the local/global nature of 
emergence?    Global order from local interactions? References SteveG's 
reflections about "believe in the collective" as I understand it.


As a sexegenarian, I find it hard to remember/understand the context of 
my dodecagenarian self well enough to have any proper regrets about 
actions/decisions made then.  I agree that it is more coherent for me to 
go back through these missives I offer up here before (or after) I send 
them and have regrets (changes if I do it before I hit send) due to the 
temporal (and therefore hamming/network distance in the adjacent 
possible?) proximity than the former example.  Maybe this is just 
another example of being stuck in the "illusion of free-will and 
narrativity"?


- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Vitalik Buterin remarked, “An emotional part of me says that once you start 
going down that way, professionalizing is just another word for losing your 
soul” [1]
That sounds plausible.  However, I have long thought that an important part of 
productivity is to find consciousness-lowering habits.   Just attach to 
whatever is front of you and forget about the motivations and the big picture.  
For one thing, it is rare that one can really change the big picture.  For two 
it is necessary to get in the critical path of a process to disrupt it.  The 
nihilistic episodic personality doesn’t have to impose a narrative before going 
on excursion.  Too much evaluation and reflection and one’s action as a virion 
cannot move forward!   There is plenty of time to wake up a judgmental brain 
process once embedded.  But what are judgements really informed by if sampling 
is based on an outsiders’ view?   This kind of ties into Glen’s local reset 
idea.

[1] https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 10:19 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics



Marcus -

Steve writes:

< Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and 
transformation...

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” Musk 
recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the 
truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t 
die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >



Maybe not?



https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4

I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation in one 
lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide yet-more tools for 
facilitating that.

It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that they can 
be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to think it can be, but 
as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help but seeing the myriad ways 
it can go wrong as well.  This negative ideation is probably a self-referential 
example of the topic itself.

Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in understanding 
more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity of "Life Itself", 
with the human (individual as well as cultural) experience being the one most 
relevant to my own life, but not exclusively.




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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics



Marcus -


Steve writes:

< Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and 
transformation...

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” Musk 
recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth 
is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t die, we 
will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >

Maybe not?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4

I do think there is plenty of room for individual growth/transformation 
in one lifetime and perhaps Psi research will (continue to) provide 
yet-more tools for facilitating that.


It isn't clear to me that merely loosening up neural pathways so that 
they can be re-created yields healthy growth as such.   I'd like to 
think it can be, but as the neo-luddite that I tend toward, I can't help 
but seeing the myriad ways it can go wrong as well.  This negative 
ideation is probably a self-referential example of the topic itself.


Following RECs original subject:  I'm interested I suppose in 
understanding more-better the myriad scales and dimensions of adaptivity 
of "Life Itself", with the human (individual as well as cultural) 
experience being the one most relevant to my own life, but not exclusively.






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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Your use of "regret" is a dead giveaway to your narrativity. A regret operator (even in formal
settings) is only useful in contexts that assume both free-will and narrativity. Marcus' link citing our
oft-discussed use of psychedelics to raise the "heat" in our "annealing" minds also
targets that narrativity and regret operators. There's no reason to have a regret operator *unless* you can
change your ephemeris with interventions like, say, a massive dose of LSD or a 3 day stay in an isolation
tank.

But Nick, EricC, Jon, and I have discussed (ad nauseum) the difference between
pragmati[ci]sm, where Peirce (vs the other American Pragmatists) still carries
some sort of anti-nominalist/foundationalist idealism. I think the existence of
a regret operator in your reflective thought may depend on that deeper
structure more than it depends on conceptions of free-will and narrativity.

In a *very* open context, where not only the machinery changes as it chunks along, but
the objective[s] change[s] through the iteration, regret can become locally scoped ...
e.g. rather than an octogenarian regretting what they did when they were 20, one might
only regret what one did 10 minutes ago but not regret the events of years ago. With such
a tightly scoped regret, we can approach self-identified episodic personalities without
being anti-nominalist/foundationalist. The foundation of that locally coherent self is
simply "smaller" ... more particular, less general, more context dependent than
full narrativity.

On 4/12/22 09:09, Steve Smith wrote:

I like to challenge young(er) people with the idea that they (and/or their
children) might *have to* live forever.

In my youth (pre-50) I had a hard time honestly contemplating senescence, much less
mortality. It was as-if I thought I would live (without diminished capacity) forever.
Every challenge (I thought) made me stronger, and every wound was to become a scar that
would in some way be useful later. In spite of that, I believe I would have lived my
life much differently had I honestly believed I would "live forever".

There are all the regrets people have about how they would have treated their
bodies better had they known they would be stuck struggling with various
conditions resulting from neglect and abuse in their later years. There are
also the regrets people have about not living their lives as fully in the
period where their appetites and naivetes allowed for a sort of hedonism that
often fades with age (and experience). /Youth being wasted on the young/, as we
often note.

The regrets I am now most focused on are those of how one learns and
builds/manages one's world-view(s), one's ontology(ies). I think this relates
to a tangent I won't indulge inline of code-switching vs mode-switching.

Following Galen Strawson's thesis on the /Episodic/ vs the /Diachronic/ (nod to Glen), I suppose I might like to have experienced life more /Episodically/ than I have, to have allowed myself a less continuous narrative of self to have been experienced. I certainly can recognize the benefit of *breaks* in what I can call a piecewise narrative life, punctuated by geographical moves, graduations, marriages and divorces, job and career changes. Each of those events allowed me to rethink my own narrative, but fundamentally, each new persona that emerged from the rubble left from the dismantling of the artifacts of the last one was essentially the same. Since I don't identify strongly as an Episodic "Self", I don't know if that sort of inside-outism from Diachronic (if that is even a fair description) is more free to *discover* itself, rather than (re)*invent* itself? Or is there a hidden diachronic-self obscured to the
episodic-selves, by the fundamental conceit of not believing in an underlying continuity-self? This is likely a mis-reading/understanding of Strawson whose examples are taken from his own self-proclaimed Episodic self-experience vs my own self-diagnosed Diachronic.

Returning to the ideation of "living forever" (or at least much longer than
planned for), I wish for my grandchildren (still in formative stages at 4 and 10) that
they be prepared much more fundamentally for self-re-discovery/invention than I was/am
and than my own grand/parents, and very likely their own parents who are somewhat
(naturally?) shaped a bit too much after me and mine.

Following RECs original posting, How to prepare these human-be(com)ings to be
adaptive at a scale in their own lives, formerly achieved only by generational
adaptivity?

--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙

Re: [FRIAM] Virtual FRIAM moving to Thursdays. FRIAM will be in person on Fridays

2022-04-12 Thread John Dobson

You're not the group's only octogenarian.  I*m 81 and counting.

John D

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 2:34 PM Nicholas Thompson 
wrote:

>
> Has anybody questioned St. John’s about this matter?
> Speaking as the groups only octogenarian, I think I will wait and see how
> many septuagenarians die before I start participating again on Friday. Nick
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
> On Apr 11, 2022, at 1:11 PM, Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>
> 
> I'll start the virtual FRIAM at the usual 9:00am on Thursday.  I hope some
> local people attend too.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 11:49 AM Stephen Guerin 
> wrote:
>
>> We will resume in-person FRIAM at St John's on Fridays.
>>
>> Virtual FRIAM will shift to Thursday mornings.
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics

Steve writes:

< Arguments for generational rather than Individual/personal growth and 
transformation...

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” Musk 
recently told Insider. “It would cause asphyxiation of society because the 
truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t 
die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.” >



Maybe not?



https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01769-4

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Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics