Re: [FRIAM] Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns

[sasmyth]

What a Panopoly of responses (or is it more of a Plethora?) on this topic here.

I can't begin to respond to the many very interesting and thoughtful points
made here.   This general topic (the existential implications of the
co-evolution of humans and technology, the "extended phenotype" as Dawkins
calls it).

Heidegger's (1977?) essay on the topic as provided is quite interesting and
deserves a complete reading, as do several other references here!   

Too bad my queue is overfull and my own extended phenotype (mostly my primary
use laptop) is over-extended.  I'm trying to extend my extended phenotype more
into the cloud (typing this in a webmail client, which I normally loathe!)
while considering a second backup of my system on Google Drive (not just my
in-house Time Capsule)... 

Our own local player in the game of Singularity, Stephen Kotler, puts a lot of
interesting ideas out there in his recent books such as "Abundance" and "The
Rise of Superman"...  I'm pretty much a luddite myself, or at least
"conservative" in the sense of believing that we are outdriving our headlights
on many fronts.

That said, I think it is inevitable... short of a global shift in
consciousness, or perhaps at least in the first world (where most of this tech
development is driven from by rampant capitalistic consumerism).   

To counter this pessimism, I am reminded that many natural processes follow
neither a linear nor an exponential growth curve but rather more of a sigmoid
which admits into the situation the idea of saturation.   The long term growth
of many things is less than it's local growth at optimum, as the growth is
characterized by a series of piecewise sigmoidal curves, each with perhaps a
higher slope at optimum than the last, but never the implied exponential when
apprehended before the saturation element takes over.

I think the existential threat of loss of meaning is very acute and many who
lost their "livelihood" in the 2001 dot.bomb or the 2008 banking/real-estate
debacles.  Many of these people (self included by some measure) have had to
reinvent, not only a career, but an identity.  Formal retirement (much of the
list here) has the same challenges except that it is socially integrated and
something we "plan for".   As for myself, while I'm keeping the wolf from the
door financially, I can imagine how hard it is for others to keep not only
financial integrity but also identity integrity.  If I had not started a
business larger than myself and had a hand in sfX "back in the day", I might
have experienced much more dis-integration of self than I actually experience
today.   

I like the idea of universal support up to the issues so aptly pointed out by
REC and others.   I like the idea of leaving people *room* to (re)invent
themselves as creative human beings without the current (archaic?) constraints
of being productive in a consumerist society.   *SO* many things have to
change roughly at the same time for this to come about, I am not confident we
will get there quickly or efficiently.

This brings me to a point about "efficiency".   Evolution has never been
"efficient" by our standards, it seems always to use mass extinctions and
frighteningly short life-spans to drive it's own engine of creativity
(whatever that means)... so I'm not swayed by arguments that suggest we *can*
evolve without outrageous cost to most of the participants.

Not intended to be a bummer here, just appreciating the complexity of this
discussion as well as (I think) of these times!

- Steve

> On 06/06/2016 02:22 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> >
https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions-f05d84c44f1a
> > was interesting, vis a vis what happens when you just give poor people
> > money.
> 
> Excerpt:
> > So in concrete terms, just how much dumber does poverty make you?
> > 
> > "Our effects correspond to between 13 and 14 IQ points," Shafir says.
"That’s comparable to losing a night’s sleep or the effects of
alcoholism." What’s  remarkable is that we could have figured all this out
30 years ago. Shafir and Mullainathan weren’t relying on anything so
complicated as brain scans. "Economists have been studying poverty for years
and psychologists have been studying cognitive limitations for years,”
Shafir explains. “We just put two and two together."
> 
> That is a good read.  Thanks.
> 
> > On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
> > 
> >> A problem with the
> >> "day jobber" approach is the narrowing of substantial things to what
> >> happens to be in the interest of dominant organizations.Even in silicon
> >> valley, that's a harsh narrowing of the possible.   So I would say do it to
> >> make the world interesting and not just for humanitarian reasons.
> 
> Yep.  We can't be arrogant enough to think we don't need those large hubs of
intention, though.  I can imagine if there's any truth to the scale-free
network concept, then lots of people 

Re: [FRIAM] wonders issue

[sasmyth]

Peggy -
 
 To the group: So, knowing you all must be familiar with his book, but I am
 not -- any opinion about Brian Cox's (physicist) thoughts/perspective? I
 haven't read Wonders of the Universe, but saw him speaking on it, and feel
 would be good to go through.

From a Review
(http://www.denofgeek.com/television/440217/wonders_of_the_solar_system_order_out_of_chaos_review.html)
of his book, I see he speaks to Nick's Vortices (Doug's Swirlies?):

 Professor Cox explains this in consistently entertaining fashion, and his
repeated references back to the apparently mundane things in our immediate
environment - the spinning vortex of water escaping from a bathroom sink, or
the constant procession of seasons - and tying these in to the celestial
events that occur in our solar system, is what keeps the science bits fresh
and engaging. 

- Steve






FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] What evolves?

[sasmyth]

Dave -

Can you put my assumption that one can speak meaningfully of the evolution of
a system or subsystem into the context of your minor points?

What of co-evolution of interdependent species (humans/grains,
megafauna/megafruit, predator/prey/forage networks, etc.) or of a network
thereof?  e.g. Whence Pollenating Insects w/o Pollen Plants, etc?

Is it as simple as declaring them to be singular (taken as a whole sub-system
of the Universe)?   Or is this entirely a misuse in your view?

Thanks to Nick for inserting the term Creodic into the discussion.  I
suppose this is a fundamental issue in the Creationism debate?  In some sense,
the more receptive of the Creationists might allow Biological Evolution if
it were essentially *creodic* (the world unfolding under the benevolent eye
and predestined plan of God in this case?) as you say?

- Steve



 This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
 
 --_--=_1305050715233870
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
 Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 14:05:15 -0400
 X-Mailer: MessagingEngine.com Webmail Interface
 
 minor points
 
 1- evolution takes a singular subject - some individual thing
 evolves.
 
 2- what originally evolved was a book or scroll - i.e. it
 unrolled - hence it evolved; or a flower - which unfolded hence
 evolved.
 
 3- a human evolves - according to homunculus theory of embryology
 - by unfolding - first level of metaphoric conscription of
 evolution as unrolling.
 
 4- things go awry when evolvution is metaphorically applied to
 the plural - e.g. taxa, species.  To make it work the plural must
 be reified as singular.
 
 5- an error of a different sort is made when evolution is applied
 to society or some other multi-component system which is singular
 and therefore can evolve (unfold) in the original sense of the
 word.  The error is forgetting that there is really only one
 system (The Universe if it is granted that there is only one, or
 The Infinite Infinity of Universes of Universes if you want to go
 all quantum on me) - all other named systems are arbitrarily
 defined subsets that are still part of the whole - an
 encapsulation error.
 
 6- yet another error is made - as Nick points out - when a
 subjective value scale is super-imposed on the sequence of
 arbitrarily defined stages or states, e.g. when the last word of
 the book is more profound than the first simply because it was
 the last revealed - or the bud is somehow less than the blossom
 because it came first in a sequence). [Aside: Anthropology as a
 scientific discipline filled hundreds of museums with thousands
 of skulls all carefully arranged in rows in order to prove that
 the brain contained within the skulls reached its 'evolutionary'
 apex with 19th century northern European males.]
 
 7- devolution - if allowed at all - would reflect a similar
 superimposition of values in a curve instead of a straight line -
 e.g. the bud is less than the blossom but the blossom devolves
 into a withered remnant of less value than either.
 
 dave west
 
 
 
 
 On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:03 -0600, Nicholas  Thompson
 nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote:
 
 Steve:
 
 
 This is sort of fun:  Which is more advanced; a horse=E2=80=99s hoof or a
 human hand.?
 
 
 Answer: the hoof is way more advanced.  (Actually I asked the
 question wrong, it should have been horses =E2=80=9Cforearm=E2=80=9D)
 
 
 Why?  Because the word =E2=80=9Cadvanced=E2=80=9D means just =E2=80=9Calter=
 ed from the
 ancestral structure that gave rise to both the hoof and the
 hand.=E2=80=9D  That ancestral structure was a  hand-like paw, perhaps
 like that on a raccoon, only a few steps back from our own hand.
 The horse=E2=80=99s hoof is a single hypertrophied fingernail on a hand
 where every other digit has shrunk to almost nothing.  Many more
 steps away.  Humans are in many ways very primitive creatures.
 Viruses are very advanced, having lost everything!  Our Maker is
 given to irony.
 
 
 Nick
 
 
 
 
 
 From: friam-boun...@redfish.com
 [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
 Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:12 AM
 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What evolves?
 
 
 Dear old bald guy with big eyebrows (aka Nick)..
 I'm becoming an old bald guy myself with earlobes that are
 sagging and a nose that continues to grow despite the rest of his
 face not so much.  I look forward to obtaining eyebrows even half
 as impressive as yours!   Now *there* is some personal
 evolution!  To use a particular vernacular, You've got a nice
 rack there Nick!
 I really appreciate your careful outline of this topic, it is one
 of the ones I'm most likely to get snagged on with folks who *do*
 want to use the world evolution (exclusively) to judge social or
 political (or personal) change they approve/disapprove of.   I
 appreciate Victoria asking this question in this manner, it is
 problematic in many social