The solution to Trump-Biden polarization may be easier (and cheaper) than we think

[Barry MacKichan]

This applies to our zoom discussion on Friday.

—Barry

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/solution-trump-biden-polarization-may-be-easier-cheaper-we-think-n1246573


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

<We cannot cure systemic mistrust of media elites from establishment outlets, or hope to completely tame our information disorder as long as the internet exists.>

Ok, so many people are local optimizers that act on local information that relates to them.   That may be true, but I doubt it is good.  Maybe it is just a phase where people become less abstraction challenged over time?

Marcus
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[Russ Abbott]

Local newspapers may help, but (other than dissing the Lincoln Project) Marc Ambinder didn't answer the question of where the money for them would come from.

On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 9:34 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

<We cannot cure systemic mistrust of media elites from establishment outlets, or hope to completely tame our information disorder as long as the internet exists.>

Ok, so many people are local optimizers that act on local information that relates to them.   That may be true, but I doubt it is good.  Maybe it is just a phase where people become less abstraction challenged over time?

Marcus
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[Steve Smith]

Barry (nod to Tom J) -

I very much agree that the demise (severe constriction?) of "long form
journalism" is significantly a problem for the larger discourse on the
many problems we face.  I'm not sure if the *readership* will support a
return to this.   I myself am guilty of "grazing" on hypermedia
sound/video/text-bites rather than taking the time and energy to prepare
and sit down to a proper 7 course meal.   Despite having a fairly
educated and well read peer group (here and elsewhere) I find that my
friends and colleagues to be as guilty as I of the same.   I *do* want
to believe that as the nation's cortisol levels drop (at least those who
remove themselves from the Facebook/Twitter-sphere).

I am just now listening to the newsfeeds applaud Biden's significant
(popular) but still squeek-by (electoral college) win and the Senate
remaining Republican controlled.   I went to bed late Tuesday night and
woke early Wednesday with a feeling of trepidation that Trump & Co had
pulled off the same thing they did in 2016, but by Wednesday evening I
began holding my breath in hopeful anticipation.   Today I finally
exhaled as the Presidential Electoral map turned blue (enough) today (or
more to the point, the major news networks, including Fox, declared a
win to Biden).

Marcus' point about "local optimization according to local information"
is relevant to the line of discussion SteveG has been promoting... 
fundamentally "trusting in the collective, emergent,
complex-adaptive-system".    Of course, this begs "what means local?" in
a highly connected world.   I personally feel that my ability to be a
"good citizen of the world" is improved by having dozens of
friends/colleagues around the world who I can tap directly for
information when something comes up that they are much more likely to
know directly about than I could (or any major media outlet).   I have
other friends/colleagues who have even more meaningful connections (via
global communications) than I do, so even if I can't get first-order
information, I can get *second order*.   I don't follow social media
(esp. Twitter and Facebook) which feels to me to facilitate the *worst*
of the negative feedback loops because they seem to undermine *personal*
investment/responsibility in the messaging they carry.

- Steve

> This applies to our zoom discussion on Friday.
>
> —Barry
>
> https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/solution-trump-biden-polarization-may-be-easier-cheaper-we-think-n1246573
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
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>

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

I can see several ways to look at this:

1) Having mostly separated (e.g. spatially) social groups could, at least in principle, lead to stable self-governance that is specialized to their local circumstances, and better samples the space of the possible ways of organizing groups.  (Alternatively it could just waste resources with lots of redundancy.)

2) Having limited connectivity of communication network could lead to more trust.   If one pitches to a local leader (or a boss) and that information is sufficiently reflected in action by that local leader, then there is some reason to have confidence in the value of engagement.   On the other hand, if it is 100,000 to 1 mapping and the local leader is flooded, then there won't be much evidence of productive engagement.   Same with twitter, one voice among millions probably won't make a dent.

3) A distributed, emergent control system is beside the point and it has nothing to do with spatial distribution or sparsity.   The limitation is in the ability or opportunity of agents to ingest information and to develop a unique value system and set of goals.    If this appetite is missing, then things like QAnon and Trump pop up to fill the hole, exploiting a capable communication network to reach a large audience that is prone to being led by a confident liar.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2020 11:03 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The solution to Trump-Biden polarization may be easier (and cheaper) than we think

Barry (nod to Tom J) -

I very much agree that the demise (severe constriction?) of "long form journalism" is significantly a problem for the larger discourse on the many problems we face.  I'm not sure if the *readership* will support a return to this.   I myself am guilty of "grazing" on hypermedia sound/video/text-bites rather than taking the time and energy to prepare and sit down to a proper 7 course meal.   Despite having a fairly educated and well read peer group (here and elsewhere) I find that my friends and colleagues to be as guilty as I of the same.   I *do* want to believe that as the nation's cortisol levels drop (at least those who remove themselves from the Facebook/Twitter-sphere).

I am just now listening to the newsfeeds applaud Biden's significant
(popular) but still squeek-by (electoral college) win and the Senate remaining Republican controlled.   I went to bed late Tuesday night and woke early Wednesday with a feeling of trepidation that Trump & Co had pulled off the same thing they did in 2016, but by Wednesday evening I began holding my breath in hopeful anticipation.   Today I finally exhaled as the Presidential Electoral map turned blue (enough) today (or more to the point, the major news networks, including Fox, declared a win to Biden).

Marcus' point about "local optimization according to local information"
is relevant to the line of discussion SteveG has been promoting... fundamentally "trusting in the collective, emergent, complex-adaptive-system".    Of course, this begs "what means local?" in a highly connected world.   I personally feel that my ability to be a "good citizen of the world" is improved by having dozens of friends/colleagues around the world who I can tap directly for information when something comes up that they are much more likely to know directly about than I could (or any major media outlet).   I have other friends/colleagues who have even more meaningful connections (via global communications) than I do, so even if I can't get first-order information, I can get *second order*.   I don't follow social media (esp. Twitter and Facebook) which feels to me to facilitate the *worst* of the negative feedback loops because they seem to undermine *personal* investment/responsibility in the messaging they carry.

- Steve

> This applies to our zoom discussion on Friday.
>
> —Barry
>
> https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/solution-trump-biden-polarization-may-be
> -easier-cheaper-we-think-n1246573
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
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> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn
> GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe
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>

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[gepr]

Yes! But I'd argue that an endogenous, dynamic (never mind buzzwords like "emergent") control system *is* related to the diversity in the repertoire of the components. I can imagine if all components have a huge, high diversity repertoire, then stable (endogenous and dynamic) control systems may *never* obtain. And if all components have only 1 behavior in their repertoire, then the same perfect order will always obtain. But rather than a flat, zero friction, edge of chaos sort of thing, there's some distribution of repertoire sizes and diversities that results in a large space of possible control systems ... and a weird landscape when trying to move from one control to another in that space.

I.e. how do those of us with large appetites successfully organize with those of us with small appetites? And, importantly, how do we *know* what our own (and others') appetite(s) looks like?

On 11/7/20 11:37 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 3) A distributed, emergent control system is beside the point and it has nothing to do with spatial distribution or sparsity.   The limitation is in the ability or opportunity of agents to ingest information and to develop a unique value system and set of goals.    If this appetite is missing, then things like QAnon and Trump pop up to fill the hole, exploiting a capable communication network to reach a large audience that is prone to being led by a confident liar.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

I wonder if there would be dancing in the streets if Trump had won.  Why or why not?  Because the cities have more Biden voters?  Because there are not enough people in the smaller towns and cities?

Frank

On Sat, Nov 7, 2020, 1:19 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes! But I'd argue that an endogenous, dynamic (never mind buzzwords like "emergent") control system *is* related to the diversity in the repertoire of the components. I can imagine if all components have a huge, high diversity repertoire, then stable (endogenous and dynamic) control systems may *never* obtain. And if all components have only 1 behavior in their repertoire, then the same perfect order will always obtain. But rather than a flat, zero friction, edge of chaos sort of thing, there's some distribution of repertoire sizes and diversities that results in a large space of possible control systems ... and a weird landscape when trying to move from one control to another in that space.

I.e. how do those of us with large appetites successfully organize with those of us with small appetites? And, importantly, how do we *know* what our own (and others') appetite(s) looks like?

On 11/7/20 11:37 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 3) A distributed, emergent control system is beside the point and it has nothing to do with spatial distribution or sparsity.   The limitation is in the ability or opportunity of agents to ingest information and to develop a unique value system and set of goals.    If this appetite is missing, then things like QAnon and Trump pop up to fill the hole, exploiting a capable communication network to reach a large audience that is prone to being led by a confident liar.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

There are some projects I would never even try at this point in my life because I can see there have been smart people that worked on them for long time and made a lot of progress.   When I was younger, I might have been more eager and dove in, happily ignorant of what others have done.   I might have even made my own progress.  In this sense that ignorance can be useful, if it makes one inclined to try and develop momentum.    Google was once a small start-up, and what did they do really?   It is just some boring indexing algorithm!  

I can see that having smaller distributed communities might have lower activation energies, if one puts aside the fact that the problems of community #00491 are almost identical to community #21432.   The interesting questions to me have to do with what are the common and unique properties of these systems and why, not a mastery over one of them.  

I think the generating functions for each of these communities is more-or-less the same and it is more important to learn that than NOT to learn it.    It seems silly to have to say that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2020 12:19 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The solution to Trump-Biden polarization may be easier (and cheaper) than we think

Yes! But I'd argue that an endogenous, dynamic (never mind buzzwords like "emergent") control system *is* related to the diversity in the repertoire of the components. I can imagine if all components have a huge, high diversity repertoire, then stable (endogenous and dynamic) control systems may *never* obtain. And if all components have only 1 behavior in their repertoire, then the same perfect order will always obtain. But rather than a flat, zero friction, edge of chaos sort of thing, there's some distribution of repertoire sizes and diversities that results in a large space of possible control systems ... and a weird landscape when trying to move from one control to another in that space.

I.e. how do those of us with large appetites successfully organize with those of us with small appetites? And, importantly, how do we *know* what our own (and others') appetite(s) looks like?

On 11/7/20 11:37 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 3) A distributed, emergent control system is beside the point and it has nothing to do with spatial distribution or sparsity.   The limitation is in the ability or opportunity of agents to ingest information and to develop a unique value system and set of goals.    If this appetite is missing, then things like QAnon and Trump pop up to fill the hole, exploiting a capable communication network to reach a large audience that is prone to being led by a confident liar.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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