Fwd: Major bug called 'Heartbleed' exposes Internet data

[Steve Smith]

>> 2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to
>> more/good symmetry, then support those.
> Symmetry of what?  What is an example of such a manifold?
>
> Marcus
Taken at face value, I think this is the key question, and not an easy
one, as glibly as I may have tried to present it in the first place.

- Steve

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[glen ropella]

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

> Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the
> new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility
> to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless
> it is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the
> oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality
> through handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.
>
> Perhaps it is the question of the commons where the commons is Glen's
> "new social manifold".   Can we in any way apply our presumed
> "enlightened self interest" to the shaping of said commons or restating
> the above?  Bending dangerously the "landscape metaphor, do we just
> carve huge moguls in it with our rambunctious race to the bottom,
> exposing rocks and other hazards thereby undermining the experience of
> all others on the slopes except the most keenly facile?  Or do we take
> an army of bulldozers to the slopes and make a flat plain of them to be
> enjoyed by all equally with no advantage proffered to diversity of
> circumstance and ability?

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

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

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

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[glen ropella]

On 04/11/2014 10:32 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 10:26 -0700, glen wrote:
>
>> 2) experiment and analyze for the types of manifolds that lead to
>> more/good symmetry, then support those.
>
> Symmetry of what?  What is an example of such a manifold?

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

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

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

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

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

Marcus


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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen -

Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!

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

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

What is the alternative?

Marcus

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

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

Wow.  

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

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

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

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

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

-- rec --

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -
> My hatred of the term "landscape" is partly because your question is
> ill-formed.  It implies a natural "up" and "down".
Sure, the source domain of the "landscape" metaphor on first observation
is that of a single-valued function over two dimensions.  Of course,
said "landscape" can have more features than mere "height" and "up"
needn't be considered "good" whilst "down" is bad.   When siting a home
or seeking a good location for hunting, gathering, or farming registered
on such a "landscape" many features are of interest ranging from soil
type to exposure, to view, to vegetation to flood-risk to water-access.
   I prefer your term manifold in it's
multi-valued/multivariate/multidimensional implications but I don't
expect it to be very useful with anyone without at least modest
mathematical exposure.

> But in our reality, there are lots of different ways to define
> success.  What we need to do is embrace these definitions and provide
> a clear explication of an individual's options _early_ on ... like
> when they're 2 years old or so... at least before the pruning.
>
> We don't do that because we _can't_ do that.  We're so caught up in
> our own myopia about the limited ways to define success.... mostly
> _money_ because without money, at least in our country, you can't do
> sh!t.  You can't even keep yourself alive when there's perfectly good
> medicine just down the street.

Yes, this is precisely the point I'm trying to stir up...  like the Sufi
story of Mullah Nasrudin encountered on the street under the lamp
seeking his lost keys.  When asked by a helpful passerby "so you lost
your keys here?" and replying "no, I lost them in that dark alley over
there, but the light is better here!",   We tend to seek easy/simple
solutions.  To the extent we are optimizers, we like a single-valued
fitness function to optimize on and are often too happy to get caught in
a local minima at that!  And yes, money, the universal solvent, seems to
be a very common one, and yes, to follow the metaphor, it does seem to
"dissolve" most everything it touches.
> So, the first part of the alternative is to take away that harsh
> pressure toward the single solution of money.  We need to work harder
> to ensure that everyone has enough to eat and access to healthcare.  
> In parallel, we need to work harder to understand the range of ways we
> can reward ourselves for productive work.
Yes, a more complex fitness function seems desirable as a "good start"
and more complex models perhaps than simple single valued functions and
a gradient descent method?  Maybe some less simple ideas like
"satisficing" vs "optimising"?  Some acknowledgement of ideas such as
linear and nonlinear feedback, canalization, basins of attraction,
punctuated equilibrium, etc.?
> Personally, I'd work the rest of my life for just enough food, an
> internet connection, and a cabin in the woods.  (which is probably all
> my artifacts are worth, anyway... if that)
That is pretty much what I am reducing my own life to... though my
"cabin" is an adobe and the "woods" is high desert and If I weren't so
damned lazy/incompetent, I think I could probably grow at least half of
my food...  people in these parts used to grow *all* of their food not
that long ago!   I'm not sure if Gary Schlitz is that far off this track
with his own "home at the edge of the rainforest" in Columbia?   Carl in
his "shack behind the Dojo" shares a few features.  I am sure there are
more here living a humble and relatively simple existence!

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

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

Keeping her (non-motorized) sailboat shipshape is mostly a matter of
thoughtful care and maintenance but at some point, she will need larger
"care packages" with a new sail or a few square feet of fiberglass and a
pot of epoxy resin to make repairs if her "fiberglass tub" ever gets
grounded on a rock or something.

Nope, there is not room on all of lake Mead (or Powell or EB or Victoria
or the Marin headlands or ..) for more than a few dozen/thousand of us,
nor can the forests (or deserts) handle us all trying to live a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle... but the image is still romantic and there
*IS* room for a few of us.  For now.

Wax Off!
  - Steve


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[glen ropella]

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

> On 04/11/2014 10:43 AM, glen wrote:
>> Well, most of us, I think, agree that symmetry with respect to female
>> and male compensation is a good symmetry.  So, there's one example.
>
> The problem there is gender culture, and the objectionable enduring
> aspects of that could be eliminated with some biochemical tuning.
> Weaken or strengthen certain drives, and watch the whole social fabric
> change.  Maybe give tax incentives for tuning one's own sex hormone
> mixture toward a socially optimal levels.  Professional body builders
> and models could get exceptions, that sort of thing..

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

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

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

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

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

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

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

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

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

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

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

Marcus


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[Nick Thompson]

REC wrote:

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

 

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

 

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.  

 

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

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 12:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen -

Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!

 

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

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

What is the alternative?

Marcus

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

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

 

Wow.  

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

-- rec --

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[Nick Thompson]

Marcus wrote:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

> because too few people would volunteer.

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Marcus

 

 

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[Steve Smith]

Roger -

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

Wow.  

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

The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose handicaps on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route? 

No, what you read is my morbid fascination running off to an extrema, at the nudging of Vonnegut when I was very young.  And it was not and is not restricted to SWMs by any means.  I'm worried about knee jerk reactions in *any* and all directions, not just toward SWMs.

While the status quo is only threatening to rape women and to lynch people of color -- the majority of people in the world -- so it's okay?

Nope, it's far from OK... as I've said elsewhere, I have a wife, two daughters and a granddaughter who I feel the need to protect (and empower) personally and systemically from such things, and by extension YOUR wife, daughters, grand-daughters, nieces and acquaintances and *their* cousins, friends, mothers, sisters, etc. ad infinitum.  Same goes for my *many* friends whose melanin load is higher than mine... and my *several* friends who prefer the sexual and romantic engagements of their own gender, or in a few cases, their former or freshly minted gender. 

On the other hand, in my proximity, these problems are not as acute as the common story suggests, it probably is elsewhere and certainly was in the past.   I do know women (and at least one man) who have been raped, more who have had such things attempted or threatened directly and *many* who feel under the threat categorically.  I know men and women whose surnames, accents, skin color, professed religion, etc. may well limit their options in the larger playing field, and I strive to relieve that for them where I can without being condescending or accidentally perpetuating it in some way.  I intervene when and how I can when such misbehaviour is underway in my presence.

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

No, you read me entirely wrong.  I'm saying simply that by focusing on the easily identifiable characteristics of the current or local dominant culture (White/Hispanic Males in this region or White/Black/Brown/Yellow/Red Males globally or ... ) as indicators for who is doing the oppressing, we might consider the larger patterns that not only lead to this oppression/inequality, but which would also re-ignite the very same table-tipping IF we COULD or DID renormalize and put a *different* group on top.  

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

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

Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.

I'm not worried about whether white men are handicapped or not.  I'm worried about whether a possibly specious rhetoric which suggests that identifying the *most obvious and/or locally evident* oppressors by their superficial characteristics (gender, sexual orientation, melanin concentration) actually leads us closer to changing the situation or instead might actually take us *away from* resolving the inequalities by simply shifting us from one basin of attraction to yet another. 

 I may be *dead wrong* in my assumption that other combinations of the characteristics in question (sexual preference, gender, and melanin load) are as capable of oppression as SWMs... maybe there *IS* only one basin of attraction defined uniquely by these three qualities, but that is not my intuition.   At best, I suspect it is a *larger* basin (characterized by SWM dominance) than those characterised by the other features...  

Go to the Stans or regions of the Middle East or Subsaharan Africa and it will probably be evident that skin color is not what causes men to be violently oppressive toward each other and toward women in particular.   On the other hand, except for the *mythical* example of the famed Amazonian Warrioresses, we *don't* have many if any examples of *women* being violent aggressive oppressors.   So maybe matriarchal societies which do not maintain hegemony through violence or oppression are possible...  and maybe homosexuals would make better statesmen and leaders than heterosexuals. 

I have it on good advice that HIllary will be running in 2016 and unless something more bold (I'd prefer Chelsea, I'm tired of my generation running things) happens, I will almost surely vote for her.   But I don't expect having a non SWM at the helm of our lumbering Titanic of a ship to actually solve our most fundamental problems.  I voted for Obama twice (as much because of his relative youth as his Y chromasome or his Melanin) and I'm disappointed in the results (not necessarily in the man).

In Vonnegut's cautionary tale for example, it was not about white males being handicapped, it was about virtually *everyone* being handicapped... pretty women being masked to hide their features, graceful ballerinas having to perform with weights on their ankles, etc.    It is about not being able to separate symptom from disease.   If we agree that "white male heterosexuals" get all the goodies at the expense of the non-SWM, do we simply assume it is the SWMness of the victors which puts them in that position? 

 Their ancestors may have been rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and thieves, they may hold the majority of wealth in the world, but let's let bygones be bygones.

Or in contrast, "let the sins of the fathers be visited upon the sons"?   You were raised in roughly the same era I was.  I'm very thankful for the awareness that was stirred up during my youth on behalf of non-male non-white non-heterosexuals... it allowed ME, for example to NOT be trapped by (all of?) the mistakes of my fathers and grandfathers.   But I'm calling on a larger analysis, for *some of us* to move on out of that local minima to a more global perspective.  While it might help to be a white, male, heterosexual, (protestant, raised in wealth, good nutrition, straight teeth, twinkle in the eye, ???, ...) to be an oppressor, I'm not sure it is necessary nor sufficient.

 What is asked is that they stop treating non-straight, non-white, non-males like slaves, and they stop allowing others to treat the non-SWMs like slaves, and that they stop blaming the non-SWMs for all the misery visited on them by SWMs as if the jerks would be really nice bros if not provoked. 

Yes, and this is a reasonable thing to ask of ourselves (especially SWMs) and eachother...   but if we insist on believing that it is the S, the W and the M characteristics that uniquely and distinctly select for this behaviour, I am suggesting it might not be that simple.   Yes, absolutely, let's not participate, perpetuate, nor tolerate that kind of nonsense... and then let's acknowledge that *at best* it is a *good start* and look a little deeper towards the problems we will *still* have even if/when/as we unseat the SWM oppressors.

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

I strive to do so at every opportunity myself, personally, and in my dealings with institutions of all kinds.   I have no interest in maintaining a SWM hegemony even if it superficially benefits me (I know too well that it does not benefit me beyond superficially when I put on my most self-enlightened perspective).  I was born into it and I participated in the growing pains of a culture trying to shed that hegemony and my daughters (and wife and sisters-in-law and many non SWF friends) benefit from the progress already made.

My wife and her sisters fought their ways to the top of the pile relatively successfully because of or in spite of that circumstance, two of four are self-made millionaires, the other two are highly accomplished (if not widely recognized) artists.  My daughters both found/created independent, successful places in the economy and social strata because of that circumstance.   And yet both of my daughters (and I fear my granddaughter) are still on a tilted playing field, though it has tilted in a strange askew way.   They both have bounced off of glass ceilings, but due to the momentum they were given by believing that there were (or should not exist) glass ceilings, broke through them eventually...  though there will surely be more.   Their *biggest* challenge, however, is finding men in their generation who can meet and keep up with them...  too many of their generation's men are wallowing in various holes... some clinging to the hegemony of their SWM (and in many cases non-W) grandfathers but many cowering under the backlash against that hegemony.   I praise our progress, but it has not been without a price and my daughters are paying that price by not having men who can meet them well.   One tried partnering with women but found it really wasn't what she wanted, the other is trying the single parent route now and is struggling with the obvious challenges that brings.

- SAS

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

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

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

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

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

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

Marcus




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[glen ropella]

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

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


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

> On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:35 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
>> Doesn’t a meritocracy favor the children of the meritorious,
>> irrespective of their own merit?  Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those
>> who disregard their families?
>
> If the first sentence is true, then they aren't disregarding their
> families.  It is just happening on a different time scale.  That and
> having a children is a choice, not a requirement.  Like smoking and
> drinking are choices.
>
>>   Doesn’t a meritocracy favor those who neglect the quality of their
>> communities?
>
> No, if their income is higher, the community will see that revenue in
> the form of taxes.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

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

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

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

Marcus



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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Nick,

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

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

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

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle,

 

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

 

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

 

Take care,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 10:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

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

 

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

 

I'm sure you guys can figure it out.

 

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

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

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

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]
skype:  merlelefkoff

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merlelefkoff

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[glen ropella]

Just to be a little more clear and to avoid the presumption that we're
not making some progress already, I have something like this in mind:

Human Resources Management Ontology
http://mayor2.dia.fi.upm.es/oeg-upm/index.php/en/ontologies/99-hrmontology

But my suspicion is that such an ontology will still be lacking in a
large number of the variables we consider when thinking about an
individual's health, well-being, happiness, usefulness, and value/merit
... most notably it's missing all the ecological, biological, and
medical ontologies. (Don't _you_ think about ticks and the epidemiology
of lyme disease when you consider a new job offer?)

And, of course, even though the ontolog[y|ies] might be huge, it's still
just a start.  We'd need to use such a scheme to build and falsify
models of how any given individual or company (vector) might wander in
the spanned space.  Are there unreachable pockets?  Unconnnected
pockets?  Etc.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

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

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

Marcus


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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

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

 

The FedEx truck-bus head on collision in northern California yesterday involved one of three bus loads of first in their families college bound high school seniors from Los Angeles on their way to visit Humboldt State University.

-- rec --

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

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

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

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

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

 

The FedEx truck-bus head on collision in northern California yesterday involved one of three bus loads of first in their families college bound high school seniors from Los Angeles on their way to visit Humboldt State University.

-- rec --

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merlelefkoff

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger -

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

Wow.  

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

The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose handicaps on you, too?  That would be an oppressive route? 

No, what you read is my morbid fascination running off to an extrema, at the nudging of Vonnegut when I was very young.  And it was not and is not restricted to SWMs by any means.  I'm worried about knee jerk reactions in *any* and all directions, not just toward SWMs.

Steve --

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

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

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

-- rec --

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