Murdoch and Trump

[Merle Lefkoff-2]

1.  That's why learning how to store food is just as important as learning how to grow food.

2.  You are right to be worried about seed.  Seed banks around the world are at risk.

3.  You didn't mention insect extinctions.  Big big problem.

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 12:28 PM doug carmichael <[hidden email]> wrote:

the problem with the small plot of land  approach

1. what to do in the winter?

2. given the number Of people who will try it, what about the supplier seeds? Are there enough?

doug

On Jan 21, 2020, at 11:20 AM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:



Thank you, Jochen.  Excellent.  Pieter:  We can't predict what will happen or when or how fast.  We only have probability analysis.  But it's happening now.  The future is here.  

My advice when I give talks on climate emergency is make sure you have a small piece of empty land, fix the topsoil, learn how to grow food, learn how to store food, meditate, and try to enjoy an altered planet.

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 1:23 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Jochen,

How confident are you about the predictions the climate scientists make?

When I delve into the details of the IPCC reports I find that there are significant uncertainties. But when popular media report the facts I get the impression that "the science is settled" . Sure, I agree that there are aspects of the science that I would argue "is settled", but there are very crucial aspects with significant uncertainties. For example, the latest available figures from the IPCC reports give the climate sensitivity as within the range of 1.5 to 4.5 (that is the expected increase in global temperatures per doubling of CO2. This is according to the models. Empirical data studies show it to be close to the lower end. If this is true, then the IPCC figures are correct and we don't have to be concerned about CO2 causing serious harm. 

Is it good enough to say that because CO2 causes the temperature to increase, the temperature has increased the last 100 years or so, the CO2 is increasing because of humans burning fossil fuels, therefore if we don't stop burning fossil fuels we are going to have huge disasters? Is it not good practice to ask how much and what other factors contribute? 

By the way, I also don't have a high opinion of Trump.  

Pieter

On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 at 01:21, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

10 years ago we had 10 degrees below zero in Berlin and several days of snow. This winter we had not a single day of snow. Not a single one. The arctic is melting, Australia and California are burning like never before and Brasil is destroying the last pieces of its precious rain forest.

And the worst thing is that it will be every year like this one, only worse. Billions of people are burning in a few decades the fossil fuels produced over millions of years. You don't need to be an expert to see that this really can not be reversed in a few months.

I could even imagine that we burn so much fossil fuels that there will be regions where we have a lack of Oxygen. Earth was like this many million years ago. 

And the most powerful country of the world has a president who ignores all of it and considers himself a very stable genius. Sean Hannity gets 36 Million Dollar (!) a year from Fox News to praise him. Isn't it depressing? 

-Jochen

-------- Original message --------

From: Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]>

Date: 1/20/20 22:59 (GMT+01:00)

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

Eric asked for someone with a comprehensive knowledge of climate science and I do not put my name in the hat. But I do have some comprehension of the basic science and the big picture.
But like all humans I have biases and very far from having a comprehensive knowledge of the literature nor the science. In my professional career as an engineer I have done a lot of engineering modeling and in my private time I am enthusiastic about emergence and have played with agent based models to simulate complex systems.  

So, on the topic under discussion, there are issues that I reckon should not be questioned (“the science is settled”):
a) On decades time scales the earth has warmed, the average sea level has increased and the average CO2 in the atmosphere increased
b) There are direct and indirect causal links between CO2 and temperature
c) The direct causal link is not sufficiently strong to be worried about
d) It’s the indirect link that’s the source of the concerns. CO2 causes the temperature to rise a little. This causes more evaporation and subsequently more clouds. Some clouds cause cooling (negative feedback) and some warming (positive feedback).
e) There are other factors than CO2 also affecting the temperature.

Then there are issues that IMO are not settled.:
I argue an issue that cuts to the very heart of the current climate change debate is the strength of feedbacks. If the positive feedback is strong and the negative feedback weak then Houston we have a problem we should listen to Greta. If not, Trump was probably right in withdrawing from Paris.

Pieter

On Sun, 19 Jan 2020 at 23:13, David Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry…

My own typos are bad enough, but usually comprehensible.  But when the damned computer helpfully comes in and substitutes the word it thinks I must have meant, the result is a true obscurity:

> One also wants to take into account arctic se ice, which if I really is on a faster melting schedule then some models predicted, though I don’t have even a good impressionistic memory of what I have heard on that.

One also wants to take into account arctic _sea_ ice, which if I _remember_ is on ….

Eric



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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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--

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[thompnickson2]

Could we develop a FRIAM convention?  In any first use of an acronym in any individual email, the user spell it out.  

AGW?  I know I should know, but 'should-knowing' something is a long way from knowing it.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 11:31 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

While your argument *seems* reasonable, I've often found that soft influence fails to meet any well-specified objectives [†]. So by pursuing your larger (AGW + other global risks) system of issues, you run into a problem definition issue. Good engineering is said to be 1/2 good problem formulation. If your target system (AGW + other global risks) is too large, then you will most likely produce vaguely formulated problems. And soft influence toward vague solutions to vaguely stated problems is not good engineering.

It would be better to identify the "edge cases" ... which conditions, if they obtain, will catastrophically destroy everything we know ... and mitigate those. You can be specific and well-formulate the problems for the edge cases.

Those making AGW a huge political play-ball are doing that. That is good engineering. And the side effects of solutions for that edge case are, yay!, a boon even if the edge case never would have obtained in the first place. One need NOT have to agree with everything in an organization to contribute and reap benefits. You don't want to contribute because you don't think the edge case will obtain. Fine. But why try to convince those who *do* want to contribute *not* to contribute?

E.g. I wouldn't hang around the Apple campus trying to argue Apple employees into quitting their jobs. Why do those who don't believe AGW is a risk keep trying to argue AGW workers to quit their work?


[†] And I say that as a person whose been specifically hired because of my "soft skills", for whatever that's worth.

On 1/21/20 9:57 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> I plead guilty as charged. My reasoning is fragile because the way I see it there are significant uncertainties. My (granted fragile) point is that there are empirical data that casts serious doubt on the accuracy of the climate models. It seems to me that in the real world, as opposed to in the modelling world, we are not heading towards a climate disaster.
>
> In concept I agree with your second point. Rather safe than sorrow. But, I'd like to extend it to other global risks as well, not only climate change. So, rather than just "buying insurance" for climate change, why not do a study of other global risks and solutions and analyse how we can get the most bang for our "do good for the world"-buck? Like the work done by https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/ I quote from their website "The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think tank that researches and publishes the smartest solutions to the world's biggest problems. Our studies are conducted by more than 300 economists from internationally renowned institutions, including seven Nobel Laureates, to advise policymakers and philanthropists how to achieve the best results with their limited resources."
>
> Just a last point. I'm all in favour of moving away from fossil fuels. But, if you make it such a huge political play-ball, you run the risk of doing stupid things in the name of doing good. An example:
> I live in Mossel Bay in South Africa and from my house I have a view
> of the bay. One evening a month or so ago we saw what looked like a small island in the bay. We inquired and it turned out to be an oil platform that was manufactured in China and is being towed for use in the North Sea and there was bad weather in the open sea and they took temporary refuge in the bay. Just think about this - Iron and steel is produces huge amounts of CO2. Europe, as a proud sponsor of the Paris agreement, are serious about reducing their CO2 emissions. So they let China do the dirty work, pay them for it and just buy the manufactured oil platform. My point is - I just don't join in the fearmongering. I say recognize the uncertainties and be realistic about the actions.


--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

Ha! Yes, sorry. Anthropogenic Global Warming.

On 1/21/20 11:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Could we develop a FRIAM convention?  In any first use of an acronym in any individual email, the user spell it out.  
>
> AGW?  I know I should know, but 'should-knowing' something is a long way from knowing it.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[thompnickson2]

Thanks, Glen,

 

While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we will chose, even if we only do so by choosing not to choose. 

 

But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 

 

I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

 

NIck

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 12:55 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Ha! Yes, sorry. Anthropogenic Global Warming.

 

On 1/21/20 11:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Could we develop a FRIAM convention?  In any first use of an acronym in any individual email, the user spell it out. 

>

> AGW?  I know I should know, but 'should-knowing' something is a long way from knowing it.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

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[gepr]

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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[gepr]

The problem with Marcus' question is its 2 types of closure. 1) communication, reason, and action are separable. But the question convolves them. And 2) any instance of communication, reason, or action won't be complete. (I'm reminded of Wolpert's paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362)

And this (also) hearkens back to the scientific use of incomprehensible models. The sentiment from Siegenfeld that the objects/mechanisms in a model can be obtuse without preventing us from learning about their behavior, combined with Pieter's mention of Deutsch, got me thinking again about these preemptive closures. Someone like Deutsch, whose cognitive abilities seem to be more expansive than most, will tend to over-estimate the cognitive abilities of others (cf Dunning-Kruger), lending to a tendency to be delusionally optimistic about human progress ... or at least a tendency in hindsight to believe we've done all this intentionally ... instead of stumbling like idiots into a lucky sweet spot.

The work on "zero-intelligence agents" can be used to make the argument that these brainy people, with 6σ expansive intellects, actually *hinder* our progress. The progress we've made consists largely of us morons taking stunted action, with stunted communication, and stunted reason. I've made this argument before when criticizing "Effective Altruism" and some other trends in the "rationalist" community.

Seen another way, a better example of an obtuse model than Deutsch is Feynman, because he was such a great teacher. I think it's fair to say that *we* don't understand the internal mechanisms that composed the animal we call "Richard Feynman". Yet, he helped us make scientific progress. I expect some might claim that Feynman wasn't a *model* of, say, quantum structures. But that claim forgets what computer programmers know in a deep sense, that has-a relations and is-a relations can produce the same result. Whether Feynman has-a model of the quantum or is-a model of the quantum is irrelevant to the large-scale, collective wave of progress.

And so, in addition to my 2 ways of making scientific progress with obtuse models (parallax and expressibility), we have this 3rd way implied by Marcus and bolstered by Pieter. It would be interesting if there were a scale-free distribution of intellect expansiveness (with a small number of big ones like Deutsch down to lots of morons like ants or worker bees). My guess is the complexity fanbois should be arguing that it's that network *structure* that leads to the progress, rather than focusing on any 1 scale.

On 1/21/20 3:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

The distribution of a small number of big ones and very large number small ones (like in a scale free network with a power law distribution) is an emerging property of a complex system where agents interact with each other. I don’t think human intellect distribution falls in this category. My guess is that human intelligence approximately follows a normal distribution? I think there are many average intelligent people on earth, few morons and geniuses? 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 14:44, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The problem with Marcus' question is its 2 types of closure. 1) communication, reason, and action are separable. But the question convolves them. And 2) any instance of communication, reason, or action won't be complete. (I'm reminded of Wolpert's paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362)

And this (also) hearkens back to the scientific use of incomprehensible models. The sentiment from Siegenfeld that the objects/mechanisms in a model can be obtuse without preventing us from learning about their behavior, combined with Pieter's mention of Deutsch, got me thinking again about these preemptive closures. Someone like Deutsch, whose cognitive abilities seem to be more expansive than most, will tend to over-estimate the cognitive abilities of others (cf Dunning-Kruger), lending to a tendency to be delusionally optimistic about human progress ... or at least a tendency in hindsight to believe we've done all this intentionally ... instead of stumbling like idiots into a lucky sweet spot.

The work on "zero-intelligence agents" can be used to make the argument that these brainy people, with 6σ expansive intellects, actually *hinder* our progress. The progress we've made consists largely of us morons taking stunted action, with stunted communication, and stunted reason. I've made this argument before when criticizing "Effective Altruism" and some other trends in the "rationalist" community.

Seen another way, a better example of an obtuse model than Deutsch is Feynman, because he was such a great teacher. I think it's fair to say that *we* don't understand the internal mechanisms that composed the animal we call "Richard Feynman". Yet, he helped us make scientific progress. I expect some might claim that Feynman wasn't a *model* of, say, quantum structures. But that claim forgets what computer programmers know in a deep sense, that has-a relations and is-a relations can produce the same result. Whether Feynman has-a model of the quantum or is-a model of the quantum is irrelevant to the large-scale, collective wave of progress.

And so, in addition to my 2 ways of making scientific progress with obtuse models (parallax and expressibility), we have this 3rd way implied by Marcus and bolstered by Pieter. It would be interesting if there were a scale-free distribution of intellect expansiveness (with a small number of big ones like Deutsch down to lots of morons like ants or worker bees). My guess is the complexity fanbois should be arguing that it's that network *structure* that leads to the progress, rather than focusing on any 1 scale.

On 1/21/20 3:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--

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[gepr]

My intuition matches yours. But I was also including animals like social insects, bees, termites, etc. And I think it would be reasonable to scale this all the way down to prokaryotes. The point being that the extent to which an organism can *model* the world is mostly limited and extremely limited by the majority of us.

The over-estimation of the presence of, power of, and extent of any glob of cognition is a problem. This is where I think people like Deutsch (and many from the rationalist community) get it wrong. Because they're super smart, they tend to over-estimate the role of cognition.

On 1/22/20 7:29 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> The distribution of a small number of big ones and very large number small ones (like in a scale free network with a power law distribution) is an emerging property of a complex system where agents interact with each other. I don’t think human intellect distribution falls in this category. My guess is that human intelligence approximately follows a normal distribution? I think there are many average intelligent people on earth, few morons and geniuses? 

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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[Steve Smith]

Too much (IMO) of our contemporary (public and private?) discourse seems to be high on confirmation bias.   

The ensemble of possible futures (trajectories through?) has exploded (see Kauffman's "Adjacent Possible") both with the growth of technological complexity and with the shift in distribution of communication "distances" (both geospatial and network).  

Confirmation bias I will speculate (if not quite assert) is an important self-protective skill (where self is the individual and possibly collective ego). 

See, see!  I Tole ya! 

(hell in a handbasket OR heaven on a handcart, you pick)

There is a reason it exists and is so ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean it isn't  (yet another) delusion and likely harmful in the long run.  It might be a good way to "get you through the day" but I contend *really sucks* as a long-term thinking strategy.

I appreciate Pinker offering us up lots of anecdotes/factoids and a hopeful narrative to string them together.  I think they are a nice tonic (though not antidote) for murky dismal thinking (awfulizing can be it's own self-fulfilling thing)...   but at least one place he goes too far is to assume that HIS measures of "a good life" are actually universal and complete.   They probably do apply to him and to most/many on this list (middle-class +/- professionals far enough into their careers/lives to have some assets or at least momentum).

Stable Genius in Chief  insists that the "roaring economy" he's managed to pump up on massive environmental and social deregulation steroids and government-debt fueled injections (via huge tax cuts for both wealthy and corporate players in the stock market) adds to everyone's quality of life.  Those without much if any stake in the stock market have to depend on the lower unemployment rates that go with a "boom" which is *some* relief, but if the bulk of the increased employment is in low-pay, no-benefit jobs, it is at best a minor salve for some, and a double-down for others (like the company store in the company town raising prices but increasing everyone's credit limit and offering a wider variety of luxury items most cant really afford in the first place?).

Much if not all of the first-world (at least Anglophonic ) seems to be on the same trip...  

To balance my own "awfulizing",  I have some confidence in anecdotal heuristics like: "darkest before dawn" ; "has to get worse before it gets better" ; "gotta hit bottom before you bounce back up".  Our collective will/consciousness/awareness/???   IS a distribution (the other subthread here of interest) and I wonder at whether it is more usefully characterized as an integral or a superposition?

Mumble,

- Steve

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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[thompnickson2]

My guess is that human intelligence approximately follows a normal distribution? I think there are many average intelligent people on earth, few morons and geniuses? 

 

I have always thought of human intelligence as like the immune system.  It is intensely group selected.  To facilitate multiplicity of function among the individuals o smallish groups, the genetic system spews out a tremendous variation in intelligences … musical, mathematical, geographical, social … so that every small group will contain at least one of them.  FRIAM is such a small group, out amongst the lions on a harsh desert – at the edge of extinction.   I think the idea of the “intelligence” test is the worst single idea humans have ever had.  

 

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

The distribution of a small number of big ones and very large number small ones (like in a scale free network with a power law distribution) is an emerging property of a complex system where agents interact with each other. I don’t think human intellect distribution falls in this category. My guess is that human intelligence approximately follows a normal distribution? I think there are many average intelligent people on earth, few morons and geniuses? 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 14:44, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The problem with Marcus' question is its 2 types of closure. 1) communication, reason, and action are separable. But the question convolves them. And 2) any instance of communication, reason, or action won't be complete. (I'm reminded of Wolpert's paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362)

And this (also) hearkens back to the scientific use of incomprehensible models. The sentiment from Siegenfeld that the objects/mechanisms in a model can be obtuse without preventing us from learning about their behavior, combined with Pieter's mention of Deutsch, got me thinking again about these preemptive closures. Someone like Deutsch, whose cognitive abilities seem to be more expansive than most, will tend to over-estimate the cognitive abilities of others (cf Dunning-Kruger), lending to a tendency to be delusionally optimistic about human progress ... or at least a tendency in hindsight to believe we've done all this intentionally ... instead of stumbling like idiots into a lucky sweet spot.

The work on "zero-intelligence agents" can be used to make the argument that these brainy people, with 6σ expansive intellects, actually *hinder* our progress. The progress we've made consists largely of us morons taking stunted action, with stunted communication, and stunted reason. I've made this argument before when criticizing "Effective Altruism" and some other trends in the "rationalist" community.

Seen another way, a better example of an obtuse model than Deutsch is Feynman, because he was such a great teacher. I think it's fair to say that *we* don't understand the internal mechanisms that composed the animal we call "Richard Feynman". Yet, he helped us make scientific progress. I expect some might claim that Feynman wasn't a *model* of, say, quantum structures. But that claim forgets what computer programmers know in a deep sense, that has-a relations and is-a relations can produce the same result. Whether Feynman has-a model of the quantum or is-a model of the quantum is irrelevant to the large-scale, collective wave of progress.

And so, in addition to my 2 ways of making scientific progress with obtuse models (parallax and expressibility), we have this 3rd way implied by Marcus and bolstered by Pieter. It would be interesting if there were a scale-free distribution of intellect expansiveness (with a small number of big ones like Deutsch down to lots of morons like ants or worker bees). My guess is the complexity fanbois should be arguing that it's that network *structure* that leads to the progress, rather than focusing on any 1 scale.

On 1/21/20 3:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[thompnickson2]

Say more, Merle.  Didn’t understand.  n

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

 

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

 

Pieter

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

 

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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[thompnickson2]

I èsoç want to agree with you Pieter.  But there is a contradiction here:  if the Enlightenment has worked, it should not need defense, right?  A system that “works” does not sow the seeds or its own destruction, right? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

 

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

 

Pieter

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

 

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Steve,

 

Do you remember “feed the dinosaur”;  I think it was a Marxist trope of sixties. At least one person here argues that human extinction is one viable solution to our problem.   

 

I understand what an obtuse model, here, although I understand it because I substitute the word “opaque” for obtuse, so perhaps I don’t understand it.  In the extreme, it’s a model that we don’t understand any better than the process it models.  It seems to go back to my argument with Epstein who asserted that models are unconnected with explanations.  No, not THAT Epstein.

 

Can somebody explain to me in Defrocked-english-major-language about parallax and expressibility?   Thanks,

 

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 9:33 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Too much (IMO) of our contemporary (public and private?) discourse seems to be high on confirmation bias.   

The ensemble of possible futures (trajectories through?) has exploded (see Kauffman's "Adjacent Possible") both with the growth of technological complexity and with the shift in distribution of communication "distances" (both geospatial and network).  

Confirmation bias I will speculate (if not quite assert) is an important self-protective skill (where self is the individual and possibly collective ego). 

See, see!  I Tole ya! 

(hell in a handbasket OR heaven on a handcart, you pick)

There is a reason it exists and is so ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean it isn't  (yet another) delusion and likely harmful in the long run.  It might be a good way to "get you through the day" but I contend *really sucks* as a long-term thinking strategy.

I appreciate Pinker offering us up lots of anecdotes/factoids and a hopeful narrative to string them together.  I think they are a nice tonic (though not antidote) for murky dismal thinking (awfulizing can be it's own self-fulfilling thing)...   but at least one place he goes too far is to assume that HIS measures of "a good life" are actually universal and complete.   They probably do apply to him and to most/many on this list (middle-class +/- professionals far enough into their careers/lives to have some assets or at least momentum).

Stable Genius in Chief  insists that the "roaring economy" he's managed to pump up on massive environmental and social deregulation steroids and government-debt fueled injections (via huge tax cuts for both wealthy and corporate players in the stock market) adds to everyone's quality of life.  Those without much if any stake in the stock market have to depend on the lower unemployment rates that go with a "boom" which is *some* relief, but if the bulk of the increased employment is in low-pay, no-benefit jobs, it is at best a minor salve for some, and a double-down for others (like the company store in the company town raising prices but increasing everyone's credit limit and offering a wider variety of luxury items most cant really afford in the first place?).

Much if not all of the first-world (at least Anglophonic ) seems to be on the same trip...  

To balance my own "awfulizing",  I have some confidence in anecdotal heuristics like: "darkest before dawn" ; "has to get worse before it gets better" ; "gotta hit bottom before you bounce back up".  Our collective will/consciousness/awareness/???   IS a distribution (the other subthread here of interest) and I wonder at whether it is more usefully characterized as an integral or a superposition?

Mumble,

- Steve

 

 

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

 

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

 

Pieter

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

 

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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

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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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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

About your "if the Enlightenment has worked, it should not need defense, right?"

If people do not recognize that it has worked, is it wrong to point out that it has worked?

I'm not claiming there are no global problems - there certainly are. But things are getting better, not? I've recently read that during the last decade humanity has for the first time ever progressed to the point where less than 10% of the global population lives in absolute poverty. 
Using this example - there are still massive problems; 10 % lives in absolute poverty.

From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

I quote from the same wikipedia page:

"In public opinion surveys around the world, people surveyed tend to incorrectly think that extreme poverty has not decreased."

Then about your "A system that “works” does not sow the seeds or its own destruction, right?"

I totally agree, it does not sow the seeds of its own destruction. Or does it? I don't observe it sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

Pieter

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 19:25, <[hidden email]> wrote:

I èsoç want to agree with you Pieter.  But there is a contradiction here:  if the Enlightenment has worked, it should not need defense, right?  A system that “works” does not sow the seeds or its own destruction, right? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

 

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

 

Pieter

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

 

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
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twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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[gepr]

Did Epstein ever respond to your (& Derr's) criticism?

"Opaque" isn't a perfect substitute for "obtuse", but it's OK. By "obtuse", I really mean "low interpretability", where interpretability is the extent to which one can *read* and *understand* the structure of a model. It's mostly used in the analysis of neural network solutions to various problems. "Opaque" is synonymous with "incomprehensible" ... zero interpretability. "Obtuse" means somewhere in the middle, but probably toward the opaque end of the spectrum. [†]

"Expressibility" means "what a model can do", the behaviors it can express. For example a "flying squirrel" can't fly. But it can glide. So, the squirrel cannot express flying. Thus, a flying squirrel is an OK model for some types of airplane like gliders, but not others like jet planes.

"Parallax" is the more general concept for "triangulation". In triangulation, 2 perspectives are used to locate a 3rd thing. As far as I know, these two are fairly standard English words. So, all you need to do is look in the dictionary.


[†] The terms "black", "white", and "gray" box are sometimes used to indicate this "readability" property. A black box would then be opaque. A gray box would be obtuse. And a white box would be transparent. I don't like that lexicon. But I suppose it's fine for most people.

On 1/22/20 10:04 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I understand what an obtuse model, here, although I understand it because I substitute the word “opaque” for obtuse, so perhaps I don’t understand it.  In the extreme, it’s a model that we don’t understand any better than the process it models.  It seems to go back to my argument with Epstein <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/1/9.html> who asserted that models are unconnected with explanations.  No, not THAT Epstein.
> [...]
> Can somebody explain to me in Defrocked-english-major-language about parallax and expressibility?   Thanks,


--
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[thompnickson2]

Pieter,

 

Thanks for writing.  I stipulate to your main point … that at least, in some places things are getting better, and that enlightenment institutions have made that happen.   (My wife says I should work harder on my stipulations.)  BUT  it does appear that “enlightenment” is kind of a weedy species, if enlightenment cannot grow upon soil that enlightenment has succeeded on. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 11:06 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nick,

 

About your "if the Enlightenment has worked, it should not need defense, right?"

If people do not recognize that it has worked, is it wrong to point out that it has worked?

I'm not claiming there are no global problems - there certainly are. But things are getting better, not? I've recently read that during the last decade humanity has for the first time ever progressed to the point where less than 10% of the global population lives in absolute poverty. 
Using this example - there are still massive problems; 10 % lives in absolute poverty.

From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

I quote from the same wikipedia page:

"In public opinion surveys around the world, people surveyed tend to incorrectly think that extreme poverty has not decreased."

 

 

 

Then about your "A system that “works” does not sow the seeds or its own destruction, right?"

I totally agree, it does not sow the seeds of its own destruction. Or does it? I don't observe it sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

 

Pieter

 

 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 19:25, <[hidden email]> wrote:

I èsoç want to agree with you Pieter.  But there is a contradiction here:  if the Enlightenment has worked, it should not need defense, right?  A system that “works” does not sow the seeds or its own destruction, right? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

So much trouble?

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Steven Pinker's, I quote from  https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570  :
"If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress." 

You might argue that it's not going to hold in the future, but I think you're on shaky ground to argue we are in trouble now.

Pieter 

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 17:32, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is the hubris that has got us into so much trouble!

 

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 1:00 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, I would go for this one. IMO we are involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are indeed possible and flourishing. Sure there are risks, climate change being one but not the only one. Humanity is still very fragile and vulnerable to existential risks like climate change, a big meteor or comet hitting the earth, a big sun flare causing major damage to our electricity distribution networks, new very dangerous, and others. The end could come before I finish this sentence. But on the positive side if you observe the progress that has happened, I am very optimistic that we are on the path towards a better future.  
I am a big fan of David Deutsch. Apart from him being part of having developed the first quantum computer algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_algorithm) , his views on infinite progress as per his book The Beginning of Infinity resonates very well with me.
I quote about the book from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity)
“Deutsch views the Enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process is physically possible to perform provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The Enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden Age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.”

 

Pieter

 

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 01:05, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

"So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot."

 

How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where communication, reason, and action are possible?   If we are not, then democracy is nothing more than a temporary way to keep the peace and to diffuse a need many have for (a feeling of) agency.  It is a rearrangement of deck chairs because soon the real shit will be coming down.   If all living creatures are just riding a wave, a process unfolding and going wherever it must go, some may recognize they have no control and rationally opt for the Dionysian approach.  Other living things like koalas and kangeroos and polar bears die by the millions, helpless and afraid.   At least the Dionysian gets the luxury of recognizing, "Yep, this is it."  It just depends on what kind of influence *can* work.  At one point the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world.   Now it isn't even possible to get people to dispose of their plastic bottles properly.  I think the Apollonians better take charge ASAP, if that's what they are going to do. 

 

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 2:49 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

 

Nah. I reject the dichotomy. I consider myself both D and an A, but in different domains. And I think it might be reasonable to time slice between A & D. My sister's ex used to say "We play hard and we work hard" ... indicating that they were both D & A, maybe even simultaneously, depending on how you interpret that.

The more interesting thing about AGW is whether or not one *must* be a believer or a "skeptic" [†], and nothing in between. As a dyed in the wool agnostic, I neither believe nor am I a "skeptic", from gun control to abortion to AGW. I also don't like Britney Spears' music. But if she showed up at my door and asked me to ... oh, I don't know ... create a visualization package for her music, I would definitely do it, which would mean listening to her music a LOT for days on end. You don't have to agree with a mission in order to contribute to the mission.

So, it seems to me to be *unreasonable* to run around complaining about how so many people are AGW believers. So what? If you don't want to work on the problem, go work on something else. It's just weird how the "skeptics" are so obsessed. E.g.

  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg


[†] In quotes to indicate that many people abuse the term. I am a skeptic, but not a "skeptic" ... if you grok the gist.

On 1/21/20 12:17 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> While I am "in", it seems to me that a distinction is beginning to evolve here between whether a reasonable person CAN doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and whether such a person SHOULD doubt AGW.   I think reasonable people could argue whether we are in a period of AGW (400yrs), a period of global cooling (11,000 yrs) or a spectacularly fragile and geologically unprecedented period of climate stability (also about 11kyrs).  So, in these sorts of situations, people tend to sort themselves out into Dionysians and Apollonians, the former declaring that we're probably  fucked and we might as well stay warm, run around in our cars, and burn all the coal we can, and the later declaring that we have a chance to get it right and we should take our best shot.  I am, as you all know, with the Apollonians.  We are, after all, the choosing species, the species that can knowingly chart it's own path.  So we “should” choose; in fact, we /will/ chose, even if we only do so by
> choosing not to choose. 
>
>  
>
> But it's clear, now why the debate is so intractable.  The debate between Dionysians and Apollonians has been in progress for centuries, so it's no surprise that we are struggling with it now. 
>
>  
>
> I hear some of you formulating an argument that whether we are D’s or A’s should be determined by the shape of the hazard space.  As a collective, I think we FRIAMMERS are particularly well positioned and qualified to have that discussion, and I hope it will continue. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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