capitalism vs. individualism

classic Classic list List threaded Threaded
130 messages Options
1234 ... 7
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
I know I've seen some screeds, here, about "postmodernism" and it's unhinging belief from truth, though I probably can't reconstruct them. In any case, along those lines comes this opinion piece:

  Will "post-truth" politics be capitalism's undoing?
  https://www.salon.com/2019/11/03/capitalism-created-the-post-truth-society-and-that-may-be-its-undoing/

I kinda-sorta agree that individualism contributes to such unhinging because individualism is antithetic to any kind of consensus building. But it's totally unclear to me how this is fundamentally related to *capitalism*, which I loosely define as the private ownership of property. In fact, it seems to me that capitalism defeats individualism in several ways, including fiat currency (which reduces property to a readily divisible value), collective "persons" like corporations which can own property using explicit sharing agreements, and built-in mechanisms like markets where some kind of consensus on things like price obtain.

That makes me think that either I'm missing some important part of the author's assumptions *or* I simply disagree in some non-obvious fundamental way.

--
☣ 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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
I think the point is that organizations can't achieve goals if there is no overlap in meaning of the goals and mechanisms for achieving the goals.   Even if there are a few shared concepts, like money, that's not enough to explain why a transaction would be arranged in the first place -- two agents must have some overlapping reference frame beyond the cost and payment of the service performed.

There are kinds of truth that give near-immediate grounding  like fulfilling a delivery in a shared reference frame, or not, and then others that have less direct impact.    For many people the difficulty of meeting their short-term responsibilities take all of their attention, and so any obstacle to that (real or imagined) like carbon dioxide caps, is easier to throw into the Facts I will Deny category.   Increasing the space of deniable information makes it easier to anonymously externalize costs on others, and on a less obvious horizon, and decreases the cognitive loan on them for attention and reasoning.

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
OK. The only way I can make that work in my head is to argue that capitalism is not merely one of many things a capitalist can think/believe, but a kind of ethic or arching way of being ... a whole philosophy. *If* I can do that and claim that a Capitalist (big C) derives from the simple principles of methodological capitalism to a world-view, then it's reasonable to think the Capitalist believes capitalism answers *all* ethical questions (or at least a large enough share of them). And then it's reasonable to blame Capitalists for putting too much burden on what are really insufficient mechanisms for making the lion's share of ethical decisions.

A little C capitalist, who thinks capitalism is dandy for *some* social decision making, but irrelevant for most of them, would *not* rely on capitalism for other things (like science or how to vote on abortion). So, perhaps the article's author could make the claim that Capitalists and their over-burdening of Capitalism is a cause of "post-truth", but not capitalists and capitalism.

Your comment about many people being at their limit merely meeting their short-term responsibilities is relevant. I find a lot of people who put too much stock in their pet -ism, I suppose. And it seems some people might try to unify any plurality of -isms into a Grand Unified Ism (GUI - Ha!). I can't help but wonder if their inability to be/think pluralist is *incapacity* or simply laziness. It's like people who say they don't have time to exercise. Pffft. They're merely saying they don't *prioritize* exercise. I still tend to think everyone has at least as much energy and curiosity as I have, which prevents me from believing that very many people are simply *incapable* of thinking/being pluralist. Instead, they prioritize against pluralism and put all their eggs in their pet GUI.

On 11/4/19 3:40 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think the point is that organizations can't achieve goals if there is no overlap in meaning of the goals and mechanisms for achieving the goals.   Even if there are a few shared concepts, like money, that's not enough to explain why a transaction would be arranged in the first place -- two agents must have some overlapping reference frame beyond the cost and payment of the service performed.
>
> There are kinds of truth that give near-immediate grounding  like fulfilling a delivery in a shared reference frame, or not, and then others that have less direct impact.    For many people the difficulty of meeting their short-term responsibilities take all of their attention, and so any obstacle to that (real or imagined) like carbon dioxide caps, is easier to throw into the Facts I will Deny category.   Increasing the space of deniable information makes it easier to anonymously externalize costs on others, and on a less obvious horizon, and decreases the cognitive loan on them for attention and reasoning.


--
☣ 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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
Glen writes:

> Instead, they prioritize against pluralism and put all their eggs in their pet GUI.

Whether this is laziness depends on whether their GUI works hard to unify pluralistic observations, or simply truncates observations or doesn't make observations.    It is also lazy to model a set of microcosms and not model the economy or environment that connect them.    That could be the hard part.

Marcus
   

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
The existence of, and ability to register, the observations is the important part. Along with people's ability to *not see* (which is different from "ignore") information that contradicts their held positions, potential observations may be plentiful but unavailable to the potential observer. I suppose with Ismists (people who buy into -isms), there's always a risk of being so locked into what you already think that you're incapable of any observation, much less those that juxtapose different things.

But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration. It would be too "meta" to lock oneself into a particular integration so that *other* ways of integrating were obfuscated. So, any model of the economy/environment that connects them must have near-equivalent siblings that can also model that economy/environment.

In any case, I'm happy so many people are trash-talking capitalism. But the author of the article seems to be committing such a large rhetorical error that I can't trust what he's saying at all. He could have left out the nonsense about Glenn Beck and used that space to distinguish between capitalism as a world-view versus capitalism as a way to solve a few particular problems and I wouldn't have blinked at all.


On 11/5/19 10:17 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Whether this is laziness depends on whether their GUI works hard to unify pluralistic observations, or simply truncates observations or doesn't make observations.    It is also lazy to model a set of microcosms and not model the economy or environment that connect them.    That could be the hard part.


--
☣ 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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
Glen writes:

"But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    The space unmodeled could contain a configuration (a new Ism) that is has better properties than the existing configurations, and the available observations are just what has been found so far.    If one is unable or unwilling to compress to commonalities -- to unify -- then one cannot anticipate novelty either.    I have 500 channels of crap on cable (more, I guess), and I don't really need to watch it all to appreciate the exceptions to this.

Marcus


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
I'm not sure I agree. Even without unification into a singular whole, we can register novelty by clustering. Clustering in a space, obviously, requires a space of some sort. But spaces are defined by bases that are often only tiny slices/aspects of the things arranged in the space. E.g. we can organize TV shows by run-time, ignoring all other aspects. And if a new show has a run-time different from all other TV shows, then it's novel, even if in an uninteresting way.

I've recently been exploring state space reconstruction methods for some of our more enigmatic model traces. EEMD revealed an interesting IMF for a periodicity I have yet to explain mechanistically. It's a bit infuriating because I wrote the damned model. Anyway, such a task is less about unifying the contributions to the signal than it is finding a basis from which to "debug" it. (Debug in quotes because the periodicity might end up being a counter-intuitive feature.)


On November 5, 2019 12:02:26 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

>Glen writes:
>
>"But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that
>sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space
>unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration."
>
>"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    The space
>unmodeled could contain a configuration (a new Ism) that is has better
>properties than the existing configurations, and the available
>observations are just what has been found so far.    If one is unable
>or unwilling to compress to commonalities -- to unify -- then one cannot anticipate novelty either. I have 500 channels of crap on cable (more, I guess), and I don't really need to watch it all to appreciate the exceptions to this.


--
glen

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Steve Smith
I feel trepidatious to even try to weigh in here, but try I shall
(unless I delete my attempt before I <send>).  

I agree with Glen's point about the author conflating "C" with little
"c" capitalism.   I am a reformed Capitalist who continues to practice
capitalism on a daily basis, though not always *proudly*.   The author
refers to capitalism as an "economic system" which I believe makes it
closer to *C*apitalism.  Glen loosely defines capitalism as *private
ownership of property* but i want to further refine it to be private
ownership of *the means of production*, and then extend that to
*excluding public ownership* as with "the Commons". 

My working experience/definiton with/of *C*apitalism is roughly the
larger (even than an economic system) definition the author describes
which invokes the extension of (absolute) individual rights over
material objects to more abstract things like land (both small and huge)
and perhaps ultimately political parties (Trump becoming defacto
leader/ruler/owner of the Republican Party) or ideas (beliefs?).   Thus
post-truth <==> Capitalism.  

I'd like to tie post-truth back to Capitalism more directly/tightly as I
agree that the author did not necessarily do that well, but I'm not
finding a good argument on the fly.   I appreciate the "gesture" he
makes *toward* linking (C)apitalism with the broader idea that the
individual not only has the *right* to believe anything, but nearly the
*requirement* to do so.    With that seems to be a voraciousness which
seeks to take *personal ownership* of all things, including "the
Commons" represented by nature itself (air, water, viewsheds, solar
irradiance) and more to the point of current events, the government
(for/by/of the people?) itself.

With that ramble out of the way, I want to address the question of
"isms"... which I take to simply be "informal models" which can have
both organic and engineered roots/natures.  They are also *collective*
by some measure, being the aggregation or superposition of the
individual (and subcollective) ideas/concepts of people.  Political
parties, for example, have "party lines" (doctrine) which may well have
been crafted by a few "scholars" with a particular ideal pattern in mind
(e.g. Marxist Communism, Keynesian Economics), but in fact, they *also*
evolve and morph with "the will of the people" or maybe more aptly "the
imagination of the people".   In the spirit of the *world itself* being
a *complex adaptive system* I would suggest that the "isms" of
sociopolitics (e.g. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etc.) are
roughly regions of equilibria connected by high-dimensional bifurcation
"points" (alternatively basins of attraction bounded by "saddles" and
"ridges").

To the extent that  such "isms" are made up of "beliefs" as much as
"acts",  the full embedding space would need to include *all possible
beliefs* to be complete, but in fact, it is the subspace that we happen
to be exploring at any given time which is relevant.  On the other hand,
there does appear to be a place for "most dangerous ideas" which
represent a "seed" of organization which might introduce/find/create a
"path" between these subspaces (isms) as well as yet others yet
unknown.     Glen's idea that we not try to interpolate between the
existing spaces (smooth the space-between with our own assumptions?)
lest we miss some kind of interesting/useful structure in the
intervening landscape seems motivated (if I'm even beginning to
characterize what he said correctly).

As a reform(ing)ed Capitalist, I am very interested in how the reality
of private property (in the sense of "possession is 9/10 of the law")
competes with those elements of the physical (and social?) multiverse
which might be "best" (whatever best means?) left in "the Commons".   I
have a strong sense that among my "possessions" there are many which
require too much of the "force of law" to maintain as my own...   for
example, anything I cannot keep on my person or in my sight is at risk
of being absconded with.  A piece of real property which I do not reside
or work significantly at (weekly if not daily) would seem to be at-risk
of re-appropriation by others, and in the sense of stewardship, anything
I "can't take care of" might not really be mine?  For example, in the
plantations-operated-by-chattel-slavery, might be said to have belonged
to those who cleared, plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields and those
who built, maintained, and repaired the buildings more than the
individual or family whose claim to "ownership" of the real property and
it's improvements were well beyond their own ability to have created,
much less maintained it.   

Mumble,

 - Steve

On 11/5/19 2:23 PM, glen wrote:

> I'm not sure I agree. Even without unification into a singular whole, we can register novelty by clustering. Clustering in a space, obviously, requires a space of some sort. But spaces are defined by bases that are often only tiny slices/aspects of the things arranged in the space. E.g. we can organize TV shows by run-time, ignoring all other aspects. And if a new show has a run-time different from all other TV shows, then it's novel, even if in an uninteresting way.
>
> I've recently been exploring state space reconstruction methods for some of our more enigmatic model traces. EEMD revealed an interesting IMF for a periodicity I have yet to explain mechanistically. It's a bit infuriating because I wrote the damned model. Anyway, such a task is less about unifying the contributions to the signal than it is finding a basis from which to "debug" it. (Debug in quotes because the periodicity might end up being a counter-intuitive feature.)
>
>
> On November 5, 2019 12:02:26 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Glen writes:
>>
>> "But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that
>> sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space
>> unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration."
>>
>> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    The space
>> unmodeled could contain a configuration (a new Ism) that is has better
>> properties than the existing configurations, and the available
>> observations are just what has been found so far.    If one is unable
>> or unwilling to compress to commonalities -- to unify -- then one cannot anticipate novelty either. I have 500 channels of crap on cable (more, I guess), and I don't really need to watch it all to appreciate the exceptions to this.
>


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Prof David West

As a card carrying Hermeneutic (postmodernism historically derives from the Hermeneutics of Heidegger and his student Gadamer) the flaws of the article arise from the assertion that Capitalism is/has/embodies some kind of Truth and therefore un/non/anti-Truth will kill it. From the viewpoint of someone who knows/believes/understands everything to be Interpretation, this is a silly assertion.

The only way you can ascribe Truth to an ism, Capitalism included, is by disregarding ninety-percent of the "data" as irrelevant and claiming the self-consistent (mostly) residue to be that Truth.

And of course each ism cherry picks the ten-percent of the data (non-overlapping sets) that supports its interpretation of fact/reality/truth and vociferously defends it as the only correct way to see things or think about things  — and then makes the fatal mistake of believing, in a fundamentalist sort of way, their own story (interpretation).

That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy of impeachment. While the story being told may have substance, it has no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and among all those with other stories to tell.

davew

[Personal aside: some ranchers in southern Utah gave me a "Keep America Great — Trump 2020" ball cap. I am tempted, sometimes, to wear it in solidarity with Adam Schiff and Democrats/Liberals who seem Hell bent on getting Donald re-elected. I don't do so because I am afraid of attracting violence from ultra-orthodox, fundamentalist, believers of the TrumpSatan story.]




On Thu, Nov 7, 2019, at 1:08 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> I feel trepidatious to even try to weigh in here, but try I shall
> (unless I delete my attempt before I <send>).  
>
> I agree with Glen's point about the author conflating "C" with little
> "c" capitalism.   I am a reformed Capitalist who continues to practice
> capitalism on a daily basis, though not always *proudly*.   The author
> refers to capitalism as an "economic system" which I believe makes it
> closer to *C*apitalism.  Glen loosely defines capitalism as *private
> ownership of property* but i want to further refine it to be private
> ownership of *the means of production*, and then extend that to
> *excluding public ownership* as with "the Commons". 
>
> My working experience/definiton with/of *C*apitalism is roughly the
> larger (even than an economic system) definition the author describes
> which invokes the extension of (absolute) individual rights over
> material objects to more abstract things like land (both small and huge)
> and perhaps ultimately political parties (Trump becoming defacto
> leader/ruler/owner of the Republican Party) or ideas (beliefs?).   Thus
> post-truth <==> Capitalism.  
>
> I'd like to tie post-truth back to Capitalism more directly/tightly as I
> agree that the author did not necessarily do that well, but I'm not
> finding a good argument on the fly.   I appreciate the "gesture" he
> makes *toward* linking (C)apitalism with the broader idea that the
> individual not only has the *right* to believe anything, but nearly the
> *requirement* to do so.    With that seems to be a voraciousness which
> seeks to take *personal ownership* of all things, including "the
> Commons" represented by nature itself (air, water, viewsheds, solar
> irradiance) and more to the point of current events, the government
> (for/by/of the people?) itself.
>
> With that ramble out of the way, I want to address the question of
> "isms"... which I take to simply be "informal models" which can have
> both organic and engineered roots/natures.  They are also *collective*
> by some measure, being the aggregation or superposition of the
> individual (and subcollective) ideas/concepts of people.  Political
> parties, for example, have "party lines" (doctrine) which may well have
> been crafted by a few "scholars" with a particular ideal pattern in mind
> (e.g. Marxist Communism, Keynesian Economics), but in fact, they *also*
> evolve and morph with "the will of the people" or maybe more aptly "the
> imagination of the people".   In the spirit of the *world itself* being
> a *complex adaptive system* I would suggest that the "isms" of
> sociopolitics (e.g. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etc.) are
> roughly regions of equilibria connected by high-dimensional bifurcation
> "points" (alternatively basins of attraction bounded by "saddles" and
> "ridges").
>
> To the extent that  such "isms" are made up of "beliefs" as much as
> "acts",  the full embedding space would need to include *all possible
> beliefs* to be complete, but in fact, it is the subspace that we happen
> to be exploring at any given time which is relevant.  On the other hand,
> there does appear to be a place for "most dangerous ideas" which
> represent a "seed" of organization which might introduce/find/create a
> "path" between these subspaces (isms) as well as yet others yet
> unknown.     Glen's idea that we not try to interpolate between the
> existing spaces (smooth the space-between with our own assumptions?)
> lest we miss some kind of interesting/useful structure in the
> intervening landscape seems motivated (if I'm even beginning to
> characterize what he said correctly).
>
> As a reform(ing)ed Capitalist, I am very interested in how the reality
> of private property (in the sense of "possession is 9/10 of the law")
> competes with those elements of the physical (and social?) multiverse
> which might be "best" (whatever best means?) left in "the Commons".   I
> have a strong sense that among my "possessions" there are many which
> require too much of the "force of law" to maintain as my own...   for
> example, anything I cannot keep on my person or in my sight is at risk
> of being absconded with.  A piece of real property which I do not reside
> or work significantly at (weekly if not daily) would seem to be at-risk
> of re-appropriation by others, and in the sense of stewardship, anything
> I "can't take care of" might not really be mine?  For example, in the
> plantations-operated-by-chattel-slavery, might be said to have belonged
> to those who cleared, plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields and those
> who built, maintained, and repaired the buildings more than the
> individual or family whose claim to "ownership" of the real property and
> it's improvements were well beyond their own ability to have created,
> much less maintained it.   
>
> Mumble,
>
>  - Steve
>
> On 11/5/19 2:23 PM, glen wrote:
> > I'm not sure I agree. Even without unification into a singular whole, we can register novelty by clustering. Clustering in a space, obviously, requires a space of some sort. But spaces are defined by bases that are often only tiny slices/aspects of the things arranged in the space. E.g. we can organize TV shows by run-time, ignoring all other aspects. And if a new show has a run-time different from all other TV shows, then it's novel, even if in an uninteresting way.
> >
> > I've recently been exploring state space reconstruction methods for some of our more enigmatic model traces. EEMD revealed an interesting IMF for a periodicity I have yet to explain mechanistically. It's a bit infuriating because I wrote the damned model. Anyway, such a task is less about unifying the contributions to the signal than it is finding a basis from which to "debug" it. (Debug in quotes because the periodicity might end up being a counter-intuitive feature.)
> >
> >
> > On November 5, 2019 12:02:26 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >> Glen writes:
> >>
> >> "But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that
> >> sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space
> >> unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration."
> >>
> >> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    The space
> >> unmodeled could contain a configuration (a new Ism) that is has better
> >> properties than the existing configurations, and the available
> >> observations are just what has been found so far.    If one is unable
> >> or unwilling to compress to commonalities -- to unify -- then one cannot anticipate novelty either. I have 500 channels of crap on cable (more, I guess), and I don't really need to watch it all to appreciate the exceptions to this.
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
< That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy of impeachment. While the story being told may have substance, it has no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and among all those with other stories to tell. >

The problem we have is that there is not enough anger.   When we get enough anger, then systematic progress can begin to occur.  

Marcus
 

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Prof David West
Or violence. Ad hoc, then systematic.



On Thu, Nov 7, 2019, at 9:49 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> < That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from
> your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy
> of impeachment. While the story being told may have substance, it has
> no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have
> no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and
> among all those with other stories to tell. >
>
> The problem we have is that there is not enough anger.   When we get
> enough anger, then systematic progress can begin to occur.  
>
> Marcus
>  
>
> ============================================================
> 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/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by Prof David West
DaveW -
As a card carrying Hermeneutic 
"Hermeneutics is the art of understanding and of making oneself understood" - Wikipedia
From the viewpoint of someone who knows/believes/understands everything to be Interpretation, this is a silly assertion.
Interpretation of "received wisdom" conventionally.   Rhetorical presentation of "received wisdom" is not hermeneutical.
The only way you can ascribe Truth to an ism, Capitalism included, is by disregarding ninety-percent of the "data" as irrelevant and claiming the self-consistent (mostly) residue to be that Truth.

And of course each ism cherry picks the ten-percent of the data (non-overlapping sets) that supports its interpretation of fact/reality/truth and vociferously defends it as the only correct way to see things or think about things  — and then makes the fatal mistake of believing, in a fundamentalist sort of way, their own story (interpretation).
This cynical interpretation of the attempt to condense knowledge and wisdom is not unfounded, but do you contend that it is intrinsic ot "isms" that they be thus?  Is your 10% data-driven, anecdotal, or rhetorical?
That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy of impeachment.
Do you mean *this impeachment* of *this president* at *this time*?  Or are you impugning the very idea of impeachment, of congressional oversight of the Executive and the ideal of checks and balances?
While the story being told may have substance, it has no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and among all those with other stories to tell.

The style of this administration (and sadly the last Republican one as well) is that of an arrogant bully, saying and doing anything to get one's way, denying any wrong-doing categorically, and then squealing "unfair!" anytime someone lands even a half-good punch on them.   Decades ago, when my sympathies were more with the Right than the Left (in some key areas) it was because I interpreted their position to be considered, thoughtful and in some sense generous.   I haven't seen that from the Right in a very long time, and have seen it more and more on the Left.   Politicians are still politicians but *some* of them truly seem motivated to be *Statesmen*, even if the game as it has (d)evolved makes that hugely difficult.

It is really rich for the (self-Righteous) Right to accuse the left of being bullies, but that is one of the clear hallmarks of a bully...  to cry foul when confronted effectively.

davew

[Personal aside: some ranchers in southern Utah gave me a "Keep America Great — Trump 2020" ball cap. I am tempted, sometimes, to wear it in solidarity with Adam Schiff and Democrats/Liberals who seem Hell bent on getting Donald re-elected. I don't do so because I am afraid of attracting violence from ultra-orthodox, fundamentalist, believers of the TrumpSatan story.]

What about the simple possibility that many will believe that you believe the story embroidered on the cap, no matter how they might react overtly?   I'm of the apprehension that while you don't seem to strictly believe that Trump has made America "Great Again" or that keeping him in office will  yield a continued or increased "Greatness", I suspect that your own version of what I call in myself "morbid fascination" has you happy enough standing around roasting marshmallows of what is left of things as he proceeds to burn it down.  I shared some of the reactionary spirit that (nearly) drove Bernie to the nomination in 2016 and did in fact drive Donald to taking the Gerrymandered Electoral College majority,  but whatever good that disruption brought is well over IMO...   it is time to call a halt to this "punctuation" and return to a new "equilibrium" if we can.

Do YOU see a new equilibrium possible, or do you think we need to rekindle the flames if they start to die down?

- SteveS

PS.  I am reminded of Nick's (with Stephen/Owen/et-al support) MOTH (my way or the highway) strategy in the iterated prisoner's dilemma.   It is perhaps too simplified for application in the context of our national elections, but I suspect that the Left may be moving toward that strategy which beats the chronic defector strategy that the Right seems to prefer.


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Re: leaving the interstitial space unmodeled being motivated reasoning -- I struggled with that, mostly because I lamely qualified it twice: 1) only sometimes and 2) only if you *cannot* multi-model it. My emotional (?, intuitive maybe?) motivation is that I too often see people slap together something that kindasorta works, then the begin believing their slapped together thing because it kindasorta works (80/20 rule) and it's too inconvenient to pay back that technical debt. If your team is ready to systematically maintain a skeptical stance, then go ahead and model the environment/economy and be willing to dump/iterate on it when it's falsified. But otherwise, maybe it's best to leave it unmodeled.

Re: the extension of ownership to larger meaning (stewardship, systemic consequences, etc.) -- I agree completely. I wanted to say "Well said." But I'm not sure you've said it well.  Nor have I. Nor has anyone I've read. The tragedy of the commons is difficult to grok and even more difficult to explain, say, to the dog walkers who leave their dog shit in the school yard behind our house ... or worse yet, to the teenager with fantastic math skills who would prefer to spend her time categorizing fashion choices.

On 11/6/19 4:08 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> To the extent that  such "isms" are made up of "beliefs" as much as
> "acts",  the full embedding space would need to include *all possible
> beliefs* to be complete, but in fact, it is the subspace that we happen
> to be exploring at any given time which is relevant.  On the other hand,
> there does appear to be a place for "most dangerous ideas" which
> represent a "seed" of organization which might introduce/find/create a
> "path" between these subspaces (isms) as well as yet others yet
> unknown.     Glen's idea that we not try to interpolate between the
> existing spaces (smooth the space-between with our own assumptions?)
> lest we miss some kind of interesting/useful structure in the
> intervening landscape seems motivated (if I'm even beginning to
> characterize what he said correctly).
>
> As a reform(ing)ed Capitalist, I am very interested in how the reality
> of private property (in the sense of "possession is 9/10 of the law")
> competes with those elements of the physical (and social?) multiverse
> which might be "best" (whatever best means?) left in "the Commons".   I
> have a strong sense that among my "possessions" there are many which
> require too much of the "force of law" to maintain as my own...   for
> example, anything I cannot keep on my person or in my sight is at risk
> of being absconded with.  A piece of real property which I do not reside
> or work significantly at (weekly if not daily) would seem to be at-risk
> of re-appropriation by others, and in the sense of stewardship, anything
> I "can't take care of" might not really be mine?  For example, in the
> plantations-operated-by-chattel-slavery, might be said to have belonged
> to those who cleared, plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields and those
> who built, maintained, and repaired the buildings more than the
> individual or family whose claim to "ownership" of the real property and
> it's improvements were well beyond their own ability to have created,
> much less maintained it.


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
In reply to this post by Prof David West
On 11/7/19 4:15 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Or violence. Ad hoc, then systematic.

On Violence: A Comparison of Georges Sorel & Frantz Fanon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNLN3anBByY
(Parentheticals reflect my inability to transcribe what he's saying.)

>     "In the context of the colonial dispensation, Fanon saw violence on the part of the oppressed masses not only as necessary, but also as therapeutic. For him, violence was an act of pure (?) catharsis, because it was through the unceremonious imposition of violence that the oppressed masses were stripped of their freedom and dignity. And only through the judicious counter use of violence can the rights be restored. In Fanon's view, the spilling of the blood of the hated conqueror was analogous to the spilling of the blood of the sacrificial lamb. It had redemptive value. (confused stumbling) There can be no redemption without the shedding of blood. For all these reasons, therefore, the spilling, or to be more precise, the lavish spilling of the blood of the conqueror is the sine qua non for the liberation of the oppressed masses." So it's only through violence that the oppressed can discover themselves and their lost humanity, the humanity that's been denied. And with the killing of the oppressor, it becomes quite evident to the oppressed that the oppressor can bleed.
>

The somewhat ad hoc violence being used by rent-seekers like Trump and his fascist followers is being met with somewhat judicious violence being used by others like antifa. As Steve points out in his last post, whether the more judicious uses of violence will work or not depends on the depth of their strategies.
============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Prof David West
Dave writes:

< That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy of impeachment. While the story being told may have substance, it has no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and among all those with other stories to tell. >

I attended a National Night Out event.   One of my neighbors is a legal professional, a black man, who remarked a bailiff had mistakenly treated him as a defendant.   He walks up and down the street with his little girl that drives an electric car to keep her safe.  Another one of my neighbors is a grandson of a famous Indian physicist that worked with Einstein.   His wife is a doctor.   Next door is an Irish woman, a project manager for a tech company, and her husband who is Balinese, that does landscape design.  They have daughter that is just starting college.  There's the widower across the street that went to Cal and for graduate school but spent his working life as a building contractor.    He misses his son who is starting his career.   There's a Chinese man across the street who works in finance.  He's divorced but looks after the kids.   Down a few houses is an Iranian woman that works at Apple and her husband, who is white, that works at a ridesharing company.   Across the street is a white couple.   She is a professor at Cal and he works for Pixar.  

All of these families are what someone like Patrick Buchanan might claim are "Fundamentally changing the character of America."   He may be right about that, but they are changing it for the better.   They are the new economy and the new middle class.   As far as I could tell, without any real probing, they all hate this administration and were glad to see the new folks on the street weren't of that persuasion.  There is a Reality I see.  The thousands of neighborhoods like this one, are the ones that ask Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff to please hand Trump his ass.  It is not some conspiracy of the democratic officials that have decoupled from their voters. 

Where does this all go?   I don't know, but there are well-resourced people out here that are pissed-off and justifiably so.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, November 7, 2019 12:36 AM
To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism
 

As a card carrying Hermeneutic (postmodernism historically derives from the Hermeneutics of Heidegger and his student Gadamer) the flaws of the article arise from the assertion that Capitalism is/has/embodies some kind of Truth and therefore un/non/anti-Truth will kill it. From the viewpoint of someone who knows/believes/understands everything to be Interpretation, this is a silly assertion.

The only way you can ascribe Truth to an ism, Capitalism included, is by disregarding ninety-percent of the "data" as irrelevant and claiming the self-consistent (mostly) residue to be that Truth.

And of course each ism cherry picks the ten-percent of the data (non-overlapping sets) that supports its interpretation of fact/reality/truth and vociferously defends it as the only correct way to see things or think about things  — and then makes the fatal mistake of believing, in a fundamentalist sort of way, their own story (interpretation).

That last step, believing the fictional story that you weave from your interpretation of cherry picked data, is fundamental to the idiocy of impeachment. While the story being told may have substance, it has no Reality, it has no Truth, and telling (yelling) that story will have no effect except other than increasing anger and hostility between and among all those with other stories to tell.

davew

[Personal aside: some ranchers in southern Utah gave me a "Keep America Great — Trump 2020" ball cap. I am tempted, sometimes, to wear it in solidarity with Adam Schiff and Democrats/Liberals who seem Hell bent on getting Donald re-elected. I don't do so because I am afraid of attracting violence from ultra-orthodox, fundamentalist, believers of the TrumpSatan story.]




On Thu, Nov 7, 2019, at 1:08 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I feel trepidatious to even try to weigh in here, but try I shall
> (unless I delete my attempt before I <send>).  
>
> I agree with Glen's point about the author conflating "C" with little
> "c" capitalism.   I am a reformed Capitalist who continues to practice
> capitalism on a daily basis, though not always *proudly*.   The author
> refers to capitalism as an "economic system" which I believe makes it
> closer to *C*apitalism.  Glen loosely defines capitalism as *private
> ownership of property* but i want to further refine it to be private
> ownership of *the means of production*, and then extend that to
> *excluding public ownership* as with "the Commons". 
>
> My working experience/definiton with/of *C*apitalism is roughly the
> larger (even than an economic system) definition the author describes
> which invokes the extension of (absolute) individual rights over
> material objects to more abstract things like land (both small and huge)
> and perhaps ultimately political parties (Trump becoming defacto
> leader/ruler/owner of the Republican Party) or ideas (beliefs?).   Thus
> post-truth <==> Capitalism.  
>
> I'd like to tie post-truth back to Capitalism more directly/tightly as I
> agree that the author did not necessarily do that well, but I'm not
> finding a good argument on the fly.   I appreciate the "gesture" he
> makes *toward* linking (C)apitalism with the broader idea that the
> individual not only has the *right* to believe anything, but nearly the
> *requirement* to do so.    With that seems to be a voraciousness which
> seeks to take *personal ownership* of all things, including "the
> Commons" represented by nature itself (air, water, viewsheds, solar
> irradiance) and more to the point of current events, the government
> (for/by/of the people?) itself.
>
> With that ramble out of the way, I want to address the question of
> "isms"... which I take to simply be "informal models" which can have
> both organic and engineered roots/natures.  They are also *collective*
> by some measure, being the aggregation or superposition of the
> individual (and subcollective) ideas/concepts of people.  Political
> parties, for example, have "party lines" (doctrine) which may well have
> been crafted by a few "scholars" with a particular ideal pattern in mind
> (e.g. Marxist Communism, Keynesian Economics), but in fact, they *also*
> evolve and morph with "the will of the people" or maybe more aptly "the
> imagination of the people".   In the spirit of the *world itself* being
> a *complex adaptive system* I would suggest that the "isms" of
> sociopolitics (e.g. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etc.) are
> roughly regions of equilibria connected by high-dimensional bifurcation
> "points" (alternatively basins of attraction bounded by "saddles" and
> "ridges").
>
> To the extent that  such "isms" are made up of "beliefs" as much as
> "acts",  the full embedding space would need to include *all possible
> beliefs* to be complete, but in fact, it is the subspace that we happen
> to be exploring at any given time which is relevant.  On the other hand,
> there does appear to be a place for "most dangerous ideas" which
> represent a "seed" of organization which might introduce/find/create a
> "path" between these subspaces (isms) as well as yet others yet
> unknown.     Glen's idea that we not try to interpolate between the
> existing spaces (smooth the space-between with our own assumptions?)
> lest we miss some kind of interesting/useful structure in the
> intervening landscape seems motivated (if I'm even beginning to
> characterize what he said correctly).
>
> As a reform(ing)ed Capitalist, I am very interested in how the reality
> of private property (in the sense of "possession is 9/10 of the law")
> competes with those elements of the physical (and social?) multiverse
> which might be "best" (whatever best means?) left in "the Commons".   I
> have a strong sense that among my "possessions" there are many which
> require too much of the "force of law" to maintain as my own...   for
> example, anything I cannot keep on my person or in my sight is at risk
> of being absconded with.  A piece of real property which I do not reside
> or work significantly at (weekly if not daily) would seem to be at-risk
> of re-appropriation by others, and in the sense of stewardship, anything
> I "can't take care of" might not really be mine?  For example, in the
> plantations-operated-by-chattel-slavery, might be said to have belonged
> to those who cleared, plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields and those
> who built, maintained, and repaired the buildings more than the
> individual or family whose claim to "ownership" of the real property and
> it's improvements were well beyond their own ability to have created,
> much less maintained it.   
>
> Mumble,
>
>  - Steve
>
> On 11/5/19 2:23 PM, glen wrote:
> > I'm not sure I agree. Even without unification into a singular whole, we can register novelty by clustering. Clustering in a space, obviously, requires a space of some sort. But spaces are defined by bases that are often only tiny slices/aspects of the things arranged in the space. E.g. we can organize TV shows by run-time, ignoring all other aspects. And if a new show has a run-time different from all other TV shows, then it's novel, even if in an uninteresting way.
> >
> > I've recently been exploring state space reconstruction methods for some of our more enigmatic model traces. EEMD revealed an interesting IMF for a periodicity I have yet to explain mechanistically. It's a bit infuriating because I wrote the damned model. Anyway, such a task is less about unifying the contributions to the signal than it is finding a basis from which to "debug" it. (Debug in quotes because the periodicity might end up being a counter-intuitive feature.)
> >
> >
> > On November 5, 2019 12:02:26 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >> Glen writes:
> >>
> >> "But re: avoiding modeling the space between the -isms, I'd argue that
> >> sometimes (only sometimes), it's best to leave the interstitial space
> >> unmodeled to avoid biasing the integration."
> >>
> >> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    The space
> >> unmodeled could contain a configuration (a new Ism) that is has better
> >> properties than the existing configurations, and the available
> >> observations are just what has been found so far.    If one is unable
> >> or unwilling to compress to commonalities -- to unify -- then one cannot anticipate novelty either. I have 500 channels of crap on cable (more, I guess), and I don't really need to watch it all to appreciate the exceptions to this.
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by gepr
Glen -

> Re: leaving the interstitial space unmodeled being motivated reasoning
> -- I struggled with that, mostly because I lamely qualified it twice:
> 1) only sometimes and 2) only if you *cannot* multi-model it. My
> emotional (?, intuitive maybe?) motivation is that I too often see
> people slap together something that kindasorta works, then the begin
> believing their slapped together thing because it kindasorta works
> (80/20 rule) and it's too inconvenient to pay back that technical
> debt. If your team is ready to systematically maintain a skeptical
> stance, then go ahead and model the environment/economy and be willing
> to dump/iterate on it when it's falsified. But otherwise, maybe it's
> best to leave it unmodeled.

In the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful",  what you are
calling _interstitial_ implies to me that you are thinking of them more
as "wrong because incomplete" ?  In my decades long work with scientists
and engineers, trying to provide useful "visualizatoins" of their work,
I have often been confronted by their eagerness to accept *my*
model-fitting over their sparse data as somehow "magic".   In the early
days of animation (roughly flip-books) the time-series interpolation
required to make it smooth was often mistaken for magically exposing
some "feature" of the model, when at best, it subdued the perceptual
jinkiness introduced by their sampling.   I had done nothing more than
arbitrarily fit a spline to their data, which they themselves could well
have done, but would not have... somehow outsourcing that sleight of
hand made it OK?

I am in sympathetic resonance with your experience of "kinda sorta" and
80/20 but it is worth emphasizing perhaps that the 80/20 rule in
extension blows up to infinity... it would take an infinite amount of
time and detail to model 100%, and the technical debt will never be
fully paid, by definition.   Oddly this might be a way of saying "you
can't own Truth, just pay the interest on a mortgage against it?"  

I am in the process of trying to apprehend a GUI(sm) of sorts, not to
arrive at a final or absolute truth, but rather to seek some extra
understanding power by expanding the domain of consideration.   In my
experience, models are useful for understanding, explanation, and
prediction...   the first and last being the hardest with the middle
being the loosest.   A lot of what we call post-hoc rationalization fits
into that category I think.

>
> Re: the extension of ownership to larger meaning (stewardship,
> systemic consequences, etc.) -- I agree completely. I wanted to say
> "Well said." But I'm not sure you've said it well.  Nor have I. Nor
> has anyone I've read.
I struggle with the same challenge... in my own mind I often use "well
considered", even though I may not be happy with the actual description
of a thing, I am often convinced of it's strong support and as you
indicate *only wish* it were "well said".   Perhaps the archaic "here
here!" (or is it "hear hear!") applies better than "well said!"?
> The tragedy of the commons is difficult to grok and even more
> difficult to explain, say, to the dog walkers who leave their dog shit
> in the school yard behind our house ... or worse yet, to the teenager
> with fantastic math skills who would prefer to spend her time
> categorizing fashion choices.

What is the complement of the "tragedy" of the commons?  Is it the
"glory" of it?  Or is it more the "absolute fundamental reality" of
it.    Water rights or pollution regulations would seem to be a
necessary emergent artifact of governance in response to said "tragedy"
and has us ultimately often seeing only the negative space of The
Commons.  In the spirit of "might makes right", there are no Commons,
only resources to be gathered and hoarded and defended by *might*.   I
sometimes feel that the spirit of the frontier which seems to be the
root of individualism characterizing most brands of libertarianism and
conservatism has no room for a "true commons" nor ultimately for any
notion of "stewardship".   One simply "owns things" by virtue of "might"
(physical, rhetorical, legal, economic?) and one has absolutely no
responsibility *to* those things, nor to others who might have a stake
in them (e.g. atmosphere, water, etc.).   

- Steve


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr


On 11/7/19 9:55 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> In the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful",  what you are
> calling _interstitial_ implies to me that you are thinking of them more
> as "wrong because incomplete" ?  In my decades long work with scientists
> and engineers, trying to provide useful "visualizatoins" of their work,
> I have often been confronted by their eagerness to accept *my*
> model-fitting over their sparse data as somehow "magic".   In the early
> days of animation (roughly flip-books) the time-series interpolation
> required to make it smooth was often mistaken for magically exposing
> some "feature" of the model, when at best, it subdued the perceptual
> jinkiness introduced by their sampling.   I had done nothing more than
> arbitrarily fit a spline to their data, which they themselves could well
> have done, but would not have... somehow outsourcing that sleight of
> hand made it OK?

Well, I was refining Marcus' imperative that we *should* work to model the environment/economy in which our sub-isms live. I think he was, appropriately, pushing back on my denigration of creating GUIs. So, by "interstitial", I meant the glue between -isms. When combining lower-case capitalism with, say, human rights, we have to find a way to model the interstitial space between them, unify them, integrate them. But when doing so, as you point out with your curve fitting example, we arbitrarily *promote* one interstitial space model over another *unless* we provide a way to swap in and out multiple, distinct, ways of integrating them. So, it's less about "wrong because incomplete" and more about "don't believe what you see" ... skepticism.

That's why I prefer "all models are *always* wrong" to "all models are wrong, some are useful". Never place any trust, whatsoever, in anything you think, see, or do. If you trust it, then you're a sucker.


> What is the complement of the "tragedy" of the commons?  Is it the
> "glory" of it?

My own cocktail party attempts have focused on *entitlement*. So many of my elders (Boomers) criticize Millenials for their entitlement, that it makes for a good hook. When they start bitching about how Millenials expect this or that, I try to turn the tables and say *Yes!* We want them to be entitled. We want them to feel safe walking down the street, entitled to roam the streets at all hours without getting raped. We want them to have avocado toast at their local cafe because avocados are good for you. We want them to "get a prize just for showing up" because showing up is *good*. But my rhetoric rarely works. My GenX peers just look at me and roll their eyes: Who cares? Just drink your damned beer.

--
☣ 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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
 Glen writes:

< My own cocktail party attempts have focused on *entitlement*. So many of my elders (Boomers) criticize Millenials for their entitlement, that it makes for a good hook. When they start bitching about how Millenials expect this or that, I try to turn the tables and say *Yes!* We want them to be entitled. We want them to feel safe walking down the street, entitled to roam the streets at all hours without getting raped. We want them to have avocado toast at their local cafe because avocados are good for you. >

I think we (>= GenX) aren't getting the message.   The subtext is "How is it you morons didn't figure this out?"

Marcus


============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

gepr
On 11/7/19 10:22 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think we (>= GenX) aren't getting the message.   The subtext is "How is it you morons didn't figure this out?"

I agree. But I think I would go further, as Greta Thunberg has and assert that it's not just a matter of not figuring it out. It's a matter of dereliction of duty. We have a duty to build the commons so that our descendants will be more and more entitled. Entitled to see live polar bears, breathe clean air, eat avocado toast, devote their lives to creativity rather than wage slavery, etc.

--
☣ 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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: capitalism vs. individualism

Marcus G. Daniels
The article below aligns with my experience as a child in rural America, and I'm reminded of it every time I visit my parent's hometown.   There is an active spirit of dereliction, in fact -- the Glenn Beck's as in the original article.  Not even from the majority, but enough that it keeps going.   People that try to fix it (people I know) are often punished.    

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/trump-arkansas.html

Sometimes I think the best thing to do is to continue to drain these towns of their smart people, move the bulk of taxation to state and municipal governments, and then let them have it their way with no medical care,  no schools, no roads, and no law enforcement.

Marcus

On 11/7/19, 10:47 AM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

    On 11/7/19 10:22 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
    > I think we (>= GenX) aren't getting the message.   The subtext is "How is it you morons didn't figure this out?"
   
    I agree. But I think I would go further, as Greta Thunberg has and assert that it's not just a matter of not figuring it out. It's a matter of dereliction of duty. We have a duty to build the commons so that our descendants will be more and more entitled. Entitled to see live polar bears, breathe clean air, eat avocado toast, devote their lives to creativity rather than wage slavery, etc.
   
    --
    ☣ 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/
    FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
   

============================================================
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/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
1234 ... 7