subject:"Re\: \[FRIAM\] Openness amplifies Inequality\?"


On 4/12/14, 9:02 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
corporations leads to better corporations.

Crowdfunded private intelligence?

Marcus



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-12 Thread Nick Thompson

M

It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
corporations leads to better corporations.  

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2014 8:46 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of 
> breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the 
> cage, so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next
generation.

If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then the cages
that get to parent the next generation are the successful corporations.
They get to define what is meritorious by controlling the 
wealth and by having the means to lobby the government.They also get 
to choose the individuals in the cage (their hires).   Note the 
selection criteria for the cages is also `their' criteria (e.g. stock
price), not some multi-objective criteria that would perhaps better serve
the whole set pool of people that are caged-up, as it were.

If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think you 
have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the U.S.S.R.   
Otherwise there is not the distinction between the breeders and the bred.

If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which cages are
being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so that the more
ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total. I mean, I'm a super
chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep the peace in the cage by
making it clear to the other chickens know they could end up dead, or 
half dead, but without actually doing it.   I'll also estimate that my 
offspring will be pretty good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes to
that, and that this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out well
enough, I may have counted how many cages are at my facility and done some
arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that as a guess
for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000 eggs, why should
I participate in a process that can yield 100,000 eggs? 
That would undermine the grand plan above.

Marcus

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/12/14, 2:17 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Yeh... since my wife slipped blowfish shashimi onto the sushi tray 
I've had to trim my beard with toenail clippers...  who would have 
guessed that transgenic effects were so easy to obtain?

An unfortunate case of role suction..

Marcus



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


Arlo,

Muave - mauve + suave.
-Arlo James Barnes


Que suave dude!

Suzy wants to know if you want to come over for some Easter Fugu and 
egg-dying... the way she prepares it, the neurotoxins simultaneously 
mess with your spelling and color perception centers...  get ready for 
some really trippy synaesthesia (synesthaesia!)...   Dog nail clippers 
are the best for the post-sushi beard-trim, however!  I have an extra 
pair you can keep.  We can dye top-hats instead of eggs maybe?



- Mad Hatter


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-12 Thread Arlo Barnes

Muave - mauve + suave.
-Arlo James Barnes

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


>> And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?
Look for creatures such as this if you turn West at Pojoaque..   Not 
mentioned in the tour books for some reason.


https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/943678_602662879744027_2002682148_n.jpg 

Yeh... since my wife slipped blowfish shashimi onto the sushi tray I've 
had to trim my beard with toenail clippers...  who would have guessed 
that transgenic effects were so easy to obtain?   But finally my muave 
sued top hat actually fits!



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/12/14, 11:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

On 4/12/14 11:30 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke 
about physicists and chickens. Neither you nor I are physicists,  but 
we do have to contend with them sometimes.

And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?
Look for creatures such as this if you turn West at Pojoaque..   Not 
mentioned in the tour books for some reason.


https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/943678_602662879744027_2002682148_n.jpg

Marcus


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/12/14 11:30 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:

Nick,

Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke 
about physicists and chickens.  Neither you nor I are physicists,  but 
we do have to contend with them sometimes.

And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-12 Thread Merle Lefkoff

Nick,

Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke about
physicists and chickens.  Neither you nor I are physicists,  but we do have
to contend with them sometimes.


On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Nick Thompson
wrote:

> Merle,
>
>
>
> Not quite sure what was the thrust of your response here, but my original
> post was written in that fanciful way only because I could not recall the
> details of the experiment or the citation.  Nothing spherical about my
> Libertarian or Socialist chickens.  They actually existed in a poultry
> husbandry lab in Indiana.  Do you want the citation?  The basic message
> here is, Be careful what  you select for.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Merle
> Lefkoff
> *Sent:* Friday, April 11, 2014 11:47 PM
>
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?
>
>
>
> A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a
> physicist to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a
> solution, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson <
> nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Marcus,
>
> Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
> rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when
> put
> in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
> egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
> supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking
> each
> other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
> and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
> laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.
>
> Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
> breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
> so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
> remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
> productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call
> these
> your socialist chickens.
>
> It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
> Indiana.
>
>
> N
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
> Daniels
>
> Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?
>
> On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
> New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.
>
>
> Marcus
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merlelefkoff
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>



-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-12 Thread Nick Thompson

Merle, 

 

Not quite sure what was the thrust of your response here, but my original post 
was written in that fanciful way only because I could not recall the details of 
the experiment or the citation.  Nothing spherical about my Libertarian or 
Socialist chickens.  They actually existed in a poultry husbandry lab in 
Indiana.  Do you want the citation?  The basic message here is, Be careful what 
 you select for.

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 11:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a physicist 
to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a solution, but 
it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net> > wrote:

Marcus,

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.


N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com 
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.


Marcus


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-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org <mailto:me...@emergentdiplomacy.org> 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff 


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


  
  

  
  
  Super Chicken!
  
  

   

  Have we just updated the "Little Red Hen" for the new
  millenium.
  
  The
Little Red Hen
  
  Are our folk-tales and fables 
  merely proto-libertarian rhetoric?
  
  
The Ant and the Grasshopper


On
  4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
  
  

   622 × 443 -
  dltk-teach.com 

  
  Then some poultry husbandry professor got
a bright idea.  Instead of

breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them
by the cage,

so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next
generation.

  
  
  If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then
  the cages that get to parent the next generation are the
  successful corporations.  They get to define what is meritorious
  by controlling the wealth and by having the means to lobby the
  government.    They also get to choose the individuals in the cage
  (their hires).   Note the selection criteria for the cages is also
  `their' criteria (e.g. stock price), not some multi-objective
  criteria that would perhaps better serve the whole set pool of
  people that are caged-up, as it were.
  
  
  If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think
  you have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the
  U.S.S.R.   Otherwise there is not the distinction between the
  breeders and the bred.
  
  
  If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which
  cages are being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so
  that the more ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total.
  I mean, I'm a super chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep
  the peace in the cage by making it clear to the other chickens
  know they could end up dead, or half dead, but without actually
  doing it.   I'll also estimate that my offspring will be pretty
  good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes to that, and that
  this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out well enough, I
  may have counted how many cages are at my facility and done some
  arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that as
  a guess for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000
  eggs, why should I participate in a process that can yield 100,000
  eggs? That would undermine the grand plan above.
  
  
  Marcus
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
  
  Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
  
  to unsubscribe
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.


If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then the 
cages that get to parent the next generation are the successful 
corporations.  They get to define what is meritorious by controlling the 
wealth and by having the means to lobby the government.They also get 
to choose the individuals in the cage (their hires).   Note the 
selection criteria for the cages is also `their' criteria (e.g. stock 
price), not some multi-objective criteria that would perhaps better 
serve the whole set pool of people that are caged-up, as it were.


If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think you 
have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the U.S.S.R.   
Otherwise there is not the distinction between the breeders and the bred.


If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which cages 
are being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so that the more 
ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total. I mean, I'm a super 
chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep the peace in the cage by 
making it clear to the other chickens know they could end up dead, or 
half dead, but without actually doing it.   I'll also estimate that my 
offspring will be pretty good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes 
to that, and that this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out 
well enough, I may have counted how many cages are at my facility and 
done some arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that 
as a guess for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000 
eggs, why should I participate in a process that can yield 100,000 eggs? 
That would undermine the grand plan above.


Marcus







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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Merle Lefkoff

A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a
physicist to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a
solution, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson
wrote:

> Marcus,
>
> Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
> rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when
> put
> in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
> egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
> supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking
> each
> other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
> and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
> laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.
>
> Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
> breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
> so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
> remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
> productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call
> these
> your socialist chickens.
>
> It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
> Indiana.
>
> N
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
> Daniels
> Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?
>
> On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
> New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.
>
> Marcus
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>



-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus, 

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens. 

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.  

N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.

Marcus


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve, 

 

One of the consequences of using complexity babble is that it simply
describes the behavior of the system, rather than accusing any one part of
the system for that behavior.  So the question boils down to, "How do we
fill the basin?"  My favorite way is to tax the bejeezus out of the rich and
use it for education, etc., of the poor, because it nearly fulfills my
particular sense of morality.  (Actually, we would probably need the
guillotines, for THAT purpose.)  But others may think of less vindictive
ways to reach the goal of continually filling the basin. 

 

You don't want to make me dictator. 

 

N 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 10:19 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

Nick -

Merle, 

 

I am sure we CAN'T figure it out without your help as a "emergentist".   The
damage done by discrimination is a great example of non-zero-sum losses.
The problem is similar to the problem of inequality of opportunity
generally.  The attractor is for the children of better-off people to be
better-off and for better-off children to become better-off adults and have
better-off children.  As an example I give you the Wood-Gormely [elementary]
school here in Santa Fe, which has a richer educational program because the
parents throw resources and time at it.  And, I assume, simply because it
has an aura of a place where Parents give a damn.  Thus, despite being a
Public School, it becomes by virtue of these investments of time and
resources and energy, a "better" public school.  To deprive all parents of
the possibility of investing in the school their kid goes to is to deprive
all schools of something essential; but the possibility of such investment
leads inevitably to the genealogical flow of social benefits.  Which is why
we have to revive the notion of social Democracy in this poor sad country of
ours.  

 

FRIAMMERS could be crucial to such a discussion, if only by virtue of having
the conceptual tool of the "attractor" at our disposal.  In complexity
terms, what is it that social democracies do?  Is it basin filling?  

And "preferential attachment" and "canalization" and "coevolution on fitness
landscapes", et cetera...

I was impressed that the original author in question, Astra Taylor even
*referenced* complexity science topics.   I'm not of the belief that
sprinkling complexity science terms onto a problem will magically remove
it's stains, BUT I do believe that many real-world, everyday challenges in
the world *can be* and often *must be* modeled as the non-linear systems
that they are, rather than fitting them to a simple linear system, then
drawing totally undermotivated and usually bogus conclusions based on those
models.

When usually we hear "the Rich get Richer", it rings our bell of unfairness
and abuse of power rather than being accepted as a truism about positive
feedback (even in linear systems) and preferential attachment and
canalization...

While the  rhetoric of equality politics may have been critical to break
over from the old cultural hegemony into a new basin of attraction, I don't
think that the challenge remains making the point that "power corrupts" over
and over again, but rather seeking a dynamic which has the properties we
(think that?) we desire.   "Be careful what you wish for" being an entirely
other question, I fear.

Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron> " is a cautionary tale of
one ultimate consequence of linear, brute force attempts at achieving
"equality".

"You Don't Always Get What You Want" - Stones

- Steve





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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.

New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.

Marcus


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Well, Marcus, what little data I have heard about suggests that Prozac does
reduce anxiety and thereby makes people more assertive in their own
interest.   And, it moves monkeys up the hierarchy.  

I hear rumors (as opposed to vaguely remembered old data) that testosterone
is increased by winning and that testosterone increases aggression.So
feed saltpeter to the rich. };-)>

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 3:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:49 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In short, if this account is correct, we are already feeding Prozac in 
> at the bottom of the hierarchy.  I wonder what happens to the social 
> dynamics of an exective group when some of the members start taking 
> Prozac

The absence of depression doesn't seem to me to be the same thing as the
presence of dominance behaviors, risk taking, etc. that might be
specifically associated with testosterone.  Other aspects of personality
that are influenced by the endocrine system could be modulated by depression
too.  I mean, Prozac (etc) may help the subordinate person cope in their
subordinate position, but won't necessarily cause them to be an alpha, or
make subversive plans against the alphas. 

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Roger Critchlow

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith  wrote:

>  Roger -
>
>   Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become
>> the new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility
>> to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless it
>> is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the oppressive
>> route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality through
>> handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.
>>
>>   Wow.
>
>  The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are
> routinely subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence, and
> violence; african american males spend their lives in prison while
> privileged white males get slapped on the wrist for the same infractions.
>  So society currently imposes drastic, life threatening handicaps on the
> disadvantaged.
>
>  The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose
> handicaps on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route?
>
> No, what you read is my morbid fascination running off to an extrema, at
> the nudging of Vonnegut when I was very young.  And it was not and is not
> restricted to SWMs by any means.  I'm worried about knee jerk reactions in
> *any* and all directions, not just toward SWMs.
>
>
Steve --

I was mostly startled by how lame the "Harrison Bergeron" story becomes
when presented as an argument against remedying structural discrimination.
 Even if the story attempted to be an equal opportunity handicapper, its
point was how unfair such a regime would be to the genius, 7 foot tall,
straight white male character who gets shot down by a foaming at the mouth
woman bureaucrat when he rebels against the system.  Makes Vonnegut sound a
bit of a misogynist troll when you run it together like that.

There's been a war going on among science fiction writers very much on this
point -- google "sfwa controversy" for background -- which has come to
accusations of censorship and abridgement of free speech because non-SWM
complaints are being acted on.

I wouldn't worry about knee jerk reactions on this subject, you'll probably
need replacement knee joints before anything changes.

-- rec --

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Merle Lefkoff

Roger, who ever thought life was fair?  It just is.

The intent of the trip---these are the kinds of interventions that must be
brought to scale to force change.  And we just don't apply resources to the
systemic level.


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Roger Critchlow  wrote:

>
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>>
>>
>> Have you seen the latest research on how increasingly impossible it is to
>> move from one class to another in America?  You were so right in your post
>> above.  Born into working class, marry within working class, raise working
>> class children, they marry working class spouses, etc.   Occasional
>> breakthrough, but those cases are for statistical purposes anecdotal.  A
>> suite of complex variables, but certainly no adaptation here.
>>
>>
> The FedEx truck-bus head on collision in northern California yesterday
> involved one of three bus loads of first in their families college bound
> high school seniors from Los Angeles on their way to visit Humboldt State
> University.
>
> -- rec --
>
> 
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>



-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Roger Critchlow

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>
>
> Have you seen the latest research on how increasingly impossible it is to
> move from one class to another in America?  You were so right in your post
> above.  Born into working class, marry within working class, raise working
> class children, they marry working class spouses, etc.   Occasional
> breakthrough, but those cases are for statistical purposes anecdotal.  A
> suite of complex variables, but certainly no adaptation here.
>
>
The FedEx truck-bus head on collision in northern California yesterday
involved one of three bus loads of first in their families college bound
high school seniors from Los Angeles on their way to visit Humboldt State
University.

-- rec --

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 14:21 -0700, glen wrote:
> Again, we're limited by our binary, unidimensional, and translational 
> understanding of "merit" and the reward for merit.  That 
> limited/ambiguous understanding is the root of the problem.  And it's 
> why both Nick and Marcus are both logically right and wrong.
> 
> As long as something so base/universal as money is the foundation for 
> it, meritocracy will be vapid or utopian, perhaps both. 

If there is a line for merit, money seems as good as any.
If the discussion is about finding a multi-dimensional Pareto optimal
front, then we need to be at least precise enough to formulate
experiments to measure the tradeoffs.  It's not acceptable to just say
that family and community have infinite merit.  

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Merle Lefkoff

Nick,

There are several public schools in Santa Fe where more than 100 children
go "home" each night to the back of a truck or car, or to a tent in the
S.F. National Forest.  Their families are homeless.  We are looking into
how to open the schools at night for meals and a safe place to sleep.  I'll
be stunned if it can happen, but what the hell.

Have you seen the latest research on how increasingly impossible it is to
move from one class to another in America?  You were so right in your post
above.  Born into working class, marry within working class, raise working
class children, they marry working class spouses, etc.   Occasional
breakthrough, but those cases are for statistical purposes anecdotal.  A
suite of complex variables, but certainly no adaptation here.


Interesting birds at my feeder.  Want to go for a walk?


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Nick Thompson
wrote:

> Merle,
>
>
>
> I am sure we CAN’T figure it out without your help as a “emergentist”.
>   The damage done by discrimination is a great example of non-zero-sum
> losses.  The problem is similar to the problem of inequality of opportunity
> generally.  The attractor is for the children of better-off people to be
> better-off and for better-off children to become better-off adults and have
> better-off children.  As an example I give you the Wood-Gormely
> [elementary] school here in Santa Fe, which has a richer educational
> program because the parents throw resources and time at it.  And, I assume,
> simply because it has an aura of a place where Parents give a damn.  Thus,
> despite being a Public School, it becomes by virtue of these investments of
> time and resources and energy, a “better” public school.  To deprive all
> parents of the possibility of investing in the school their kid goes to is
> to deprive all schools of something essential; but the possibility of such
> investment leads inevitably to the genealogical flow of social benefits.
> Which is why we have to revive the notion of social Democracy in this poor
> sad country of ours.
>
>
>
> FRIAMMERS could be crucial to such a discussion, if only by virtue of
> having the conceptual tool of the “attractor” at our disposal.  In
> complexity terms, what is it that social democracies do?  Is it basin
> filling?
>
>
>
> Take care,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Merle
> Lefkoff
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 10, 2014 10:48 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?
>
>
>
> In Iceland woman make more than men (working part-time);  the gap is only
> 2.5% in Slovenia.  Women are not equally represented in some of the highest
> paying professions, which accounts for much of the difference
>
>
>
> Women lost their equal work status 10,000 years ago when the plow was
> invented.  This is a complicated issue.  It will take time.
>
>
>
> I'm sure you guys can figure it out.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz 
> wrote:
>
> On Apr 10, 2014, at 5:51 PM, Marcus G. Daniels 
> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:22 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
> >
> > IMO, lurking in their minds is:  What is this employee's absolute
> > priority?   Is it the bottom line of the company or is it taking their
> > kids to school and helping with their homework and building treehouses?
> > What will be the employee's top priority on a day to day basis?   If I
> > am cost constrained, who should I choose?  Who is loyal to me?  Who is
> > predictable and reliable?
>
> A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I don’t
> have personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” democracies of
> the world have recognized this tendency and legislated to regulate it. I do
> remember on one job where we worked in conjunction with folks in Germany,
> and I learned that employers were much more constrained in how many hours
> they were allowed to require. I’m uncertain as to what is the “best”
> balance between employers’  and workers’ rights.
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
&

Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:49 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In short, if this account is correct, we are already feeding Prozac in
> at the bottom of the hierarchy.  I wonder what happens to the social
> dynamics of an exective group when some of the members start taking
> Prozac

The absence of depression doesn't seem to me to be the same thing as the
presence of dominance behaviors, risk taking, etc. that might be
specifically associated with testosterone.  Other aspects of personality
that are influenced by the endocrine system could be modulated by
depression too.  I mean, Prozac (etc) may help the subordinate person
cope in their subordinate position, but won't necessarily cause them to
be an alpha, or make subversive plans against the alphas. 

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?



Again, we're limited by our binary, unidimensional, and translational 
understanding of "merit" and the reward for merit.  That 
limited/ambiguous understanding is the root of the problem.  And it's 
why both Nick and Marcus are both logically right and wrong.


As long as something so base/universal as money is the foundation for 
it, meritocracy will be vapid or utopian, perhaps both.  What we need is 
a more applicable understanding of merit and reward, fleshed out by 
quantitative, experimentally selected models of humans and their 
environment.  Anything else is just more bloviation.



On 04/11/2014 01:03 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:35 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:


Doesn’t a meritocracy favor the children of the meritorious,
irrespective of their own merit?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those
who disregard their families?


If the first sentence is true, then they aren't disregarding their
families.  It is just happening on a different time scale.  That and
having a children is a choice, not a requirement.  Like smoking and
drinking are choices.


  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those who neglect the quality of their
communities?


No, if their income is higher, the community will see that revenue in
the form of taxes.


--
⇒⇐ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:35 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Doesn’t a meritocracy favor the children of the meritorious,
> irrespective of their own merit?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those
> who disregard their families? 

If the first sentence is true, then they aren't disregarding their
families.  It is just happening on a different time scale.  That and
having a children is a choice, not a requirement.  Like smoking and
drinking are choices. 

>  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those who neglect the quality of their
> communities?

No, if their income is higher, the community will see that revenue in
the form of taxes.

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


Roger -


Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to
become the new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible)
ability/agility to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great
term by the way, unless it is just another way avoiding saying
"landscape";) or taking the oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's
tale of imposed social equality through handicapping everyone down
to a least common denominator.

Wow.

The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are 
routinely subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence, 
and violence; african american males spend their lives in prison while 
privileged white males get slapped on the wrist for the same 
infractions.  So society currently imposes drastic, life threatening 
handicaps on the disadvantaged.


The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose 
handicaps on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route?
No, what you read is my morbid fascination running off to an extrema, at 
the nudging of Vonnegut when I was very young.  And it was not and is 
not restricted to SWMs by any means.  I'm worried about knee jerk 
reactions in *any* and all directions, not just toward SWMs.
While the status quo is only threatening to rape women and to lynch 
people of color -- the majority of people in the world -- so it's okay?
Nope, it's far from OK... as I've said elsewhere, I have a wife, two 
daughters and a granddaughter who I feel the need to protect (and 
empower) personally and systemically from such things, and by extension 
YOUR wife, daughters, grand-daughters, nieces and acquaintances and 
*their* cousins, friends, mothers, sisters, etc. ad infinitum.  Same 
goes for my *many* friends whose melanin load is higher than mine... and 
my *several* friends who prefer the sexual and romantic engagements of 
their own gender, or in a few cases, their former or freshly minted gender.


On the other hand, in my proximity, these problems are not as acute as 
the common story suggests, it probably is elsewhere and certainly was in 
the past.   I do know women (and at least one man) who have been raped, 
more who have had such things attempted or threatened directly and 
*many* who feel under the threat categorically.  I know men and women 
whose surnames, accents, skin color, professed religion, etc. may well 
limit their options in the larger playing field, and I strive to relieve 
that for them where I can without being condescending or accidentally 
perpetuating it in some way.  I intervene when and how I can when such 
misbehaviour is underway in my presence.
Better a society where white men are free than a society where 
everyone is oppressed?  I'm sure it rings true to a lot of misogynist, 
racist trolls, but that's not the way I want to roll.
No, you read me entirely wrong.  I'm saying simply that by focusing on 
the easily identifiable characteristics of the current or local dominant 
culture (White/Hispanic Males in this region or 
White/Black/Brown/Yellow/Red Males globally or ... ) as indicators for 
who is doing the oppressing, we might consider the larger patterns that 
not only lead to this oppression/inequality, but which would also 
re-ignite the very same table-tipping IF we COULD or DID renormalize and 
put a *different* group on top.


I even put out a stalking horse set of reasons why *White* 
*Heterosexual* *Males* might be more predisposed to or more capable *of* 
oppression than other groups.   I'm not even denying that there might 
very well be a positive correlation between those characteristics and 
the tendency toward dominance/oppression/violence... I'm just asking the 
question as to whether this is more of a *feature* of a *system* than it 
is the specific details of the dominant "species" (SWMs).


North America (if not the entire world populated with humans) has fairly 
recent examples of how ecosystems were crashed or at least distorted 
badly by identifying and deleting the most obviously aggressive species 
(e.g. Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and to a lesser extent Lynx, Fox, Coyote, 
Ferret).  I think most agree that villianizing the apex predators and 
eliminating them turned out to be misguided.   I'm just asking the 
question of whether we might be making the same mistake when we focus on 
the *white male straightness* rather than on the *niche* (dominant 
oppressor) and try to understand the whole dynamic of such systems 
rather than the specific characteristics of those (currently, locally) 
filling the niche (SWM)?

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.
I'm not worried about whether white men are handicapped or not.  I'm 
worried about whether a possibly specious rhetoric which suggests that 
identifying the *most obvious and/or locally evident* oppressors by 
their superficial characteristics (gender, sexual orientation, melanin 
concentration) actually leads us closer to changing the situation or 
instead might actuall

Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus wrote: 

Just go the other way a smidge or ten.  Just experiencing such a parameter
sweep would probably make people change the way they think about the core of
their identity.  It can't be that people do hormone replacement like this
because they want to be more `natural'.

On some accounts, depression is not a disease but an adaptation to
subordinatation in a highly structured society that must, by its extremely
hierarchical nature, have many, many subordinate people.  (Think about a
tennis tournament as a social institution, a device for creating a situation
in which only one person wins!)  If you are going to lose anyway, bad policy
to try.  Better to wait your chance.  But then, in a highly structured
society, most people die waiting their chance.  

So, enter prozac.  Shakes people out of their defensive  adaptation. 

In short, if this account is correct, we are already feeding Prozac in at
the bottom of the hierarchy.  I wonder what happens to the social dynamics
of an exective group when some of the members start taking Prozac

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 1:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 11:49 -0700, glen wrote:

> That's overshooting just a bit... too easy of a target to knock down 

> because too few people would volunteer.

There are Sunday morning advertisements on TV for roll-on testosterone!

And of course it is very common for women to take hormone replacement.

Both are to some extent done out of vanity. Just go the other way a smidge
or ten.  Just experiencing such a parameter sweep would probably make people
change the way they think about the core of their identity.

It can't be that people do hormone replacement like this because they want
to be more `natural'. 

In a way biochemical interventions would be easier to do than context
changing -- don't have to find a new job, move away from friends and family,
etc.

As for the openness thing, it seems to me what matters is whether
not-completely-open systems with membranes or formal interfaces like city
councils or criminal trials can be navigated given a reasonable amount of
energy.  Do the interfaces promote orderly communication or just
consolidation of power?

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

REC wrote: 

The ideal here, as I understood it, is a kind of meritocracy where those who 
perform better are rewarded for their performance.  Make it so.

 

Doesn’t a meritocracy favor the children of the meritorious, irrespective of 
their own merit?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those who disregard their 
families?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those who neglect the quality of their 
communities?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor all those who are in the class of 
people who get to define merit?  

 

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.  

 

On the contrary.  I know one person who is trying to do just that.  Me.  

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 12:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Steve Smith mailto:sasm...@swcp.com> > wrote:

Glen -

Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!

 

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:

The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
different from those that dominated before the openness.  Our new
masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
like Musk and Schmidt.  And it's not really money that the "haves"
have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
the new social manifold.

What is the alternative?

Marcus

And yes, this is what I'm asking this august body to consider... are there 
alternatives?

Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the new 
"robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility to 
manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless it is just 
another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the oppressive route as 
told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality through handicapping 
everyone down to a least common denominator.

 

Wow.  

 

The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are routinely 
subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence, and violence; 
african american males spend their lives in prison while privileged white males 
get slapped on the wrist for the same infractions.  So society currently 
imposes drastic, life threatening handicaps on the disadvantaged.  

 

The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose handicaps 
on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route?  While the status quo is only 
threatening to rape women and to lynch people of color -- the majority of 
people in the world -- so it's okay?

 

Better a society where white men are free than a society where everyone is 
oppressed?  I'm sure it rings true to a lot of misogynist, racist trolls, but 
that's not the way I want to roll.

 

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.  Their ancestors may have 
been rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and thieves, they may hold the majority of 
wealth in the world, but let's let bygones be bygones.  What is asked is that 
they stop treating non-straight, non-white, non-males like slaves, and they 
stop allowing others to treat the non-SWMs like slaves, and that they stop 
blaming the non-SWMs for all the misery visited on them by SWMs as if the jerks 
would be really nice bros if not provoked.  

 

The ideal here, as I understood it, is a kind of meritocracy where those who 
perform better are rewarded for their performance.  Make it so.

 

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 11:49 -0700, glen wrote:

> That's overshooting just a bit... too easy of a target to knock down 
> because too few people would volunteer.

There are Sunday morning advertisements on TV for roll-on testosterone!
And of course it is very common for women to take hormone replacement.
Both are to some extent done out of vanity. Just go the other way a
smidge or ten.  Just experiencing such a parameter sweep would probably
make people change the way they think about the core of their identity.
It can't be that people do hormone replacement like this because they
want to be more `natural'. 

In a way biochemical interventions would be easier to do than context
changing -- don't have to find a new job, move away from friends and
family, etc.

As for the openness thing, it seems to me what matters is whether
not-completely-open systems with membranes or formal interfaces like
city councils or criminal trials can be navigated given a reasonable
amount of energy.  Do the interfaces promote orderly communication or
just consolidation of power?

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 04/11/2014 11:27 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

On 04/11/2014 10:43 AM, glen wrote:

Well, most of us, I think, agree that symmetry with respect to female
and male compensation is a good symmetry.  So, there's one example.


The problem there is gender culture, and the objectionable enduring
aspects of that could be eliminated with some biochemical tuning.
Weaken or strengthen certain drives, and watch the whole social fabric
change.  Maybe give tax incentives for tuning one's own sex hormone
mixture toward a socially optimal levels.  Professional body builders
and models could get exceptions, that sort of thing..


That's overshooting just a bit... too easy of a target to knock down 
because too few people would volunteer.


A better option would be simply to incentivize various demographics to 
change their context in calculated ways.  For example, we could pay some 
of the members of Flux to move down to Austin for a year.  We could take 
data from them here, then take the same or equivalent data from them in 
their new context down in Austin.  Such a controlled experiment would 
help us understand gender culture without invasive biochemical tuning. 
(We're limited in the extent to which we can control for the 
non-invasive tuning like eating too much Tex-Mex, of course.)  I know 
I'd volunteer for such studies... though not to Austin or Silicon 
Valley... but almost anywhere else.  (Whether my relationships with 
others would survive such context-breaking is another matter... we'd 
have to insist on controls much like those used for clinical trials. 
e.g. If you've been in such a study in the past 5 years, you're 
disqualified.)


The real problem, though, doesn't lie so much in our not doing such 
experiments.  The problem lies in how we analyze and curate the results. 
 Psychology and sociology seem a bit impoverished in their ability to 
collect and reduce data for consumption by, say, legislators.  With 
better databases, we might see more quantitatively falsifiable models 
emerge, from which we can better design experiments like that.


Moving away from something like a hacker space, we could consider groups 
like Alcoholics Anonymous.  Apparently, there are all sorts of 
specialized groups, some of which are open to anyone waltzing in and 
some of which are closed and new attendees have to be vetted.  One 
example is the women only group. 
http://leavingaa.com/have-you-been-13th-stepped/ In such cases, openness 
can be a very bad thing.  In order to support symmetry and give 
particular women just as much chance to use whatever tools such groups 
might provide, closing the meetings is useful.  The same might be said 
of, say, City Councils or criminal trials.  Some such meetings are 
closed in order to support symmetry and avoid the asymmetries amplified 
by openness.


In any case, it seems like a no-brainer to conclude that not all 
openness is always a good thing.


--
⇒⇐ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


Glen -
My hatred of the term "landscape" is partly because your question is 
ill-formed.  It implies a natural "up" and "down".
Sure, the source domain of the "landscape" metaphor on first observation 
is that of a single-valued function over two dimensions.  Of course, 
said "landscape" can have more features than mere "height" and "up" 
needn't be considered "good" whilst "down" is bad.   When siting a home 
or seeking a good location for hunting, gathering, or farming registered 
on such a "landscape" many features are of interest ranging from soil 
type to exposure, to view, to vegetation to flood-risk to water-access. 
  I prefer your term manifold in it's 
multi-valued/multivariate/multidimensional implications but I don't 
expect it to be very useful with anyone without at least modest 
mathematical exposure.
But in our reality, there are lots of different ways to define 
success.  What we need to do is embrace these definitions and provide 
a clear explication of an individual's options _early_ on ... like 
when they're 2 years old or so... at least before the pruning.


We don't do that because we _can't_ do that.  We're so caught up in 
our own myopia about the limited ways to define success mostly 
_money_ because without money, at least in our country, you can't do 
sh!t.  You can't even keep yourself alive when there's perfectly good 
medicine just down the street.
Yes, this is precisely the point I'm trying to stir up...  like the Sufi 
story of Mullah Nasrudin encountered on the street under the lamp 
seeking his lost keys.  When asked by a helpful passerby "so you lost 
your keys here?" and replying "no, I lost them in that dark alley over 
there, but the light is better here!",   We tend to seek easy/simple 
solutions.  To the extent we are optimizers, we like a single-valued 
fitness function to optimize on and are often too happy to get caught in 
a local minima at that!  And yes, money, the universal solvent, seems to 
be a very common one, and yes, to follow the metaphor, it does seem to 
"dissolve" most everything it touches.
So, the first part of the alternative is to take away that harsh 
pressure toward the single solution of money.  We need to work harder 
to ensure that everyone has enough to eat and access to healthcare.  
In parallel, we need to work harder to understand the range of ways we 
can reward ourselves for productive work.
Yes, a more complex fitness function seems desirable as a "good start" 
and more complex models perhaps than simple single valued functions and 
a gradient descent method?  Maybe some less simple ideas like 
"satisficing" vs "optimising"?  Some acknowledgement of ideas such as 
linear and nonlinear feedback, canalization, basins of attraction, 
punctuated equilibrium, etc.?
Personally, I'd work the rest of my life for just enough food, an 
internet connection, and a cabin in the woods.  (which is probably all 
my artifacts are worth, anyway... if that)
That is pretty much what I am reducing my own life to... though my 
"cabin" is an adobe and the "woods" is high desert and If I weren't so 
damned lazy/incompetent, I think I could probably grow at least half of 
my food...  people in these parts used to grow *all* of their food not 
that long ago!   I'm not sure if Gary Schlitz is that far off this track 
with his own "home at the edge of the rainforest" in Columbia?   Carl in 
his "shack behind the Dojo" shares a few features.  I am sure there are 
more here living a humble and relatively simple existence!


I have a friend who lives full-time aboard her 24' sailboat on Lake Mead 
who insists she "hasn't smelled asphalt in 10 years" and never docks at 
a marina.   She depends on a "gift economy" for her basic needs (oats, 
corn, beans, rice, eggs etc.), she has had no cash income for 10 
years...  people seek her out by boat and 4x4 in the coves and channels 
where she tends to anchor between excursions up and down the lake... for 
her mystical and often retrograde ideas and company for which in 
exchange, they bring her "care packages" most of which she turns around 
and re-gifts to her friends living in various homeless camps at the ends 
of roads at aforementioned "coves".


She gets her connection with the outside world through these visits and 
*yes* the magic of technology.  A young couple who she once helped to 
nurture a struggling business now provides her with a "friends and 
family" cell phone with unlimited data  and SMS.   Her laptop is fritzed 
and she occasionally wishes it weren't and contemplates if it isn't time 
to ask Santa for an Android Tablet... She's considered sorting out 
getting her (backup?) internet over ham radio... she does have a small 
ham set onboard, her small bank of lead-acid batteries being kept topped 
by solar and drained really only by the radio, her cell charger...  and 
the occasional cabin light (go to bed when the sun goes down if you 
don't have things to do by star/moonlight!).


Keeping her (non-

Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Roger Critchlow

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:

> Glen -
>
> Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!
>
>  On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:
>>
>>> The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
>>> different from those that dominated before the openness.  Our new
>>> masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
>>> like Musk and Schmidt.  And it's not really money that the "haves"
>>> have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
>>> the new social manifold.
>>>
>> What is the alternative?
>>
>> Marcus
>>
> And yes, this is what I'm asking this august body to consider... are there
> alternatives?
>
> Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the
> new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility to
> manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless it is
> just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the oppressive
> route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality through
> handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.
>
> Wow.

The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are routinely
subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence, and violence;
african american males spend their lives in prison while privileged white
males get slapped on the wrist for the same infractions.  So society
currently imposes drastic, life threatening handicaps on the disadvantaged.

The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose
handicaps on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route?  While the
status quo is only threatening to rape women and to lynch people of color
-- the majority of people in the world -- so it's okay?

Better a society where white men are free than a society where everyone is
oppressed?  I'm sure it rings true to a lot of misogynist, racist trolls,
but that's not the way I want to roll.

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.  Their ancestors may
have been rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and thieves, they may hold the
majority of wealth in the world, but let's let bygones be bygones.  What is
asked is that they stop treating non-straight, non-white, non-males like
slaves, and they stop allowing others to treat the non-SWMs like slaves,
and that they stop blaming the non-SWMs for all the misery visited on them
by SWMs as if the jerks would be really nice bros if not provoked.

The ideal here, as I understood it, is a kind of meritocracy where those
who perform better are rewarded for their performance.  Make it so.

-- rec --

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


> Well, most of us, I think, agree that symmetry with respect to female 
> and male compensation is a good symmetry.  So, there's one example. 

The problem there is gender culture, and the objectionable enduring
aspects of that could be eliminated with some biochemical tuning.
Weaken or strengthen certain drives, and watch the whole social fabric
change.  Maybe give tax incentives for tuning one's own sex hormone
mixture toward a socially optimal levels.  Professional body builders
and models could get exceptions, that sort of thing.. 

Marcus



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 04/11/2014 10:32 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 10:26 -0700, glen wrote:


2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to
more/good symmetry, then support those.


Symmetry of what?  What is an example of such a manifold?


Well, most of us, I think, agree that symmetry with respect to female 
and male compensation is a good symmetry.  So, there's one example. 
There are plenty more.  But I can't help thinking you're asking for 
examples for a nefarious reason ... perhaps to build a straw man. 8^)


One social manifold would be the hyper liberal tech scene here in 
Portland.  To look at the male/female symmetry in the context of that 
manifold, we can examine our "feminist hacker space": 
http://fluxlab.io/.  Many of the brogrammers we have here have objected 
quite strongly to its very existence.  They yelp "reverse prejudice" and 
heap all sorts of criticism on it.  Luckily, our social manifold shuts 
those idiots down rather quickly.  Change the manifold, perhaps by 
moving down to Santa Clara or even Palo Alto, and I suspect such 
symmetry-maintaining pressures will lessen.


--
⇒⇐ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 04/11/2014 10:22 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the
new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility
to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless
it is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the
oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality
through handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.

Perhaps it is the question of the commons where the commons is Glen's
"new social manifold".   Can we in any way apply our presumed
"enlightened self interest" to the shaping of said commons or restating
the above?  Bending dangerously the "landscape metaphor, do we just
carve huge moguls in it with our rambunctious race to the bottom,
exposing rocks and other hazards thereby undermining the experience of
all others on the slopes except the most keenly facile?  Or do we take
an army of bulldozers to the slopes and make a flat plain of them to be
enjoyed by all equally with no advantage proffered to diversity of
circumstance and ability?


My hatred of the term "landscape" is partly because your question is 
ill-formed.  It implies a natural "up" and "down".  But in our reality, 
there are lots of different ways to define success.  What we need to do 
is embrace these definitions and provide a clear explication of an 
individual's options _early_ on ... like when they're 2 years old or 
so... at least before the pruning.


We don't do that because we _can't_ do that.  We're so caught up in our 
own myopia about the limited ways to define success mostly _money_ 
because without money, at least in our country, you can't do sh!t.  You 
can't even keep yourself alive when there's perfectly good medicine just 
down the street.


So, the first part of the alternative is to take away that harsh 
pressure toward the single solution of money.  We need to work harder to 
ensure that everyone has enough to eat and access to healthcare.  In 
parallel, we need to work harder to understand the range of ways we can 
reward ourselves for productive work.  Personally, I'd work the rest of 
my life for just enough food, an internet connection, and a cabin in the 
woods.  (which is probably all my artifacts are worth, anyway... if that)


--
⇒⇐ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?




2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to
more/good symmetry, then support those.

Symmetry of what?  What is an example of such a manifold?

Marcus
Taken at face value, I think this is the key question, and not an easy 
one, as glibly as I may have tried to present it in the first place.


- Steve


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 10:26 -0700, glen wrote:

> 2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to 
> more/good symmetry, then support those.

Symmetry of what?  What is an example of such a manifold?

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 04/11/2014 10:07 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:

And it's not really money that the "haves"
have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
the new social manifold.


What is the alternative?


Well, they come in 2 categories:

1) regressive - go back to things like royalty or landedness, or
2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to 
more/good symmetry, then support those.


Lumping all of (2) into "oh well, we just have to live with it" seems a 
bit defeatist.  And claiming that _all_ openness is always a good thing 
seems a bit naive, as well.  Admitting that some types of openness 
amplify undesirable asymmetries (including security through obscurity) 
seems to me like a progressive step forward.


--
⇒⇐ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


Glen -

Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:

The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
different from those that dominated before the openness.  Our new
masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
like Musk and Schmidt.  And it's not really money that the "haves"
have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
the new social manifold.

What is the alternative?

Marcus
And yes, this is what I'm asking this august body to consider... are 
there alternatives?


Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the 
new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility 
to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless 
it is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the 
oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality 
through handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.


Perhaps it is the question of the commons where the commons is Glen's 
"new social manifold".   Can we in any way apply our presumed 
"enlightened self interest" to the shaping of said commons or restating 
the above?  Bending dangerously the "landscape metaphor, do we just 
carve huge moguls in it with our rambunctious race to the bottom, 
exposing rocks and other hazards thereby undermining the experience of 
all others on the slopes except the most keenly facile?  Or do we take 
an army of bulldozers to the slopes and make a flat plain of them to be 
enjoyed by all equally with no advantage proffered to diversity of 
circumstance and ability?


"Hey McCloud, get offa my Ewe!" - not the Stones

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:
> The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
> different from those that dominated before the openness.  Our new
> masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
> like Musk and Schmidt.  And it's not really money that the "haves"
> have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
> the new social manifold.

What is the alternative?

Marcus



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 04/10/2014 04:31 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Yes, there are still big distinctions between the haves and the
have nots, but there are more ways to move up. That's way more
interesting than worrying about the cretins that Ms. Taylor has
observed.

We've been here before:

Re: using openness as a tool for opacity
http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2013-October/020821.html

While I agree that openness increases the kind and degree of
opportunities to "move up" (or move in, out, down, and through), I
maintain that openness allows for _more_ exploitation by the "haves" of
the "have nots". The increase in opportunities simply changes the
landscape (another buzzword I hate but can't avoid).

We can analogize with the industrial revolution. Instead of being
exploited by wealthy landowners with good blood, the serfs in the newly
formed US were exploited by clever tricksters who knew how to "move up"
and then game the system so that they "stayed up" ... they even engaged
in sophisticated propoganda schemes like donating money to construct
libraries and such for the "public good".

The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply different
from those that dominated before the openness. Our new masters will be
(are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people like Musk and
Schmidt. And it's not really money that the "haves" have... it's the
agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate the new social
manifold.

Overall, openness is used by the morally corrupt contingent of these
tricksters to achieve and maintain hegemony ... or simply to engage in
perverse behavior:
http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


Nick -


Merle,

I am sure we CAN'T figure it out without your help as a "emergentist". 
  The damage done by discrimination is a great example of non-zero-sum 
losses.  The problem is similar to the problem of inequality of 
opportunity generally.  The attractor is for the children of 
better-off people to be better-off and for better-off children to 
become better-off adults and have better-off children.  As an example 
I give you the Wood-Gormely [elementary] school here in Santa Fe, 
which has a richer educational program because the parents throw 
resources and time at it.  And, I assume, simply because it has an 
aura of a place where Parents give a damn.  Thus, despite being a 
Public School, it becomes by virtue of these investments of time and 
resources and energy, a "better" public school.  To deprive all 
parents of the possibility of investing in the school their kid goes 
to is to deprive all schools of something essential; but the 
possibility of such investment leads inevitably to the genealogical 
flow of social benefits. Which is why we have to revive the notion of 
social Democracy in this poor sad country of ours.


FRIAMMERS could be crucial to such a discussion, if only by virtue of 
having the conceptual tool of the "attractor" at our disposal.  In 
complexity terms, what is it that social democracies do?  Is it basin 
filling?


And "preferential attachment" and "canalization" and "coevolution on 
fitness landscapes", et cetera...


I was impressed that the original author in question, Astra Taylor even 
*referenced* complexity science topics.   I'm not of the belief that 
sprinkling complexity science terms onto a problem will magically remove 
it's stains, BUT I do believe that many real-world, everyday challenges 
in the world *can be* and often *must be* modeled as the non-linear 
systems that they are, rather than fitting them to a simple linear 
system, then drawing totally undermotivated and usually bogus 
conclusions based on those models.


When usually we hear "the Rich get Richer", it rings our bell of 
unfairness and abuse of power rather than being accepted as a truism 
about positive feedback (even in linear systems) and preferential 
attachment and canalization...


While the  rhetoric of equality politics may have been critical to break 
over from the old cultural hegemony into a new basin of attraction, I 
don't think that the challenge remains making the point that "power 
corrupts" over and over again, but rather seeking a dynamic which has 
the properties we (think that?) we desire.   "Be careful what you wish 
for" being an entirely other question, I fear.


Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron 
" is a cautionary tale 
of one ultimate consequence of linear, brute force attempts at achieving 
"equality".


"You Don't Always Get What You Want" - Stones

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Merle, 

I am sure we CAN’T figure it out without your help as a “emergentist”.   The 
damage done by discrimination is a great example of non-zero-sum losses.  The 
problem is similar to the problem of inequality of opportunity generally.  The 
attractor is for the children of better-off people to be better-off and for 
better-off children to become better-off adults and have better-off children.  
As an example I give you the Wood-Gormely [elementary] school here in Santa Fe, 
which has a richer educational program because the parents throw resources and 
time at it.  And, I assume, simply because it has an aura of a place where 
Parents give a damn.  Thus, despite being a Public School, it becomes by virtue 
of these investments of time and resources and energy, a “better” public 
school.  To deprive all parents of the possibility of investing in the school 
their kid goes to is to deprive all schools of something essential; but the 
possibility of such investment leads inevitably to the genealogical flow of 
social benefits.  Which is why we have to revive the notion of social Democracy 
in this poor sad country of ours.  

FRIAMMERS could be crucial to such a discussion, if only by virtue of having 
the conceptual tool of the “attractor” at our disposal.  In complexity terms, 
what is it that social democracies do?  Is it basin filling?  

Take care, 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 10:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

In Iceland woman make more than men (working part-time);  the gap is only 2.5% 
in Slovenia.  Women are not equally represented in some of the highest paying 
professions, which accounts for much of the difference

Women lost their equal work status 10,000 years ago when the plow was invented. 
 This is a complicated issue.  It will take time.

I'm sure you guys can figure it out.

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com> > wrote:

On Apr 10, 2014, at 5:51 PM, Marcus G. Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:22 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> IMO, lurking in their minds is:  What is this employee's absolute
> priority?   Is it the bottom line of the company or is it taking their
> kids to school and helping with their homework and building treehouses?
> What will be the employee's top priority on a day to day basis?   If I
> am cost constrained, who should I choose?  Who is loyal to me?  Who is
> predictable and reliable?

A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I don’t have 
personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” democracies of the world 
have recognized this tendency and legislated to regulate it. I do remember on 
one job where we worked in conjunction with folks in Germany, and I learned 
that employers were much more constrained in how many hours they were allowed 
to require. I’m uncertain as to what is the “best” balance between employers’  
and workers’ rights.

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org <mailto:me...@emergentdiplomacy.org> 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff 

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Gary Schiltz

Ah, visualize the scene: Steve pulling the plow, singing "I'll never be your 
beast of burden” and his wife behind with the whip, shouting “More work, less 
singing!” :-)

On Apr 11, 2014, at 12:07 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
> On 4/10/14 10:47 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>> 
>> Women lost their equal work status 10,000 years ago when the plow was 
>> invented.  This is a complicated issue.  It will take time.
> I actually own a primitive plow (more appropriately known as an Ard) which my 
> wife and I used in our garden for a (very) short time.   Despite my wife 
> being no slouch physically, mentally nor emotionally, it *always* worked 
> better when I was harnessed up to pull the ard and she managed the guiding of 
> the path and depth of the (wooden) share rather than vice-versa.  If we were 
> being paid for this work according to it's utility it would be a very low 
> rate and I think her task would be more valuable since in principle I could 
> (and should) be replaced by a stronger and more tireless beast.



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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-11 Thread Gary Schiltz

Actually, I was thinking more specifically of the regulation from the 
employers’ side, i.e. limiting the ability to *require* employees to work more. 
I’m not necessarily advocating for more or less regulation, just pointing out 
that some countries have at least attempted to regulate the process. Maybe 
labor laws were more important in the early 20th century as the industrial 
revolution was getting in full swing. Or not :-)

On Apr 11, 2014, at 8:48 AM, Marcus G. Daniels  wrote:
> On 4/10/14, 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I don’t 
>> have personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” democracies of 
>> the world have recognized this tendency and legislated to regulate it.
> To actually regulate it, it would be necessary to take steps to stop work off 
> hours.  For abstract activities like software development that is close to 
> impossible.  There's always a way to do more work than the other guy by 
> putting in more effort.  Anyway, what's with this heavy-handed regulation?   
> Why is investing in children/family any more valuable than investing in work? 
>   It's a planet running out of natural resources, after all.

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?


On 4/10/14, 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I 
don’t have personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” 
democracies of the world have recognized this tendency and legislated 
to regulate it.
To actually regulate it, it would be necessary to take steps to stop 
work off hours.  For abstract activities like software development that 
is close to impossible.  There's always a way to do more work than the 
other guy by putting in more effort.  Anyway, what's with this 
heavy-handed regulation?   Why is investing in children/family any more 
valuable than investing in work?   It's a planet running out of natural 
resources, after all.


Marcus


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Steve Smith


  
  
On 4/10/14 10:47 PM, Merle Lefkoff
  wrote:

  

  Women lost their equal work status 10,000 years ago when the
  plow was invented.  This is a complicated issue.  It will take
  time.

  

I actually own a primitive plow (more appropriately known as an Ard)
which my wife and I used in our garden for a (very) short time.  
Despite my wife being no slouch physically, mentally nor
emotionally, it *always* worked better when I was harnessed up to
pull the ard and she managed the guiding of the path and depth of
the (wooden) share rather than vice-versa.  If we were being paid
for this work according to it's utility it would be a very low rate
and I think her task would be more valuable since in principle I
could (and should) be replaced by a stronger and more tireless
beast.


 
  


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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Merle Lefkoff

In Iceland woman make more than men (working part-time);  the gap is only
2.5% in Slovenia.  Women are not equally represented in some of the highest
paying professions, which accounts for much of the difference

Women lost their equal work status 10,000 years ago when the plow was
invented.  This is a complicated issue.  It will take time.

I'm sure you guys can figure it out.


On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

> On Apr 10, 2014, at 5:51 PM, Marcus G. Daniels 
> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:22 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
> >
> > IMO, lurking in their minds is:  What is this employee's absolute
> > priority?   Is it the bottom line of the company or is it taking their
> > kids to school and helping with their homework and building treehouses?
> > What will be the employee's top priority on a day to day basis?   If I
> > am cost constrained, who should I choose?  Who is loyal to me?  Who is
> > predictable and reliable?
>
> A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I don’t
> have personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” democracies of
> the world have recognized this tendency and legislated to regulate it. I do
> remember on one job where we worked in conjunction with folks in Germany,
> and I learned that employers were much more constrained in how many hours
> they were allowed to require. I’m uncertain as to what is the “best”
> balance between employers’  and workers’ rights.
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>



-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
me...@emergentdiplomacy.org
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:38 -0600, Steve Smith wrote:

> The original (implicit) question was *does* Openness amplify
> Inequality as a matter of course?

Reading over the essay again, all she seems to notice are abusive
misogynistic trolls.  I guess if they could be compartmentalized and
kept from seeing the evidence of each others fine work that would be
more like equality?  Can't we just promise to make examples out of a few
of them from time to time and call it good?  

I guess it depends whether you really care about norms in the larger
population, or whether you have the assumption that most of life (esp.
now) involves about filtering out the noise to find the signal, and that
it won't always be easy to find.  

The opportunities for working in tech are way, way better now than when
I was a kid.  Today a young person has at their disposal hundreds of
millions of lines of free source code to learn from, improve, and
exploit, and direct ways to engage with the companies that maintain that
code.  Yes, there are still big distinctions between the haves and the
have nots, but there are more ways to move up.  That's way more
interesting than worrying about the cretins that Ms. Taylor has
observed.  

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Gary Schiltz

On Apr 10, 2014, at 5:51 PM, Marcus G. Daniels  wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:22 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
> 
> IMO, lurking in their minds is:  What is this employee's absolute
> priority?   Is it the bottom line of the company or is it taking their
> kids to school and helping with their homework and building treehouses?
> What will be the employee's top priority on a day to day basis?   If I
> am cost constrained, who should I choose?  Who is loyal to me?  Who is
> predictable and reliable?

A very North American (and simply human, I suspect) perspective. I don’t have 
personal experience, but I believe the more “advanced” democracies of the world 
have recognized this tendency and legislated to regulate it. I do remember on 
one job where we worked in conjunction with folks in Germany, and I learned 
that employers were much more constrained in how many hours they were allowed 
to require. I’m uncertain as to what is the “best” balance between employers’  
and workers’ rights.

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 16:22 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> But if we are to get out of this mess, and if we believe families are
> important to human individual and collective well-being, we have to
> find a way to counter the perverse incentives that afflict corporate
> managers. 

IMO, lurking in their minds is:  What is this employee's absolute
priority?   Is it the bottom line of the company or is it taking their
kids to school and helping with their homework and building treehouses?
What will be the employee's top priority on a day to day basis?   If I
am cost constrained, who should I choose?  Who is loyal to me?  Who is
predictable and reliable?

Now it is possible that smarter or more productive employees can change
the rules of their priority list and still get more done than the person
putting in the hours, but I think that is the exception.

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Steve Smith


Roger -

So, what's the question here?


The original (implicit) question was *does* Openness amplify Inequality 
as a matter of course?


My elaborated question in light of both yours and Marcus' response is 
what the balance might be between:


1. A specific "conspiracy" by (straight?) white males to exclude all
   others from this profession (or access to any desirable resources?).
2. A less specific "conspiracy" by *any* dominant group to exclude all
   others from access to desirable resources.
3. A specific structural (in phase space) feature of this profession as
   a dynamic system which selects for homogeneity of membership and
   therefore access to certain desirable resources.
4. A general feature of a more general class of systems of which a
   profession such as this is likely to tend toward homogeneity.

Simply put, I think it may be a truism that "dominance begets dominance" 
rather than white-male-straightness is fundamentally hinky?


On the other hand, I think it *is* arguable that both maleness and 
straightness may select for specific behaviors (forms of 
aggression/competition?) that might actually aggravate/accelerate this 
dynamic at least in comparison to many (some average of) females and/or 
homosexual males.


I'm not as sure about whiteness (melanin content of skin?) though there 
may be a positive correlation between social groups which evolved in 
harsher climates with long periods of low productivity (winter) 
punctuated with shorter periods of high productivity and strategies for 
controlling the resulting resources effectively. This seems to be 
broadly correlated with the evolution of more northern peoples which 
seems also to select for lowered melanin in the skin.


I don't think it is unique to heterosexuals, nor men, nor white people 
to exhibit in-group altruism as you suggest or a familiarity-selfishness 
as Marcus riposted with.  I only question whether this is unique to the 
impugned group.   I make a weak argument above, I think that said group 
may be more capable or even inclined to such, but it doesn't seem to be 
a simple black and white matter.


That said, *as* a member of said group by circumstance, I *am* 
interested in understanding what kind of a system (social?) could be 
implemented/engaged-in which would not reinforce those qualities.   It 
is accepted that as a member of said group (in our culture) that I have 
benefited from all of this, and I think I can find  many ways in which I 
specifically *do*, although I can also find examples where I personally 
got the proverbial "short end" of this and that, so I am not without 
experience with "short ends", for whatever that is worth.


- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Nick Thompson

“But only so many family oriented' people will work 12-16 hour days.”

 

This would seem to be the key.  All the value-problems in our society would 
seem to be summarized in this one assertion.   If one grants that women are 
predisposed by physiology to be more tied to infants that men, and that infants 
become childen, and that a family is made up of infants and children and their 
parents, and perhaps grandparents, and that, therefore, on average, women are 
more likely to be family oriented then men, and that, on average, corporations 
don’t give a shit about the maintenance of families, THEN, on average, women 
will be paid less than men because, on average, women are less likely to put in 
16 hour days (working, or LOOKING like they are working) than men. So if a 
manager stereotypes candidates for a raise, he or she is less likely to EXPECT 
16 hour days from female employees than from male employees.  This is not to 
say that when women do escape the attractors of childbearing and nursing, they 
are probably better at putting in 16 hour days as men.   But if we are to get 
out of this mess, and if we believe families are important to human individual 
and collective well-being, we have to find a way to counter the perverse 
incentives that afflict corporate managers.  I think I might start by making it 
a crime to work more than 8 hours a day or to suborn the working of more than 8 
hours a day.  

 

See you all tomorrow, 

 

Nick

 





 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 3:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

So, what's the question here?

 

You think maybe that the predominance of straight white men in technology is 
innately right?  That other genders and races aren't capable of doing the job, 
so all those white male losers and assholes that we have to deal with are 
objectively the best people for the jobs they hold?

 

Or are you thinking that maybe all those white male losers got their skills and 
jobs through some sort of structural inequity that tilted the competition in 
their favor?  That a kind of in-group altruism is operating here, where white 
men give each other a pass while agreeing to allow the jerks among them to beat 
up the women, persons of color, and non-normative gender identities so those 
uppity not male, not white, not straight competitors have to wade through piles 
of shit that straight white men never meet?

 

If you grant that the competition has been tilted in the past and is still 
tilted the present, by whatever mysterious mechanisms there might be that help 
some while hindering others, then it's hard to argue that the same mysterious 
mechanisms won't find their way into the future.

 

-- rec --

 

 

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Marcus G. Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

Astra Taylor writes:

``Those women who do fight their way into the industry often end up
leaving -- their attrition rate is 56%, or double that of men -- and
sexism is a big part of what pushes them out. “I no longer touch code
because I couldn't deal with the constant dismissing and undermining of
even my most basic work by the ‘brogramming’ gulag I worked for,” wrote
one woman in a roundup of answers to the question: Why there are so few
female engineers?''

Women form cliques too.  I'm all for prohibiting all of this (coalition
formation and politics) from the work place, but that's not likely to
happen.  Make it as taboo as sexual harassment.  Some people believe
that this is all part of what gives a team good morale and
communication.  I think that's nonsense.  A good team is made of people
that are engaged in the technical work, and not each other.

My experience is that, in the world of software engineering, women are
often easier to work with then men.  Often they have better listening
skills and better impulse control -- and so there is less of the Not
Invented Here syndrome which plagues so many projects.  But only so many
`family oriented' people will work 12-16 hour days.

Marcus






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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 15:25 -0600, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> So, what's the question here?
[..]
> Or are you thinking that maybe all those white male losers got their
> skills and jobs through some sort of structural inequity that tilted
> the competition in their favor?

There's a third possibility, which is that while there is inequity, the
stereotypical silicon valley brogrammer is actually good at their jobs,
in spite of having this defect.  I would say it is (relative) privilege
that gave them the opportunity to develop the skills they have.  Mostly
what makes software engineers valuable is skill, judgment, and literacy,
and that mostly comes from lots of practice -- which is to say, starting
young.  Being especially intelligent helps, but I think does not fully
replace experience.  

> That a kind of in-group altruism is operating here, where white men
> give each other a pass while agreeing to allow the jerks among them to
> beat up the women, persons of color, and non-normative gender
> identities so those uppity not male, not white, not straight
> competitors have to wade through piles of shit that straight white men
> never meet?

So, if you buy the argument above, then a selection criteria for who to
put in your company is to select someone like yourself: Someone you
understand.  Not for altruistic reasons, but for selfish reasons.  While
perhaps egotistical, it would be a crude way to model how they would
work out.  Credentials like open source experience or education add to
that, but there to there is inequity inherent in those experiences too.
In contrast, doing something unfamiliar could seem riskier.  

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve writes:

> More than anything, I 
> find that a "healthy" team can help a new member find resonance with the 
> teams values and habits (work ethic, quality work product, open 
> communication, etc.) while an "unhealthy" one can undermine an 
> individual's natural instincts or choices.

I argue that "team values" tend to be an unhealthy concept.  The team
has a goal, and that goal needs to be recognized and pursued -- a
contract or a milestone, etc.  Work toward the goal, don't take undue
advantage or put special burden of particular people to get it done.  
Putting aside fairness and responsibility issues, other values or
affinities (race, gender, recreational preferences) are things that just
distinctions that will create in-group and out-groups, and that (in my
opinion) does more harm that good.  

Doing this will increase diversity of the team, whereas playing the
blacker/whiter/americaner than thou card does the opposite.  What you do
is what should matter, not who you are.

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Roger Critchlow

So, what's the question here?

You think maybe that the predominance of straight white men in technology
is innately right?  That other genders and races aren't capable of doing
the job, so all those white male losers and assholes that we have to deal
with are objectively the best people for the jobs they hold?

Or are you thinking that maybe all those white male losers got their skills
and jobs through some sort of structural inequity that tilted the
competition in their favor?  That a kind of in-group altruism is operating
here, where white men give each other a pass while agreeing to allow the
jerks among them to beat up the women, persons of color, and non-normative
gender identities so those uppity not male, not white, not straight
competitors have to wade through piles of shit that straight white men
never meet?

If you grant that the competition has been tilted in the past and is still
tilted the present, by whatever mysterious mechanisms there might be that
help some while hindering others, then it's hard to argue that the same
mysterious mechanisms won't find their way into the future.

-- rec --

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Astra Taylor writes:
>
> ``Those women who do fight their way into the industry often end up
> leaving -- their attrition rate is 56%, or double that of men -- and
> sexism is a big part of what pushes them out. “I no longer touch code
> because I couldn't deal with the constant dismissing and undermining of
> even my most basic work by the ‘brogramming’ gulag I worked for,” wrote
> one woman in a roundup of answers to the question: Why there are so few
> female engineers?''
>
> Women form cliques too.  I'm all for prohibiting all of this (coalition
> formation and politics) from the work place, but that's not likely to
> happen.  Make it as taboo as sexual harassment.  Some people believe
> that this is all part of what gives a team good morale and
> communication.  I think that's nonsense.  A good team is made of people
> that are engaged in the technical work, and not each other.
>
> My experience is that, in the world of software engineering, women are
> often easier to work with then men.  Often they have better listening
> skills and better impulse control -- and so there is less of the Not
> Invented Here syndrome which plagues so many projects.  But only so many
> `family oriented' people will work 12-16 hour days.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

2014-04-10 Thread Steve Smith


Marcus -

Well observed, as usual.

You state:

"My experience is that, in the world of software engineering, women are
often easier to work with then men.  Often they have better listening
skills and better impulse control -- and so there is less of the Not
Invented Here syndrome which plagues so many projects.  But only so many
`family oriented' people will work 12-16 hour days."

When I entered the professional work world, women were already 
significantly represented at all levels of Systems/Software Engineering 
except maybe management.   During my mid career, many women entered 
middle and upper management.  In general I experienced the same things 
(better listening skills, impulse control, and other ego-barriers) 
compared to men, although, by that time I had mostly arranged to work 
with people (men and women) who had transcended most of that, at least 
in the context of my teams.


I found women as direct supervisors to be much easier to communicate 
with and negotiate the complexities of my own role as 
team/project/small-group leader/manager.  While they *could* make the 
"hard decisions", they did not seem to feel the need to prove it by 
making arbitrary "hard decisions" as some of my male supervisors seemed 
compelled to do.  Mine is a very small sample set in a very unique 
(National Laboratory) environment, so has little if any more than 
anecdotal value.



I'm not so sure about your specific statement:

"I think that's nonsense.  A good team is made of people
that are engaged in the technical work, and not each other."

I do agree that strong cliques may neither be sufficient nor necessary 
but anecdotally they do seem to provide some useful side-effects that 
support intra-team communication and cooperation.  More than anything, I 
find that a "healthy" team can help a new member find resonance with the 
teams values and habits (work ethic, quality work product, open 
communication, etc.) while an "unhealthy" one can undermine an 
individual's natural instincts or choices.


The teams that formed "by circumstance" were often the most effective 
and "healthy", the ones formed by "fiat" often never had a chance 
(remember the HS habit of making us work in "teams" where there was 
always at least  one slacker/bozo?).


In a larger pool of individuals with solid technical skills, a 
reasonable work ethic, and a modest sense of quality, I believe that, as 
I think you imply, teams can form as needed, independent of any specific 
"identity".   I have seen this in action and in at least one case, 
watched subteams form and morph effectively  and fluidly from that pool.


I'm not sure what that critical mass is, but it *was* one of the "holy 
grails" of SFX, to establish such a pool that could respond to 
opportunities quickly, effectively and fluidly.   Of course the work 
(and the ability to land it) was also required.  The paradox of chickens 
and eggs.


- Steve





Astra Taylor writes:

``Those women who do fight their way into the industry often end up
leaving -- their attrition rate is 56%, or double that of men -- and
sexism is a big part of what pushes them out. “I no longer touch code
because I couldn't deal with the constant dismissing and undermining of
even my most basic work by the ‘brogramming’ gulag I worked for,” wrote
one woman in a roundup of answers to the question: Why there are so few
female engineers?''

Women form cliques too.  I'm all for prohibiting all of this (coalition
formation and politics) from the work place, but that's not likely to
happen.  Make it as taboo as sexual harassment.  Some people believe
that this is all part of what gives a team good morale and
communication.  I think that's nonsense.  A good team is made of people
that are engaged in the technical work, and not each other.

My experience is that, in the world of software engineering, women are
often easier to work with then men.  Often they have better listening
skills and better impulse control -- and so there is less of the Not
Invented Here syndrome which plagues so many projects.  But only so many
`family oriented' people will work 12-16 hour days.

Marcus






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Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?