Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

[Victoria Hughes]

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Well see, here we go again. 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

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

[Victoria Hughes]

Doug -

You are defining religion differently than I am. I said nothing about blind faith. That was your term. 

I was talking about belief. You have belief (blind faith?) in your intellectual objectivism.

Buddha said very clearly and consistently "Do not do this because I tell you to. Try this and see if it works for you, and then do it or not."

I am happy to continue this until the cows come home, but I suspect this list is not the place.  

If you want to meet over whisky, and get into this, let me know. 

Tory

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

www.toryhughes.com

www.toryhughes-galleryshop.com

www.facebook.com/tory.hughes1

On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Well see, here we go again. 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

[Nick Thompson]

Here we go again, indeed.

 

“Blind faith” is a redundancy, right?  All faith is blind.  We do not have faith in what we doubt.  As  Peirce would say:  Doubt is not a guest.  We do not entertain it.  When it moves in, it sleeps in our bed, eats at our table, goes to work with us, and listens to NPR with us when we drive home in the car.    Ditto belief.  Descartes notion that we doubt everything that we cannot assert with certainty was … to coin a phrase … crap. 

 

So we are talking about faith, full stop.  And we are talking about the claim, made by a single man, Doug Roberts, as it happens, although it could be any man, that he lives without faith. 

 

I stipulate that I am wrong if it can be shown that Doug Roberts lives without faith. 

 

How to test such a proposition?  I could put the burden on Doug.  I could say, “Doug, show me that every proposition you believe is founded in explicit premises for which you know the evidence, which evidentiary premises are themselves founded on explicit premises for which you know the evidence.  Etc. ”  In other words, prove the null.  This seems harsh, but just, given the boldness of the claim.   

 

I would predict that whatever belief Doug (or any other human) might choose to hold, if we walk him backward through his premises, we will eventually find a place where he appeals to stubbornness (“I have always believed that”), authority (“my orals committee told me it was true”), or consensus (“the guys in  the lab all agree it’s true”), and these, in my book, are all forms of faith.  We are all capable of thinking scientifically for a bit.  After that, Sahib, it’s turtles all the way down. 

 

I think it’s fair to say that the sooner such a place is reached in some person’s thinking on a subject, the less interesting that person’s thinking on that subject is..  For that reason, I would assume that Doug shares my distaste for “short loop” explanations such as “God’s will” or “because the spirit moved me”.   If this is what he means by faith, then I absolutely agree with him.  But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a shallow thinker appeals to it.    

 

Coming back to Santa Fe in a couple of weeks.  Aren’t you guys GLAD?!  I am excited.

 

Nick

 

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Well see, here we go again. 

 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

 

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

 

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

 

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

 

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

 

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

 

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

 

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

 

Tory

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

 

--Doug

 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

 

And this is not about religion?

 

I don't see it.

 

Or you don't see it.

 

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

 

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

 

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

 

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

 

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

 

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

 

   -- Owen

 

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

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Victoria,

I was speaking from the perspective of two religions with which I have first-hand familiarity: Christianity and Islam.  Both of which require faith as a prerequisite of membership.

But yes, I'd enjoy drinking whiskey with you and, if I may suggest, Steve S. to discuss further.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug -

You are defining religion differently than I am. I said nothing about blind faith. That was your term. 

I was talking about belief. You have belief (blind faith?) in your intellectual objectivism.

Buddha said very clearly and consistently "Do not do this because I tell you to. Try this and see if it works for you, and then do it or not."

I am happy to continue this until the cows come home, but I suspect this list is not the place.  

If you want to meet over whisky, and get into this, let me know. 

Tory

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

www.toryhughes.com

www.toryhughes-galleryshop.com

www.facebook.com/tory.hughes1

On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Well see, here we go again. 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Victoria Hughes]

Absolutely to Steve, and whiskey and a talk about all this. I would LOVE to.

Just tell me the time and place. 

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Victoria,

I was speaking from the perspective of two religions with which I have first-hand familiarity: Christianity and Islam.  Both of which require faith as a prerequisite of membership.

But yes, I'd enjoy drinking whiskey with you and, if I may suggest, Steve S. to discuss further.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug -

You are defining religion differently than I am. I said nothing about blind faith. That was your term. 

I was talking about belief. You have belief (blind faith?) in your intellectual objectivism.

Buddha said very clearly and consistently "Do not do this because I tell you to. Try this and see if it works for you, and then do it or not."

I am happy to continue this until the cows come home, but I suspect this list is not the place.  

If you want to meet over whisky, and get into this, let me know. 

Tory

<SeaCliff 24.125.jpg>

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

www.toryhughes.com

www.toryhughes-galleryshop.com

www.facebook.com/tory.hughes1

On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Well see, here we go again. 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

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

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

[glen ropella]

It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes!  people in
general) over-simplify complex things.  One of my pet peeves is the
conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine.

Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice.
It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice.  The extent to
which any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically.

So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not
(merely) reducible to belief or faith.  And we know he already knows
this by his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of
western Libya.  Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and
claims that religion (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone)
requires faith.  Which is it?  Can religion be woven deeply into one's
actions?  Or not?  And if not, then how deeply can a religion be woven
into the actions of animals?  What is the most habitual, instinctively,
epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven?

The answer is simple: some of us weave thought into our actions more
than others.  Some religious people hold faith more central to their
religion and some hold practice as more central.

I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold
doctrine as _less_ central to their religion than practice.  Interacting
with the real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing.  I.e.
Hanging out with their group singing songs and eating cookies is more
important than the definition of God.  (I'd contrast this with, say,
mathematicians who self identify as religious. ;-)

Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-)  Faith is just
an idea ... a thought.  To claim that faith always lies somewhere down
there is to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least
heavily dependent on thought.  I disagree completely.  I believe in
zombies.  I believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom
thought is purely epiphenomenal.  These animals do not require faith at
any layer.

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 11:31 AM:
> But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always
> lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a
> shallow thinker appeals to it.    


--
glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

If your conversations go on past the first of October, I would love to join you.  N

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Victoria Hughes
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 2:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Absolutely to Steve, and whiskey and a talk about all this. I would LOVE to.

Just tell me the time and place. 

 

Tory

 

 

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Victoria,

 

I was speaking from the perspective of two religions with which I have first-hand familiarity: Christianity and Islam.  Both of which require faith as a prerequisite of membership.

 

But yes, I'd enjoy drinking whiskey with you and, if I may suggest, Steve S. to discuss further.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug -

You are defining religion differently than I am. I said nothing about blind faith. That was your term. 

I was talking about belief. You have belief (blind faith?) in your intellectual objectivism.

 

Buddha said very clearly and consistently "Do not do this because I tell you to. Try this and see if it works for you, and then do it or not."

 

I am happy to continue this until the cows come home, but I suspect this list is not the place.  

If you want to meet over whisky, and get into this, let me know. 

 

Tory

 

 

<SeaCliff 24.125.jpg>

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

www.toryhughes.com

www.toryhughes-galleryshop.com

www.facebook.com/tory.hughes1

 

 

 

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Well see, here we go again. 

 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

 

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

 

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

 

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

 

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

 

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

 

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

 

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

 

Tory

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

 

--Doug

 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

 

And this is not about religion?

 

I don't see it.

 

Or you don't see it.

 

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

 

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

 

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

 

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

 

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

 

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

 

   -- Owen

 

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

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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

 

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

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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

 

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

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Nick, you're in fine form.  Can't wait until you come back to Santa Fe so that I may better experience it once again in person.

It's been a rather full Friday of trying to get my work done while communicating with my colleagues on the off-topics of politics and religion.

One closing note, however on the latter selection:  you may have faith that when it comes to religion, I am totally faithless.  I didn't buy into the concept while they were trying to brainwash it into me at the tender age of 8 in Sunday school at the United Church in Los Alamos, and I'm still not buying.

But thank you for once again taking such an interest in my own particular world view!

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here we go again, indeed.

 

“Blind faith” is a redundancy, right?  All faith is blind.  We do not have faith in what we doubt.  As  Peirce would say:  Doubt is not a guest.  We do not entertain it.  When it moves in, it sleeps in our bed, eats at our table, goes to work with us, and listens to NPR with us when we drive home in the car.    Ditto belief.  Descartes notion that we doubt everything that we cannot assert with certainty was … to coin a phrase … crap. 

 

So we are talking about faith, full stop.  And we are talking about the claim, made by a single man, Doug Roberts, as it happens, although it could be any man, that he lives without faith. 

 

I stipulate that I am wrong if it can be shown that Doug Roberts lives without faith. 

 

How to test such a proposition?  I could put the burden on Doug.  I could say, “Doug, show me that every proposition you believe is founded in explicit premises for which you know the evidence, which evidentiary premises are themselves founded on explicit premises for which you know the evidence.  Etc. ”  In other words, prove the null.  This seems harsh, but just, given the boldness of the claim.   

 

I would predict that whatever belief Doug (or any other human) might choose to hold, if we walk him backward through his premises, we will eventually find a place where he appeals to stubbornness (“I have always believed that”), authority (“my orals committee told me it was true”), or consensus (“the guys in  the lab all agree it’s true”), and these, in my book, are all forms of faith.  We are all capable of thinking scientifically for a bit.  After that, Sahib, it’s turtles all the way down. 

 

I think it’s fair to say that the sooner such a place is reached in some person’s thinking on a subject, the less interesting that person’s thinking on that subject is..  For that reason, I would assume that Doug shares my distaste for “short loop” explanations such as “God’s will” or “because the spirit moved me”.   If this is what he means by faith, then I absolutely agree with him.  But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a shallow thinker appeals to it.    

 

Coming back to Santa Fe in a couple of weeks.  Aren’t you guys GLAD?!  I am excited.

 

Nick

 

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 1:19 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Well see, here we go again. 

 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

 

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

 

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

 

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

 

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

 

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

 

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

 

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

 

Tory

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

 

--Doug

 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

 

And this is not about religion?

 

I don't see it.

 

Or you don't see it.

 

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

 

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

 

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

 

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

 

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

 

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

 

   -- Owen

 

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

Qué viva el simposio!

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Absolutely to Steve, and whiskey and a talk about all this. I would LOVE to.

Just tell me the time and place. 

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Victoria,

I was speaking from the perspective of two religions with which I have first-hand familiarity: Christianity and Islam.  Both of which require faith as a prerequisite of membership.

But yes, I'd enjoy drinking whiskey with you and, if I may suggest, Steve S. to discuss further.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug -

You are defining religion differently than I am. I said nothing about blind faith. That was your term. 

I was talking about belief. You have belief (blind faith?) in your intellectual objectivism.

Buddha said very clearly and consistently "Do not do this because I tell you to. Try this and see if it works for you, and then do it or not."

I am happy to continue this until the cows come home, but I suspect this list is not the place.  

If you want to meet over whisky, and get into this, let me know. 

Tory

<SeaCliff 24.125.jpg>

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

www.toryhughes.com

www.toryhughes-galleryshop.com

www.facebook.com/tory.hughes1

On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Well see, here we go again. 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

Tory

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

And this is not about religion?

I don't see it.

Or you don't see it.

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

   -- Owen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

Comments below, if you care to scroll down.  

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 2:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The
Economist


It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes!  people in
general) over-simplify complex things.  One of my pet peeves is the
conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine.
[NST ==>] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification.

Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice.
It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice.  The extent to which
any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically.
[NST ==>] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and practice.  If
I believe that my child will die if and only if it is God's will AND I
believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I will not give my child
anti-biotics.  If I give my child antibiotics, I don't believe that.
Beliefs are what we act on.

So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not
(merely) reducible to belief or faith.  And we know he already knows this by
his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya.
Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion
(yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith.  Which is it?
Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions?  Or not?  And if not, then
how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals?  What is the
most habitual, instinctively,
epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven?
[NST ==>] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something?  That the
distinction between belief and action is ill drawn?  

The answer is simple: some of us weave thought into our actions more than
others.  Some religious people hold faith more central to their religion and
some hold practice as more central.

I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine
as _less_ central to their religion than practice.  Interacting with the
real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing.
[NST ==>] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of intellectual
behavior and prioritize another, but why?  On what grounds.  If navels is
what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might be really useful.  
  I.e.
Hanging out with their group singing songs and eating cookies is more
important than the definition of God.  (I'd contrast this with, say,
mathematicians who self identify as religious. ;-)

Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-)  Faith is just an
idea ... a thought.  To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is
to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily
dependent on thought.  I disagree completely.  I believe in zombies.  I
believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is
purely epiphenomenal.  These animals do not require faith at any layer.
[NST ==>]
Ok.  Our horns are nicely locked here,  let's push a bit and see where we
get.  That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the bedstand is
evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the bedstand?  (for
myself, I would put it even more strongly:  that I reach out CONSTITUTES my
belief that the glasses are on the bedstand.  There is no separate idea
followed by an act.  If anything, the act creates the idea.  

But I thought I was having a different sort of conversation with Doug.  I
thought he and I were discussing the justification of belief.  And
justification I took to be something we do with words and propositions.  And
all I was doing was making the [obvious] point that eventually, in any
argument, no matter how fairly and well conducted, we reach a point where we
have to appeal to a proposition we cannot justify.  

In haste,

Nick,

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 11:31 AM:
> But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere
> down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a
> shallow thinker appeals to it.    


--
glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Doug,

 

I promise you, it’s not personal.

 

To me, you are, Universal Man.

 

But the question does interest me:  What IS the difference, in principle, between the kind of faith for which you and I would let people off the hook, and the kind of faith that makes us kind of nauseous.  .   They believe in God and somewhere, way down, you and I believe in turtles.  For some reason, you and I believe that their belief in God is not as good as our belief in turtles.  Why is that.  Right now, I beginning to think that belief is like soil.  Soil is a lot better if you can dig deep before you hit bedrock.   

 

Nick

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 3:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Nick, you're in fine form.  Can't wait until you come back to Santa Fe so that I may better experience it once again in person.

 

It's been a rather full Friday of trying to get my work done while communicating with my colleagues on the off-topics of politics and religion.

 

One closing note, however on the latter selection:  you may have faith that when it comes to religion, I am totally faithless.  I didn't buy into the concept while they were trying to brainwash it into me at the tender age of 8 in Sunday school at the United Church in Los Alamos, and I'm still not buying.

 

But thank you for once again taking such an interest in my own particular world view!

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here we go again, indeed.

 

“Blind faith” is a redundancy, right?  All faith is blind.  We do not have faith in what we doubt.  As  Peirce would say:  Doubt is not a guest.  We do not entertain it.  When it moves in, it sleeps in our bed, eats at our table, goes to work with us, and listens to NPR with us when we drive home in the car.    Ditto belief.  Descartes notion that we doubt everything that we cannot assert with certainty was … to coin a phrase … crap. 

 

So we are talking about faith, full stop.  And we are talking about the claim, made by a single man, Doug Roberts, as it happens, although it could be any man, that he lives without faith. 

 

I stipulate that I am wrong if it can be shown that Doug Roberts lives without faith. 

 

How to test such a proposition?  I could put the burden on Doug.  I could say, “Doug, show me that every proposition you believe is founded in explicit premises for which you know the evidence, which evidentiary premises are themselves founded on explicit premises for which you know the evidence.  Etc. ”  In other words, prove the null.  This seems harsh, but just, given the boldness of the claim.   

 

I would predict that whatever belief Doug (or any other human) might choose to hold, if we walk him backward through his premises, we will eventually find a place where he appeals to stubbornness (“I have always believed that”), authority (“my orals committee told me it was true”), or consensus (“the guys in  the lab all agree it’s true”), and these, in my book, are all forms of faith.  We are all capable of thinking scientifically for a bit.  After that, Sahib, it’s turtles all the way down. 

 

I think it’s fair to say that the sooner such a place is reached in some person’s thinking on a subject, the less interesting that person’s thinking on that subject is..  For that reason, I would assume that Doug shares my distaste for “short loop” explanations such as “God’s will” or “because the spirit moved me”.   If this is what he means by faith, then I absolutely agree with him.  But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a shallow thinker appeals to it.    

 

Coming back to Santa Fe in a couple of weeks.  Aren’t you guys GLAD?!  I am excited.

 

Nick

 

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 1:19 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Well see, here we go again. 

 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

 

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

 

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

 

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

 

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

 

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

 

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

 

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

 

Tory

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

 

--Doug

 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

 

And this is not about religion?

 

I don't see it.

 

Or you don't see it.

 

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

 

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

 

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

 

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

 

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

 

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

 

   -- Owen

 

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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[glen ropella]

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 12:18 PM:
> gepr wrote:
>> It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes!  people in
>> general) over-simplify complex things.  One of my pet peeves is the
>> conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine.
>>
> [NST ==>] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification.

Exactly!  Such is the plight of people who believe thought plays a role
in action.  Those of us who never think, only act don't have that
problem.  There are no (accurate) compressions or models that do a good
enough job of looking ahead.  (Can you tell I make my living building
simulations? ;-)

>> Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice.
>> It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice.  The extent to which
>> any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically.
>>
> [NST ==>] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and practice.  If
> I believe that my child will die if and only if it is God's will AND I
> believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I will not give my child
> anti-biotics.  If I give my child antibiotics, I don't believe that.
> Beliefs are what we act on.

No, we act on the previous state of our bodies and the rules that govern
the transition from one state to another ... no thoughts or beliefs are
required, only memory.

If you do not give your child antibiotics, it is because your history
pre-programmed you to not do that and vice versa.

>> So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not
>> (merely) reducible to belief or faith.  And we know he already knows this by
>> his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya.
>> Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion
>> (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith.  Which is it?
>> Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions?  Or not?  And if not, then
>> how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals?  What is the
>> most habitual, instinctively,
>> epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven?
>>
> [NST ==>] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something?  That the
> distinction between belief and action is ill drawn?  

If so, we'd all agree that the distinction is ill-drawn.  But we'd
probably disagree on where it should properly be drawn. ;-)

>> I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine
>> as _less_ central to their religion than practice.  Interacting with the
>> real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing.
>>
> [NST ==>] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of intellectual
> behavior and prioritize another, but why?  On what grounds.  If navels is
> what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might be really useful.  

Well, the real reason I chose to pejoratize (?) what I did is to make
the argument interesting.  I have faith that Doug believes he is not a
zombie.  Yet he argues in one context that he is a zombie and in another
context that he is not a zombie.  You are consistent in your denial of
the existence of zombies, yet you argue vociferously in defense of
behaviorism.  (Not that there's a contradiction there ... but it is
curious.)

As for the type of intellectual behavior the generalized "scientist"
holds dear and distinguishing it from religious doctrine, I really don't
intend to draw that distinction.  I am equally against both.  (Yet,
magically, I will defend the idea that philosophy is useful!  So, I am
not free of my own contradictions.)

>> Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-)  Faith is just an
>> idea ... a thought.  To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is
>> to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily
>> dependent on thought.  I disagree completely.  I believe in zombies.  I
>> believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is
>> purely epiphenomenal.  These animals do not require faith at any layer.

> [NST ==>]
> Ok.  Our horns are nicely locked here,  let's push a bit and see where we
> get.  That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the bedstand is
> evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the bedstand?  (for
> myself, I would put it even more strongly:  that I reach out CONSTITUTES my
> belief that the glasses are on the bedstand.  There is no separate idea
> followed by an act.  If anything, the act creates the idea.  

I disagree.  I believe you reach out for your glasses because the t-1
state of your body forces you to do so, not because your mind (whatever
that is) holds a belief that they are there.  Often, when I sleep in a
strange place, I do things like reach out for my phone, or the door
knob, or whatever without having thought about whether it's there at
all.  My body is just used to such motorized actions producing good result.

I am open to the idea that the concept of a "belief" is a kind of
short-cut or ideological compression of all the trillions of tiny
actions my body will take in various circumstances ... a lossy
compression.  So, I'm open to the idea that there are no such things as
beliefs, that they are only convenient fictions.  And, in that sense,
I'm open to one type of argument that would allow you to say "the act
creates/constitutes the idea".  But the idea is a delusion at worst and
an inaccurate model at best.

> But I thought I was having a different sort of conversation with Doug.  I
> thought he and I were discussing the justification of belief.  And
> justification I took to be something we do with words and propositions.  And
> all I was doing was making the [obvious] point that eventually, in any
> argument, no matter how fairly and well conducted, we reach a point where we
> have to appeal to a proposition we cannot justify.  

That may well be.  But it didn't sound that way to me.  It sounded to me
as if Doug claimed that faith is not necessary for (his) life and you
claimed that it is necessary to every (human) life -- the implication
being that it's also necessary for Doug.

The extent to which justification and rhetoric are important to any life
is my attempt to toss off all the noise and get to the point.  If Doug
is right and faith is unnecessary, then perhaps, since faith is just a
thought, all thought is unnecessary.  If my caricature of your argument
is right, that faith is necessary, then how deep does the necessity go?
 ... all the way to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?
 To boot, even if your point is that, in all justification and rhetoric,
there are _axioms_, we can take two sides: 1) the universe is a formal
system and, hence, requires axioms or 2) the universe contains or is
independent of formal systems and, hence, requires no axioms.  (I.e. 1-
justification/rhetoric/thought/faith is fundamental or 2- it's not.)

--
glen

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Nick, I enjoy our little interactions as well, in no small part due to the fact that you are (usually) charm personified.

But to answer your question:  in my case it's cosmology.  Religion, or at least most traditional religions, are simply to small-minded and human-centric to garner any respect from me.

When you study cosmology, you are per force made to recognize not only the true scale of existence, but also of the true magnitude of human egocentricity.

Cosmology is humbling all by itself, and not just for the sheer scale of the observable universe, and the time frames represented by it, but for the magnitude of what we do not yet know about it.

I have a backup answer as well, just in case the one above is not satisfying.  Get ready, it's one of those two word answers:  common sense.

Some people have it, some don't.  Wouldn't even know what to do with it if it bit them on the ass.  I don't get people like that, but there it is.

--Doug

On Sep 14, 2012 4:02 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug,

 

I promise you, it’s not personal.

 

To me, you are, Universal Man.

 

But the question does interest me:  What IS the difference, in principle, between the kind of faith for which you and I would let people off the hook, and the kind of faith that makes us kind of nauseous.  .   They believe in God and somewhere, way down, you and I believe in turtles.  For some reason, you and I believe that their belief in God is not as good as our belief in turtles.  Why is that.  Right now, I beginning to think that belief is like soil.  Soil is a lot better if you can dig deep before you hit bedrock.   

 

Nick

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 3:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Nick, you're in fine form.  Can't wait until you come back to Santa Fe so that I may better experience it once again in person.

 

It's been a rather full Friday of trying to get my work done while communicating with my colleagues on the off-topics of politics and religion.

 

One closing note, however on the latter selection:  you may have faith that when it comes to religion, I am totally faithless.  I didn't buy into the concept while they were trying to brainwash it into me at the tender age of 8 in Sunday school at the United Church in Los Alamos, and I'm still not buying.

 

But thank you for once again taking such an interest in my own particular world view!

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here we go again, indeed.

 

“Blind faith” is a redundancy, right?  All faith is blind.  We do not have faith in what we doubt.  As  Peirce would say:  Doubt is not a guest.  We do not entertain it.  When it moves in, it sleeps in our bed, eats at our table, goes to work with us, and listens to NPR with us when we drive home in the car.    Ditto belief.  Descartes notion that we doubt everything that we cannot assert with certainty was … to coin a phrase … crap. 

 

So we are talking about faith, full stop.  And we are talking about the claim, made by a single man, Doug Roberts, as it happens, although it could be any man, that he lives without faith. 

 

I stipulate that I am wrong if it can be shown that Doug Roberts lives without faith. 

 

How to test such a proposition?  I could put the burden on Doug.  I could say, “Doug, show me that every proposition you believe is founded in explicit premises for which you know the evidence, which evidentiary premises are themselves founded on explicit premises for which you know the evidence.  Etc. ”  In other words, prove the null.  This seems harsh, but just, given the boldness of the claim.   

 

I would predict that whatever belief Doug (or any other human) might choose to hold, if we walk him backward through his premises, we will eventually find a place where he appeals to stubbornness (“I have always believed that”), authority (“my orals committee told me it was true”), or consensus (“the guys in  the lab all agree it’s true”), and these, in my book, are all forms of faith.  We are all capable of thinking scientifically for a bit.  After that, Sahib, it’s turtles all the way down. 

 

I think it’s fair to say that the sooner such a place is reached in some person’s thinking on a subject, the less interesting that person’s thinking on that subject is..  For that reason, I would assume that Doug shares my distaste for “short loop” explanations such as “God’s will” or “because the spirit moved me”.   If this is what he means by faith, then I absolutely agree with him.  But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a shallow thinker appeals to it.    

 

Coming back to Santa Fe in a couple of weeks.  Aren’t you guys GLAD?!  I am excited.

 

Nick

 

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 1:19 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

 

Well see, here we go again. 

 

To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are, is inherently bad.  A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition destructive.

 

There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an intellect and then refusing to use it.

 

Blind faith is exactly that: blind.  "Faith" in religion is defined as having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one true way.  

 

I personally have no respect for religious faith.  

 

I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.

 

Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently bad.

 

And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away with fairy tales.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that is the problem. 

All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.

 

Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone through this. The challenge is our use of belief. 

 

Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for different purposes, depending on their development. 

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem. 

 

Self-awareness in all this is the key.

 

Tory

 

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 

One semi-final note from me about culture and religion:  I lived in Libya for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum.  I traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900 miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that year.  I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion.  You cannot separate them.  Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture.  Any attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.

 

--Doug

 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen. 

 

There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting "Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.

 

And this is not about religion?

 

I don't see it.

 

Or you don't see it.

 

What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular issue.

 

--Doug

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all.  The question is of groups and institutions.

 

When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?

 

When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so.  Many NRA members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.  Examples abound.  And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like Miller's Applause model.

 

Isn't this possibly a cultural issue?  Possibly regional?  The largest Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its Indonesia.  They do not appear to have this issue.

 

So my question stands as Kofi stated:

    "Where are the leaders?  Where is the Majority?  Nobody speaks up."

NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the religion lies.

 

And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do with speaking out against injustice.  It is not a religious issue, but a civic, cultural one.

 

   -- Owen

 

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

 

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-670-8195 - Cell

 

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

I thought I believed that we we are ALL zombies.  

Maybe I don't know what a zombie is.  

N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 6:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The
Economist

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 12:18 PM:
> gepr wrote:
>> It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes!  people in
>> general) over-simplify complex things.  One of my pet peeves is the
>> conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine.
>>
> [NST ==>] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification.

Exactly!  Such is the plight of people who believe thought plays a role in
action.  Those of us who never think, only act don't have that problem.
There are no (accurate) compressions or models that do a good enough job of
looking ahead.  (Can you tell I make my living building simulations? ;-)

>> Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice.
>> It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice.  The extent to
>> which any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies
dramatically.
>>
> [NST ==>] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and
> practice.  If I believe that my child will die if and only if it is
> God's will AND I believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I
> will not give my child anti-biotics.  If I give my child antibiotics, I
don't believe that.
> Beliefs are what we act on.

No, we act on the previous state of our bodies and the rules that govern the
transition from one state to another ... no thoughts or beliefs are
required, only memory.

If you do not give your child antibiotics, it is because your history
pre-programmed you to not do that and vice versa.

>> So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is
>> not
>> (merely) reducible to belief or faith.  And we know he already knows
>> this by his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of
western Libya.
>> Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that
>> religion (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith.
Which is it?
>> Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions?  Or not?  And if
>> not, then how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of
>> animals?  What is the most habitual, instinctively,
>> epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven?
>>
> [NST ==>] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something?  That the
> distinction between belief and action is ill drawn?

If so, we'd all agree that the distinction is ill-drawn.  But we'd probably
disagree on where it should properly be drawn. ;-)

>> I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold
>> doctrine as _less_ central to their religion than practice.  
>> Interacting with the real world probably takes precedence over
navel-gazing.
>>
> [NST ==>] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of
> intellectual behavior and prioritize another, but why?  On what
> grounds.  If navels is what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might
be really useful.

Well, the real reason I chose to pejoratize (?) what I did is to make the
argument interesting.  I have faith that Doug believes he is not a zombie.
Yet he argues in one context that he is a zombie and in another context that
he is not a zombie.  You are consistent in your denial of the existence of
zombies, yet you argue vociferously in defense of behaviorism.  (Not that
there's a contradiction there ... but it is
curious.)

As for the type of intellectual behavior the generalized "scientist"
holds dear and distinguishing it from religious doctrine, I really don't
intend to draw that distinction.  I am equally against both.  (Yet,
magically, I will defend the idea that philosophy is useful!  So, I am not
free of my own contradictions.)

>> Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-)  Faith is
>> just an idea ... a thought.  To claim that faith always lies
>> somewhere down there is to claim that our universe is somehow
>> _rooted_ in or at least heavily dependent on thought.  I disagree
>> completely.  I believe in zombies.  I believe animals exist who
>> either have no thoughts or in whom thought is purely epiphenomenal.
These animals do not require faith at any layer.

> [NST ==>]
> Ok.  Our horns are nicely locked here,  let's push a bit and see where
> we get.  That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the
> bedstand is evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the
> bedstand?  (for myself, I would put it even more strongly:  that I
> reach out CONSTITUTES my belief that the glasses are on the bedstand.  
> There is no separate idea followed by an act.  If anything, the act
creates the idea.

I disagree.  I believe you reach out for your glasses because the t-1 state
of your body forces you to do so, not because your mind (whatever that is)
holds a belief that they are there.  Often, when I sleep in a strange place,
I do things like reach out for my phone, or the door knob, or whatever
without having thought about whether it's there at all.  My body is just
used to such motorized actions producing good result.

I am open to the idea that the concept of a "belief" is a kind of short-cut
or ideological compression of all the trillions of tiny actions my body will
take in various circumstances ... a lossy compression.  So, I'm open to the
idea that there are no such things as beliefs, that they are only convenient
fictions.  And, in that sense, I'm open to one type of argument that would
allow you to say "the act creates/constitutes the idea".  But the idea is a
delusion at worst and an inaccurate model at best.

> But I thought I was having a different sort of conversation with Doug.  
> I thought he and I were discussing the justification of belief.  And
> justification I took to be something we do with words and
> propositions.  And all I was doing was making the [obvious] point that
> eventually, in any argument, no matter how fairly and well conducted,
> we reach a point where we have to appeal to a proposition we cannot
justify.

That may well be.  But it didn't sound that way to me.  It sounded to me as
if Doug claimed that faith is not necessary for (his) life and you claimed
that it is necessary to every (human) life -- the implication being that
it's also necessary for Doug.

The extent to which justification and rhetoric are important to any life is
my attempt to toss off all the noise and get to the point.  If Doug is right
and faith is unnecessary, then perhaps, since faith is just a thought, all
thought is unnecessary.  If my caricature of your argument is right, that
faith is necessary, then how deep does the necessity go?
 ... all the way to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?
 To boot, even if your point is that, in all justification and rhetoric,
there are _axioms_, we can take two sides: 1) the universe is a formal
system and, hence, requires axioms or 2) the universe contains or is
independent of formal systems and, hence, requires no axioms.  (I.e. 1-
justification/rhetoric/thought/faith is fundamental or 2- it's not.)

--
glen

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[glen ropella]

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 05:57 PM:
> I thought I believed that we we are ALL zombies.

Maybe you do.  I don't know.  But I infer from your words in these
e-mails that you believe beliefs are real things, are constituted by
real things, result from and result in real things.

> Maybe I don't know what a zombie is.  

   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

(Yes, I have been _called_ a master of the non sequitur ... but that's
not because I make unjustified inferences.  It's because I don't take
the time to show my work. ;-)

--
glen

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[Nick Thompson]

I forgot it was a term of art.  But I have read the sep entry and still not
where I stand on zombies.

For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point
of view.  Zombies are telic systems, no?  

Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the
Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached.

Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it.

N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 9:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The
Economist

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 05:57 PM:
> I thought I believed that we we are ALL zombies.

Maybe you do.  I don't know.  But I infer from your words in these e-mails
that you believe beliefs are real things, are constituted by real things,
result from and result in real things.

> Maybe I don't know what a zombie is.  

   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

(Yes, I have been _called_ a master of the non sequitur ... but that's not
because I make unjustified inferences.  It's because I don't take the time
to show my work. ;-)

--
glen

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[glen ropella]

On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point
> of view.  Zombies are telic systems, no?

That's a great question.  I would answer no.  Zombies cannot be telic
(as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by
their context.  They are not ends in and of themselves.  They are tools
whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor.

FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me.  They'd claim that a zombie
(were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause
(agency).  From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation,
which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any
requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for
reflective self-reference (aka closure).  Getting from reflection to
consciousness might not be that hard.  And I support them in their
quest. ;-)  But they haven't proven the closure to me.  I believe we
organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes).  Complete
closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me.  So, there's
something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to
which I understand it.

Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its
attributes.  And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose
and be called "telic" ... but that purpose would not be its _own_.
Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic.

And this is where "faith" and "crazy" enter.  When we can't reverse
engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't
empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their
actions make sense, then they're "acting on faith" or they're crazy.  It
is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated
similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that
presents us with the zombie paradox.  On the one hand, telling a
believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal
responsibility or accountability.  ("My parents made me this way!")  But
on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart
that has to be removed.

Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining
themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve
their identity, to avoid being a zombie.  I usually fail and am often
accused of being a tool. >8^)

> Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the
> Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached.
>
> Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it.

I will read it.  Thanks.  But in case it's not obvious, you must know
that I don't take this stuff very seriously.  I only think/talk about
this stuff to distract me from work.  ;-)  So, it's unlikely that I'll
be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve.

--
glen  =><= Hail Eris!

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

Wow!  This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was.  
Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the
background.  For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system.  It acts
in such a way as to maintain a set point.  So do I, sometimes.  Me and my
furnace: we are telic systems.  

All the best,

Nick



-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen ropella
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the
Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)

On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a
> point of view.  Zombies are telic systems, no?

That's a great question.  I would answer no.  Zombies cannot be telic (as I
understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context.
They are not ends in and of themselves.  They are tools whose purpose has
been installed in them by some non-zombie actor.

FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me.  They'd claim that a zombie
(were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause
(agency).  From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in
turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for
_consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference
(aka closure).  Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that
hard.  And I support them in their quest. ;-)  But they haven't proven the
closure to me.  I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of
the causes).  Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death
to me.  So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the
limited extent to which I understand it.

Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its
attributes.  And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and
be called "telic" ... but that purpose would not be its _own_.
Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic.

And this is where "faith" and "crazy" enter.  When we can't reverse engineer
a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we
can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then
they're "acting on faith" or they're crazy.  It is this ability to empathize
... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by
observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox.  On
the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool,
without personal responsibility or accountability.  ("My parents made me
this way!")  But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien,
crazy, a wart that has to be removed.

Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining
themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their
identity, to avoid being a zombie.  I usually fail and am often accused of
being a tool. >8^)

> Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the
> Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached.
>
> Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it.

I will read it.  Thanks.  But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I
don't take this stuff very seriously.  I only think/talk about this stuff to
distract me from work.  ;-)  So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it
the attention that it and you deserve.

--
glen  =><= Hail Eris!

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


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

[glen ropella]

On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Wow!  This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was.  
> Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the
> background.  For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system.  It acts
> in such a way as to maintain a set point.  So do I, sometimes.  Me and my
> furnace: we are telic systems.  

I disagree about the furnace, obviously.  I could argue from the
dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-)  How about if I launch the
argument from the concept of "stigmergy"?

Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used.
 To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended
by the designer.  Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't
_express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it
by observers.

It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster
tags, so much more than some people.  I even enjoy some forms of
vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate).  A more benign
form of vandalism are the relatively new "unconferences" and things like
collaborative fiction.  Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand
theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts.

No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or
tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable
(but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents.  Everything else is
premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer.
 (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace!  It just acts that way
when you're not around.)

--
glen  =><= Hail Eris!

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