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Future Generating Machines...

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jon zingale

Future Generating Machines...

A Sunday scratch for your dystopian itch.

Plastic Pills on Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq_-bLlY&ab_channel=PlasticPills

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

"There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons."

Amen to that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2021 12:16 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

A Sunday scratch for your dystopian itch.

Plastic Pills on Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq_-bLlY&ab_channel=PlasticPills

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gepr

Re: Future Generating Machines...

My first thought was: Who thinks this is dystopian? And why? It looks to me like one of a) what's been happening for the entire history of the universe and/or b) progress (!) what must happen in order for biological life to survive. If this is dystopian, good riddance to those who find it so. >8^D

But then my 2nd thought went a tiny bit more to the high road. I can see that our tendency to anthropomorphize and personalize (e.g. gods, Jung, naming our computers, etc.) machines might play a little trick on the minds of those who believe the story ... the Great Man trick, again ... the tendency to falsely gather and unify processes that *lack* agency and ascribe/impute agency to them.

That sort of language permeates that video, giving the machine(s) agency, intent, purpose. But that's blatantly false. To promote a false equivalence between, say, YouTube's greedy and largely coherent agency with an imputed *appearance* of coherent agency in the education system is not even wrong. It's nonsense made to seem like sense. This rhetoric is custom designed to frighten those of us who might already be predisposed to fear.

But taken objectively, if we removed the fear-based rhetoric, the *way* of thinking, would help us understand complex patterns that arise in the composition of sub-machines (machinelets?). All an objectification would take would be to cast prior epochs in the same Control terms, which they most certainly *were* ... to recast the always, and forever has been, false "individual" into its proper terms as an illusory collection of sub-machines. Once that's done, the rhetoric in the video shows itself to be Yet Another Eschatological dopamine rush. "Be afraid! Be very afraid."

Pffft. I say go with it. The Controlled world we live in is as beautiful and complex as a flower or an ant bed. Enjoy being routed. Don't fight the flow. Enjoy it. You'll die happier.

On 3/28/21 2:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons."
>
> Amen to that.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
> Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2021 12:16 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...
>
> A Sunday scratch for your dystopian itch.
>
> Plastic Pills on Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq_-bLlY&ab_channel=PlasticPills

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

jon zingale

Re: Future Generating Machines...

So, it didn't scratch your Sunday dystopian itch. How about that. Monday!

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Steve Smith

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

Jon -

Thanks for the introduction to the podcast creator: plastic pills.. I
appreciate the style of his analysis (up to Glen's "Be afraid, be very
afraid!")... I may not be steeped enough in the PostModernists to be
tired of their "know it all style". Or maybe more correctly, now that
they've been around long enough, I've become inured to the "know it all"
and am finally hearing some of the message riding on that carrier wave.

I agree with Glen (or more specifically, what I heard, probably not what
he said ) that this needn't be read as doom and gloom.   I am fed by
morbid fascination in a way that this style meets well...   preferring
to have the dark clouds presented so that I can savor the (possible,
likely, under-appreciated) glints of silver linings.   I live by a bit
of a truism (to me) that every Dystopia is also a Utopia and
vice-versa... it comes down to context.

Rather than awfulize and vilify, it seems quite obvious to me to try to
read these three (and more perhaps under extrapolation) modes of human
collective organization AS adaptive self-organization... somewhat
inevitable in it's broad strokes, if not in every detail.   Perhaps the
basis for Marx's general theme (I can't find where he said this in so
many words, but it seems to be widely reported that he believed such?)
that "all societies will eventually organize as communist, but some will
have to take a longer route to get there (through capitalism)" provides
some backdrop for this.    The significant failures of central-party,
authoritarian communist states perhaps only contradict this ideation
insomuch as *they* represent what might seem like simply a different
"long way there" compared to free market capitalism.

In the terminology of StephenG (and others), it does seem that all of
this can be contemplated as a "least action path" through a
high-dimensional space (human circumstance embedded in the larger
ecological/biospheric circumstance, embedded in a geological
circumstance, embedded in a more cosmic (solar, galactic, etc.)
circumstance.   This "hierarchy of space/time scale" is not necessarily
*real* in any absolute/objective sense, but a rough hierarchy which we
impose on it.   Following Herb Simon's "nearly decomposable system"
apprehension... it is both natural (and motivated) that we would
decompose this way and try to apprehend human
sociopoliticaleconomicspiritual evolution somewhat/mostly as an isolated
system, merely "embedded in" the larger
ecological/biospherical/geological/etc contexts.

Our awareness of anthropogenic effects on the biosphere breaks that
illusion (for those who are willing to recognize/acknowledge those
effects) but most of us are probably not ready yet to believe in any
significant couplings with, say, continental drift or the magnetosphere,
or even more far fetched, the orbits of the planets or yet more, on the
circumstances of the Milky Way.

Coming back down to the scale of Deleuz's observations...   1st world
cultures (both western *and* eastern) seem to follow the patterns he
outlines of humans/groups resorting to murder (intergroup conflict);
enslavement (also through warfare); serfdom (feudalism); wage-slaves
(bourgoise/prole/etc. industrialism); modern control (via time-clocks.
activity tracking/monitoring/etc).   China, for example, has followed a
somewhat different path (others here, notably StephenG) can speak
more-better to China's path through the last 20 (or 40 or 120) years to
get to where they may well be more effective at some critical aspects of
*our* (western industrial materialism) than we are.

The theme that Plastic Pill's expose' of Deleuze's ideas that I am
triggered by/for/with is that humans ARE self-aware (up to some delta)
and CAN modify their individual behavior (to the extent you believe in
Free Will) based on our apprehension of our own personal coupling with
these larger structures of human activity.

Perhaps as Glen implies (again, me putting my version of his words out
there) in "I say go with it" we are too puny and limited, or the grand
arc is too absolute for our willfulness to change the course of such
things in any meaningful way.   Does the flotsam on the crashing waves
of the ocean aspire to change even the smallest detail of surf, or at
best can we just aspire to "hang ten and go tubular" (to mis-hack surfer
lingo)?

I, at least, aspire to understand (apprehend aspects of?) the "nearly
decomposable" system of systems our existence is predicated on and look
for opportunities, at the very least to anticipate bifurcation points,
phase changes, saddles in this crazy existence my self-awareness was
thrown into (more aptly, grown up out of).   Maybe the more I apprehend
the less I will have any illusion that I control my own trajectory in
that milieu in any way, or that the milieu itself is an *emergent
property* that includes the effect of my own
presence/behaviour/willfulness?

I will acknowledge that the "illusion of the individual" (in particular,
"my" own illusion of independent "self") is central to all this, under
that awareness, maybe this all dissolves into something acutely
self-evident (but to what self?).

Mumble,

- Steve

On 3/29/21 8:49 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> My first thought was: Who thinks this is dystopian? And why? It looks to me like one of a) what's been happening for the entire history of the universe and/or b) progress (!) what must happen in order for biological life to survive. If this is dystopian, good riddance to those who find it so. >8^D
>
> But then my 2nd thought went a tiny bit more to the high road. I can see that our tendency to anthropomorphize and personalize (e.g. gods, Jung, naming our computers, etc.) machines might play a little trick on the minds of those who believe the story ... the Great Man trick, again ... the tendency to falsely gather and unify processes that *lack* agency and ascribe/impute agency to them.
>
> That sort of language permeates that video, giving the machine(s) agency, intent, purpose. But that's blatantly false. To promote a false equivalence between, say, YouTube's greedy and largely coherent agency with an imputed *appearance* of coherent agency in the education system is not even wrong. It's nonsense made to seem like sense. This rhetoric is custom designed to frighten those of us who might already be predisposed to fear.
>
> But taken objectively, if we removed the fear-based rhetoric, the *way* of thinking, would help us understand complex patterns that arise in the composition of sub-machines (machinelets?). All an objectification would take would be to cast prior epochs in the same Control terms, which they most certainly *were* ... to recast the always, and forever has been, false "individual" into its proper terms as an illusory collection of sub-machines. Once that's done, the rhetoric in the video shows itself to be Yet Another Eschatological dopamine rush. "Be afraid! Be very afraid."
>
> Pffft. I say go with it. The Controlled world we live in is as beautiful and complex as a flower or an ant bed. Enjoy being routed. Don't fight the flow. Enjoy it. You'll die happier.
>
>
> On 3/28/21 2:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons."
>>
>> Amen to that.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
>> Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2021 12:16 PM
>> To: [hidden email]
>> Subject: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...
>>
>> A Sunday scratch for your dystopian itch.
>>
>> Plastic Pills on Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism.
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq_-bLlY&ab_channel=PlasticPills
>

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

The controlled world is more of an influenced world; the routing is not as strong as he suggests. So long as it can be gamed and hacked I'm not too worried.
Bureaucracies barely work most of the time.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 7:49 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

My first thought was: Who thinks this is dystopian? And why? It looks to me like one of a) what's been happening for the entire history of the universe and/or b) progress (!) what must happen in order for biological life to survive. If this is dystopian, good riddance to those who find it so. >8^D

But then my 2nd thought went a tiny bit more to the high road. I can see that our tendency to anthropomorphize and personalize (e.g. gods, Jung, naming our computers, etc.) machines might play a little trick on the minds of those who believe the story ... the Great Man trick, again ... the tendency to falsely gather and unify processes that *lack* agency and ascribe/impute agency to them.

That sort of language permeates that video, giving the machine(s) agency, intent, purpose. But that's blatantly false. To promote a false equivalence between, say, YouTube's greedy and largely coherent agency with an imputed *appearance* of coherent agency in the education system is not even wrong. It's nonsense made to seem like sense. This rhetoric is custom designed to frighten those of us who might already be predisposed to fear.

But taken objectively, if we removed the fear-based rhetoric, the *way* of thinking, would help us understand complex patterns that arise in the composition of sub-machines (machinelets?). All an objectification would take would be to cast prior epochs in the same Control terms, which they most certainly *were* ... to recast the always, and forever has been, false "individual" into its proper terms as an illusory collection of sub-machines. Once that's done, the rhetoric in the video shows itself to be Yet Another Eschatological dopamine rush. "Be afraid! Be very afraid."

Pffft. I say go with it. The Controlled world we live in is as beautiful and complex as a flower or an ant bed. Enjoy being routed. Don't fight the flow. Enjoy it. You'll die happier.

On 3/28/21 2:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Future Generating Machines...

That's a bold assertion. I'd argue that any surviving bureaucracy works *most* of the time, almost by definition. Of course, *new* bureaucracies probably fail most of the time. Then it would be important to be able to talk about bureaucratic novelty. E.g. the ACA (ObamaCare) was not a *new* bureacracy. And it didn't really fail. There were various stalls and hiccups. Now that that bureaucracy is up and running, it's "working" ... maybe not optimally. But optimality is persnickety.

In any case, only data would resolve the disagreement. And in order to gather data, you'd have to be explicit about measuring "work", as well as novelty and bureaucracy.

On 3/29/21 9:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Bureaucracies barely work most of the time.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

For example, in spite of the billions spent on the NIH we had the fantastic public health failure of COVID-19.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 10:09 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

That's a bold assertion. I'd argue that any surviving bureaucracy works *most* of the time, almost by definition. Of course, *new* bureaucracies probably fail most of the time. Then it would be important to be able to talk about bureaucratic novelty. E.g. the ACA (ObamaCare) was not a *new* bureacracy. And it didn't really fail. There were various stalls and hiccups. Now that that bureaucracy is up and running, it's "working" ... maybe not optimally. But optimality is persnickety.

In any case, only data would resolve the disagreement. And in order to gather data, you'd have to be explicit about measuring "work", as well as novelty and bureaucracy.

On 3/29/21 9:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Bureaucracies barely work most of the time.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

I don't like to be the person to pick on government as other large organizations also have a problem with losing signal. There are just too many people involved, and too many people that want to "move up" and tell others what to do. It leads to a tolerance for stupidity and incompetence. People become skilled in "internal dynamics" and "chain of command" instead things that are operationally required of their organization. The routing of people to roles is sloppy and based on crude information and crude models.

https://www.brookings.edu/book/thickening-government/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 10:23 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

For example, in spite of the billions spent on the NIH we had the fantastic public health failure of COVID-19.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 10:09 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

That's a bold assertion. I'd argue that any surviving bureaucracy works *most* of the time, almost by definition. Of course, *new* bureaucracies probably fail most of the time. Then it would be important to be able to talk about bureaucratic novelty. E.g. the ACA (ObamaCare) was not a *new* bureacracy. And it didn't really fail. There were various stalls and hiccups. Now that that bureaucracy is up and running, it's "working" ... maybe not optimally. But optimality is persnickety.

In any case, only data would resolve the disagreement. And in order to gather data, you'd have to be explicit about measuring "work", as well as novelty and bureaucracy.

On 3/29/21 9:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Bureaucracies barely work most of the time.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Well, again, if you claim the NIH "didn't work", then the burden's on you to say what "work" means. It would be reasonable to claim that the NIH's purpose is to save US lives. (I don't think that's true. But it would be reasonable to say such a thing.) And since so many died from COVID-19, the NIH failed. I think the bureaucracy to saddle with that purpose is the CDC, not the NIH.

And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not, which bureaucracy failed? And why? If so, have we delineated its purpose well enough to say it failed?

This anti-government rhetoric is literally everywhere and so confused as to be nonsense.

On 3/29/21 10:23 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> For example, in spite of the billions spent on the NIH we had the fantastic public health failure of COVID-19.

--
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

My mistake I should have said HHS.

"The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services."

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 10:38 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

Well, again, if you claim the NIH "didn't work", then the burden's on you to say what "work" means. It would be reasonable to claim that the NIH's purpose is to save US lives. (I don't think that's true. But it would be reasonable to say such a thing.) And since so many died from COVID-19, the NIH failed. I think the bureaucracy to saddle with that purpose is the CDC, not the NIH.

And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not, which bureaucracy failed? And why? If so, have we delineated its purpose well enough to say it failed?

This anti-government rhetoric is literally everywhere and so confused as to be nonsense.

On 3/29/21 10:23 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> For example, in spite of the billions spent on the NIH we had the fantastic public health failure of COVID-19.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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cjf

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

uǝlƃ wrote: I'd argue that any surviving bureaucracy works *most* of the time, almost by definition.

One scholar who has taken a serious look at Parkinson’s Law is Stefan Thurner, a professor in Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna. Thurner says he became interested in the concept when the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna split into its own independent university in 2004. Within a couple years, he says, the Medical University of Vienna went from being run by 15 people to 100, while the number of scientists stayed about the same. “I wanted to understand what was going on there, and why my bureaucratic burden did not diminish – on the contrary it increased,” he says.

He happened to read Parkinson’s book around the same time and was inspired to turn it into a mathematical model that could be manipulated and tested, along with co-authors Peter Klimek and Rudolf Hanel. “Parkinson argued that if you have 6% growth rate of any administrative body, then sooner or later any company will die. They will have all their workforce in bureaucracy and none in production.

Parkinson pointed to two critical elements that lead to bureaucratisation – what he called the law of multiplication of subordinates, the tendency of managers to hire two or more subordinates to report to them so that neither is in direct competition with the manager themself; and the fact that bureaucrats create work for other bureaucrats.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191107-the-law-that-explains-why-you-cant-get-anything-done

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: [hidden email]
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 12:09 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen writes:

< And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not, which bureaucracy failed? And why? >

Someone like Redfield that has risen to a position of national significance ought to be employable. And especially employable if they present their defection just right.
For this reason I am skeptical about the officials that quivered over what Trump might do to them. People should have been repeatedly leaving.

Marcus
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gepr

Re: Future Generating Machines...

I agree. I haven't had a chance to look into the work Chris cited. But my guess is that institutions require churn, up and down the orders, from dying cells in the body to redaction of no-longer-appropriate (living document unconstitutional) laws. I'd expect a surviving bureaucracy to restructure sporadically.

Bureaucracy is an inertial memory, stored procedures. While it's true that sometimes that memory is worthless (or even detrimental, teaching old dogs new tricks), it's also true that memory is sometimes helpful. One could make a decent argument that, like everything else, we're seeing some sort of exponential growth in some core variables. So that, 100 years ago, institutional memory was more useful than it is today. But I'd like to see that whole argument made, not mere sturm and drang about bureaucrats.

On 3/29/21 11:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Glen writes:
>
> < And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not, which bureaucracy failed? And why? >
>
> Someone like Redfield that has risen to a position of national significance ought to be employable. And especially employable if they present their defection just right.
> For this reason I am skeptical about the officials that quivered over what Trump might do to them. People should have been repeatedly leaving.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

I posit that after decades of being in the system, their real skill is absorbing insane asks with a salute and a serious demeanor. They aren't really good at anything else. They know this at some level, and this is why they don't leave "public service".

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 11:20 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

I agree. I haven't had a chance to look into the work Chris cited. But my guess is that institutions require churn, up and down the orders, from dying cells in the body to redaction of no-longer-appropriate (living document unconstitutional) laws. I'd expect a surviving bureaucracy to restructure sporadically.

Bureaucracy is an inertial memory, stored procedures. While it's true that sometimes that memory is worthless (or even detrimental, teaching old dogs new tricks), it's also true that memory is sometimes helpful. One could make a decent argument that, like everything else, we're seeing some sort of exponential growth in some core variables. So that, 100 years ago, institutional memory was more useful than it is today. But I'd like to see that whole argument made, not mere sturm and drang about bureaucrats.

On 3/29/21 11:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Glen writes:
>
> < And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the
> bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not,
> which bureaucracy failed? And why? >
>
> Someone like Redfield that has risen to a position of national significance ought to be employable. And especially employable if they present their defection just right.
> For this reason I am skeptical about the officials that quivered over what Trump might do to them. People should have been repeatedly leaving.

--
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Steve Smith

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

/glen sed:
> Well, again, if you claim the NIH "didn't work", then the burden's on you to say what "work" means. It would be reasonable to claim that the NIH's purpose is to save US lives. (I don't think that's true. But it would be reasonable to say such a thing.) And since so many died from COVID-19, the NIH failed. I think the bureaucracy to saddle with that purpose is the CDC, not the NIH.
>
> And it's important to recognize the Executive branch's role in the bureaucracy. Was the Obama CDC the same as the Trump CDC? If not, which bureaucracy failed? And why? If so, have we delineated its purpose well enough to say it failed?

And maybe more to the point, to the extent the T-CDC was *mostly* the
same as the O-CDC (moreso on day 1 than by year 3), it was definitely
under a significantly different "forcing function". We also find
proving a negative problematic... can we say we know how many other
(potential) pandemics have been averted by such a (mal?)functioning
bureacracy.

That said, I am sympathetic with Marcus' judgements of the natural
"thickening" (in a bad way) of institutional structures (not precisely
the same as a bureacracy, but related?). I mostly notice this when *I*
try to navigate these systems and get something done within their
"alternate reality".. I'm much more patient/accepting of all that than
I was when I was more busy "trying to get things done".

- Steve

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jon zingale

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

One thing that strikes me about the three stages of society outlined in
the thesis (sovereign, disciplinary, control) is that they exist as a
chain of generalizations. A prototype of each preceding term is included
in the latter, paralleling what an algebraist might call exact, each
earlier stage appearing as the kernel for each later stage. Perhaps
this exactness quality is most clearly shown when we look at the effect
each societal type has on its subjects (administering death is a type of
discipline, administering discipline is a type of control). It is this
quality of expanding generalization which gives the appearance of *always
existing*. To some extent, I do think it is fair to say that while the
idea of a ring took until the 19th century to be *uncovered*, they existed
from the time the ancient Arabs produced the integers. OTOH, the relation
here can be misunderstood as being one of determination. It was not the
case that humans inevitably would uncover the idea of a ring. Instead,
once the integers were invented it became the case that humans *ought*
to arrive at the idea of a ring, that is, the invention of the integers
*anticipates* the idea of a ring, not necessarily determining its arrival.

Some kinds of complexity, à la the Noetherians, arise simply as a matter
of degree. We on this list, seem most familiar with this kind of complexity,
emergence far from equilibrium, parameterized changes in the stability
of phase spaces, etc... If it were at all clear, as the Noetherians have
hoped for going back to Laplace, that we simply need to know the starting
configuration of the universe and then to calculate, then all would be
solved and our gum flapping would simply be just that. But until the
day that such a model was proved to be the reality, it appears to me that
demanding such a conclusion is an anxiety-driven compulsion to reduce the
richness of one's own experience to automata, a perverse longing for a
religion rooted in a Kantian notion of space-time.

One can make the assertion that there are no utopias nor dystopias.
Fine, but this move to identify opposites has always been a problematic
rhetorical move, one that has been analyzed to death by individuals more
motivated than I. The take-home for me is that once utopia and dystopia
are abstracted, to a logical domain of pure presences and pure absences,
we can substitute any opposites what-so-ever and immediately forget that
a problem was ever presented. My bold claim is that nowhere in a theory
of least action will we recover what ought to be, nowhere will we find
morality, ethics, or a satisfying theory of emergence. Having nothing to
say about a problem is not the absence of a problem.

For others, others that imagine things can be that rather than this,
it may be non-trivial to speak of the human spirit, to speak of desire,
and to find their way to the creation (even if only in one's self) of
authentically new kinds. It is for these individuals that the question
of eschatology is interesting, and why not, death is interesting.
One can certainly ask, what in the thesis is it the death of?

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gepr

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Yes, therein lies the rub, the ever-present dissonance between objectives at one scale and objectives at another scale. As a small business owner, my experience with governments is nothing but pain, much like trying to get my old, fat body out into the freezing air to lift plates of literally cold iron ... or go jogging in the pouring, near-freezing, rain ... or take drugs that make me feel like I want to die in order to eliminate some "neoplasms" I can't even segment, myself, from the CT scan. But I do it, and support it, because I recognize the large-scale objectives.

E.g. WA's paid family leave is a pain in my @ss. And, presumably, I can opt out of it since all our employees are owners. But, can I actually opt out? Hm. It seems LLCs can but S-Corps can't? WTF? But do I *want* to opt out? No, not really. In principle, newly minted breeders (or those who care for family members, etc.) need support. And who will support them if there's no bureaucratic machine to do so? Philanthropy of people like Musk? I doubt it.

On 3/29/21 11:27 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I mostly notice this when *I*
> try to navigate these systems and get something done within their
> "alternate reality".. I'm much more patient/accepting of all that than
> I was when I was more busy "trying to get things done".

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Future Generating Machines...

It may be necessary or even Good that these machines aim to control, but it can also be good to find ways to beat them. They are dealing with the common cases. Being a common case may in fact make one happy as you say. Conservatives are said to be happier than liberals, right?

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 11:37 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

Yes, therein lies the rub, the ever-present dissonance between objectives at one scale and objectives at another scale. As a small business owner, my experience with governments is nothing but pain, much like trying to get my old, fat body out into the freezing air to lift plates of literally cold iron ... or go jogging in the pouring, near-freezing, rain ... or take drugs that make me feel like I want to die in order to eliminate some "neoplasms" I can't even segment, myself, from the CT scan. But I do it, and support it, because I recognize the large-scale objectives.

E.g. WA's paid family leave is a pain in my @ss. And, presumably, I can opt out of it since all our employees are owners. But, can I actually opt out? Hm. It seems LLCs can but S-Corps can't? WTF? But do I *want* to opt out? No, not really. In principle, newly minted breeders (or those who care for family members, etc.) need support. And who will support them if there's no bureaucratic machine to do so? Philanthropy of people like Musk? I doubt it.

On 3/29/21 11:27 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I mostly notice this when *I*
> try to navigate these systems and get something done within their
> "alternate reality".. I'm much more patient/accepting of all that
> than I was when I was more busy "trying to get things done".

--
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Steve Smith

Re: Future Generating Machines...

In reply to this post by gepr

I think you characterize this well:

glen> Yes, therein lies the rub, the ever-present dissonance between
objectives at one scale and objectives at another scale.

I (like to believe that I) live in a multi-scale multi-verse, meaning
that when I "try real hard" or "meditate very effectively" I can pull
back from the specifics of the *apparent* problem at hand (navigating
paid family leave rules as a small business) and consider that my
willingness (acquiescence) to engage in some sub-bureaucracy that seems
to be nothing more than a "pain in my @ss" is truly in my best interest
in the sense of being in the best interest of my "larger self", compared
to the "smaller self" who is just trying to "clear some paperwork from
my desk".

I don't know how to tease apart your language about "there is no
individual" in a way to slide clearly up and down the registers *I*
experience as my "smallest or lowest" self to a "largest or highest"
self. If I might achieve Satori/Enlightment then the distinction
(duality?) of alone/all-one presumably collapses to an (at most)
interesting delusion. I'm just not there.

Is your own refutation of "the individual" the personal experience you
have, or an intellectual abstraction to which you perhaps aspire to
experience?

- Steve

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