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I still don't see what's wrong with the dictionary definition. Is there some reason we need a different definition?
American Heritage --- wealth (wĕlth) n. 1.a. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches: gave his wealth away to charity. b. The state of being rich; affluence: a community of great wealth. 2. Goods and resources having value in terms of exchange or use: the agricultural wealth of the region. 3. A great amount; a profusion: a wealth of advice. Merriam-Webster --- wealth noun \ ˈwelth also ˈweltth \ 1 : abundance of valuable material possessions or resources 2 : abundant supply : profusion 3a : all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value b : all material objects that have economic utility especially : the stock of useful goods having economic value in existence at any one time national wealth 4 obsolete : weal, welfare On 3/18/21 9:42 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: > Let me try a definition of wealth: > > Wealth is that what makes you happy. > > > On Fri, 19 Mar 2021 at 06:01, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: > > Is the definition of wealth having a lot of whatever the culture values? (I'm late meeting Nick's challenge to me.) The former Bhutan (it's changing drastically and rapidly) valued Happiness. It's why their happy people thought they were wealthy, despite being one of the world's least "developed" country. (GDP is now rising with outside development of its natural resources). > -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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I still don't see what's wrong with the dictionary definition. Is there some reason we need a different definition? " Maybe we want to include non-material wealth such as Merle's example of the formar Bhutan's happiness? Maybe we also want to include Nick's freedom to think as wealth? @Merle, you asked for a definition, what do you think? On Fri, 19 Mar 2021 at 15:42, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: I still don't see what's wrong with the dictionary definition. Is there some reason we need a different definition? - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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In reply to this post by gepr
Which of the dictionary definitions do you prefer? On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 7:42 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: I still don't see what's wrong with the dictionary definition. Is there some reason we need a different definition? Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @merle110 - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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All of them together. It's quite normal with English words to come with a little ambiguity. But, for instance, the phrase "wealth of happiness" (AH3.b & MW2) is parsable just as it is. We don't need to redefine "wealth" to understand the phrase. And when you're talking about Bill Gates and you use "wealth", you're talking about accumulated economically tradeable assets (AH1.a & MW 1/3).
So, when someone asks "What is Wealth for", especially in the context of discussing people like Bezos, Jobs, or Oprah, it's fairly clear we're talking about money and assets. When talking about, say, Cantor or Nick, it would be very very odd to simply use "wealthy" without a qualifier. Wealth of mathematical ability, sure, easy to parse without redefining "wealth". The question "What is Wealth for" doesn't make that much sense using "wealth" as a qualifier for another substance. But if you seriously wanted to do that, you could simply re-ask "What is a Wealth of Happiness for?" and it would immediately parse out as "is happiness quantifiable?" "is happiness cumulative?" Etc. And, again, we wouldn't need to redefine happiness, either. English words work pretty well already. On 3/19/21 8:38 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > Which of the dictionary definitions do you prefer? > > On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 7:42 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: > > I still don't see what's wrong with the dictionary definition. Is there some reason we need a different definition? > > American Heritage --- > wealth (wĕlth) n. > 1.a. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches: gave his wealth away to charity. > b. The state of being rich; affluence: a community of great wealth. > 2. Goods and resources having value in terms of exchange or use: the agricultural wealth of the region. > 3. A great amount; a profusion: a wealth of advice. > > > Merriam-Webster --- > wealth noun \ ˈwelth also ˈweltth \ > 1 : abundance of valuable material possessions or resources > 2 : abundant supply : profusion > 3a : all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value > b : all material objects that have economic utility especially : the stock of useful goods having economic value in existence at any one time national wealth > 4 obsolete : weal, welfare -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by Pieter Steenekamp
At the risk (with the awareness of?) being pedantic: My working definition of Wealth is that it is accumulated or stored Value which just begs the question of "what is Value?" There are a few reasons that Fiat Currency is a common measure of
Value and Wealth (e.g. GDP, personal Wealth/Income, etc), the most
obvious (I think) is that it IS reductive and moderately
fungible. Money is "the universal solvent" which on one hand
means it helps to solve or clean up sticky problems, but it also
ultimately "dissolves everything". And you "can't buy happiness"
but money *does* work to leverage/relieve various things which
contribute-to/detract-from happiness. The kid who killed the
Asian Massage Parlor women seemed to have hit a boundary on that
one and took it out on them. I started the thread "what is Wealth for?" to prompt the kinds of discussions that have been offered up and perhaps beyond. My working definition of Value includes it being very Subjective/Personal/Context Specific and that it is at least a Vector, probably more properly a Tensor. As a strawman (in my sense), I offer dimensions such as:
Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness Index is an interesting way of evaluating the Tensor of Life into a singular Eigenvalue. It is most useful to our Western Hypercapitalism as a strong contrast to the way *we* collapse it all into $USD (private wealth or GDP or... ) even though we know money can't always buy happiness and as with our favorite whipping boy and his neice's book "Too Much and Not Enough" what seems like a linear or maybe log curve is not only fraught with inflection points, it has some kinks and even knots built into it. If the calculus of our "happiness tensor" includes satisficing as
well as optimizing terms, we see something somewhat different the
usual math for evaluating (economic) wealth/value... "Enough is too much, and that is just right!" - antidote to "Too Much and Not Enough" Some of the terms in the Value Tensor refer to virtuous rather than vicious cycles (e.g. Love, Kindness, Generosity). The extrema are interesting but not defining (Elon Musk, Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, your favorite Street Person). mumble, - Steve
On 3/19/21 7:54 AM, Pieter Steenekamp
wrote:
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On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 10:34 AM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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so freaking cute.
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What is the function of wealth? Most of the discussion above is about it's function for the person who has it, but I think about this a lot in terms of wealth's function for society. If I had to define social class, it would be based around the benefit society should receive from having a healthy middle class, and that is entirely dependent upon wealth (not income). Lower Class - The lower class lacks significant wealth relative to their expenses. Their ability to stand up for themselves is miniscule, because one or two missed paychecks will wreck their lives. Upper Class - The upper class has sizable wealth, relative to their expenses. They have so much wealth that they could quit out of the socio-economic game entirely and be just fine. They could not work again ever, or at least last many, many years without doing so. They could start a business, run it however they felt like, and if it never made money, had some loss, or even went bankrupt, they could simply continue living off of other wealth. Middle Class - Between those extremes you have people with enough wealth to take a stand, but not enough wealth to check out of the game. A middle class person can, when told to do something they consider immoral, or even sufficiently unpleasant, quit their job and spend some time looking for a new one without worry. Is your boss abusive? Are work conditions unpleasant? Were you asked to break the law, or look the other way while others did? Is your company starting to abuse or take advantage of its customers? You can refuse to take part in it. You might quit, you might make them fire you. Either way, you can use your power as a moderately-wealthy employee to push back against your employer. When the middle class is small, that does something, but not a lot, because the corporation can turn to the lower class as needed to fill positions. When the middle class is large, this has a huge effect on how workplaces operate (and this is why working conditions are better in industries dominated by middle-class skilled labor). I tend to think of the boundary conditions there as a cushion of between 6-months and 3 years. But you could certainly stretch that a bit. And note that this definition scales with cost of living. If you make $500,000 a year, but you would lose your house without the next two paychecks, you are functionally lower class, and your company will figure out how to abuse you as such. If you make $30,000 a year, spend every penny of your paycheck every month, but are quite happy with your current living conditions and have $30,000 in the bank, you are solidly middle class, and it will be harder for a boss to abuse you. The function of a middle-class wealth is to organically do a huge chunk of the things we keep ineffectively trying to get laws to do. It reduces workplace abuse. It allows people to pursue things they are passionate about. It reigns in industry excess. It encourages more moral corporate action. Etc. If we wanted to accomplish those things, and we wanted to accomplish them through law, we would focus primarily on figuring out how laws could encourage savings*, and we would make moves to at least slightly reduce compulsive consumerism. Once you have a large middle class, companies would not be able to survive without accommodating the ability of middle class people to refuse unreasonable requests, and society as a whole will benefit. * Not weird 401K-style stock-market investment schemes with penalties if you try to touch the money early; regular, old-fashioned, savings. Bank account money, home equity, maybe a share in Cousin Steve's tree trimming business, cause you helped him get started. On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 2:02 PM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote: so freaking cute. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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In reply to this post by gepr
New subject to avoid thread bending! Libertarians seem to think that private ownership of property facilitates good stewardship of that property. The tragedy of the commons argues that's not the case because the scope of ownership is ambiguous. This libertarian merely asserts that The Tragedy of the Commons is a story about a lack of willpower, and that it is best addressed by trying to create people who exercise their individual will more intelligently, not by creating a superordinate-will with a monopoly on socially sanctioned violence, especially a superordinate will with a zeal for arbitrary enforcement, run by bureaucratic minutiae. Even if you find that you eventually need something superordinate, surely (I assert) the first step in trying to fix such problems is to deal with the individual decision makers. The superordinate effort is for whatever problem is left after that has been work on. Reference any of John Dewey's writings about the essential place of educational efforts in a Democracy. However much attention we give the question of how to police bad citizens, we need to place at least as much attention on the question of how to develop good citizens. There is a similar problem with talk about The Free Rider Problem. Sometimes there is such a problem, but most of the time I hear people talk about, the context is simply a lack of commitment to trying to help others. "I think a public park would benefit the community, but I'm worried about free riders taking advantage of it without helping to pay for it." <-- That's just weak willed crap. If you want to see the community benefit from a public park, then do what you can to benefit the community, and if you achieve your goal smile with contentment at what you have accomplished. If you can't do it alone, find others who want to benefit the community in that way too. No member of the community is a "problem", in that story, whether they contribute or not. On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 5:05 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: I think it might be wise to couch this within a larger discussion of private property and ownership, in general. Libertarians seem to think that private ownership of property facilitates good stewardship of that property. The tragedy of the commons argues that's not the case because the scope of ownership is ambiguous. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
Right. This is one thing wrong with Los Alamos. There isn’t just one boss, but a network of managers. I’ve even had bosses make jokes like “You should really get a Tesla” (e.g. take on debt). And it is easy to estimate the burn rate
of employees if one has social ties to others at work (or if you live up there). For most, the burn rate to income is even worse in the bay area, but at least there are other bosses available. In a company town, you’re just screwed.
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of
Eric Charles What is the function of wealth? Most of the discussion above is about it's function for the person who has it, but I think about this a lot in terms of wealth's function for society. If I had to define social class, it would be based around
the benefit society should receive from having a healthy middle class, and that is entirely dependent upon wealth (not income). Lower Class - The lower class lacks significant wealth relative to their expenses. Their ability to stand up for themselves is miniscule, because one or two missed paychecks will wreck their lives. Upper Class - The upper class has sizable wealth, relative to their expenses. They have so much wealth that they could quit out of the socio-economic game entirely and be just fine. They could not work again ever, or at least last many,
many years without doing so. They could start a business, run it however they felt like, and if it never made money, had some loss, or even went bankrupt, they could simply continue living off of other wealth. Middle Class - Between those extremes you have people with enough wealth to take a stand, but not enough wealth to check out of the game. A middle class person can, when told to do something they consider immoral, or even sufficiently unpleasant,
quit their job and spend some time looking for a new one without worry. Is your boss abusive? Are work conditions unpleasant? Were you asked to break the law, or look the other way while others did? Is your company starting to abuse or take advantage of its
customers? You can refuse to take part in it. You might quit, you might make them fire you. Either way, you can use your power as a moderately-wealthy employee to push back against your employer. When the middle class is small, that does something, but not
a lot, because the corporation can turn to the lower class as needed to fill positions. When the middle class is large, this has a
huge effect on how workplaces operate (and this is why working conditions are better in industries dominated by middle-class skilled labor). I tend to think of the boundary conditions there as a cushion of between 6-months and 3 years. But you could certainly stretch that a bit. And note that this definition scales with cost of living. If you make $500,000 a year, but you would
lose your house without the next two paychecks, you are functionally lower class, and your company will figure out how to abuse you as such. If you make $30,000 a year, spend every penny of your paycheck every month, but are quite happy with your current living
conditions and have $30,000 in the bank, you are solidly middle class, and it will be harder for a boss to abuse you. The function of a middle-class wealth is to organically do a huge chunk of the things we keep ineffectively trying to get laws to do. It reduces workplace abuse. It allows people to pursue things they are passionate about. It reigns
in industry excess. It encourages more moral corporate action. Etc. If we wanted to accomplish those things, and we wanted to accomplish them through law, we would focus primarily on figuring out how laws could encourage savings*, and we would make moves to
at least slightly reduce compulsive consumerism. Once you have a large middle class, companies would not be able to survive without accommodating the ability of middle class people to refuse unreasonable requests, and society as a whole will benefit. * Not weird 401K-style stock-market investment schemes with penalties if you try to touch the money early; regular, old-fashioned, savings. Bank account money, home equity, maybe a share in Cousin Steve's tree trimming business, cause
you helped him get started. On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 2:02 PM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
Before I make my ur-objection, I'll say:
I agree with [⛧]: > No member of the community is a "problem", in that story, whether they contribute or not. I disagree with [⛤]: > the first step in trying to fix such problems is to deal with the individual decision makers. These 2 assertions seem contradictory. Perhaps they're not and all I need do is a better job of fleshing them out. Regardless, my primary objection is: There is no such thing as an individual. It's a convenient fiction, or perhaps an approximating simplification so we can get on with policy/philosophy/physics/whatever. If it's the latter, then my counter-assertion is that the simplification/fiction no longer works. When our pre-internet (or even pre-industrial) information landscape was mediated by public intellectuals who came to fame through intellectual work, it was reasonably effective. But now that our socio-cultural peaks and surges are transpersonal, it fails. Everywhere is Commons. There is no private property any more because there is no *privacy* any more (except in crazy edge cases who manage to go "off grid"). Our algorithms can better infer You from metadata than you can causally describe your Self. This looks, to me, like a validation of behaviorism and a falsification of libertarianism. [⛧] To provide anecdotal evidence that I agree -- Back in Oregon, I pushed for installing a public bench in the park behind our house. Another neighborhood development association member (who was a "leader" and had more credibility) liked the idea and helped push it through. I managed to find the powder coater, find a local manufacturer, hauled it to the parks maintenance building, etc.) During the discussion for what kind of bench, my partner wanted to install a middle arm rest so that nobody could sleep on the bench, you know, attracting homeless people. I managed to snuff that. What's wrong with sleeping on a bench in a public park? Anyway, since I pushed for the bench, in the few years we stayed thereafter, I maintained the area around the bench. I found a heroin kit, used condoms, trash of all kinds (including sharps and the ever-present dog sh¡t), etc. Often, kids would be on the bench late into the night smoking dope, rap on the boom box, and partying. In my opinion, it was a resounding success, as irritating as it might be to sit out on my patio and have to listen to rap all evening. [⛤] And it should be obvious from the story that you cannot, will never, "fix" the free rider problem by dealing with the individual decision makers. Each heroin addict, homeless person, kid needing time away from her parents, etc. is an entire *universe* in itself. The combinatorics of trying to fix the "problem" with the public bench makes such a method infeasible. On 3/21/21 8:02 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > New subject to avoid thread bending! > > On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 5:05 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: >> >> Libertarians seem to think that private ownership of property facilitates good stewardship of that property. The tragedy of the commons argues that's not the case because the scope of ownership is ambiguous. > > This libertarian merely asserts that The Tragedy of the Commons is a story about a lack of willpower, and that it is best addressed by trying to create people who exercise their individual will more intelligently, _not_ by creating a superordinate-will with a monopoly on socially sanctioned violence, especially a superordinate will with a zeal for arbitrary enforcement, run by bureaucratic minutiae. Even if you find that you eventually need something superordinate, surely (I assert) the first step in trying to fix such problems is to deal with the individual decision makers. The superordinate effort is for whatever problem is left after that has been work on. Reference any of John Dewey's writings about the essential place of educational efforts in a Democracy. However much attention we give the question of how to police bad citizens, we need to place at least as much attention on the question of how to develop good citizens. > > There is a similar problem with talk about The Free Rider Problem. Sometimes there /is /such a problem, but most of the time I hear people talk about, the context is simply a lack of commitment to trying to help others. "I think a public park would benefit the community, but I'm worried about free riders taking advantage of it without helping to pay for it." <-- That's just weak willed crap. If you _want_ to see the community benefit from a public park, then do what you can to benefit the community, and if you achieve your goal smile with contentment at what you have accomplished. If you can't do it alone, find others who _want_ to benefit the community in that way too. No member of the community is a "problem", in that story, whether they contribute or not. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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I think we probably pretty much agree. "It's a convenient fiction, or perhaps an approximating simplification" --- Yes! But we need some of those, and "the individual" is one that appeals to me. I do see the potential contradiction you are poking at, but I'm not sure it is fatal. In the case of the "tragedy of the commons" the lack of will is on the part of the farmers who fail to avoid a self-inflicted ruin. In the case of the so-called "free rider problem", the lack of will is on the part of the person providing the free ride. I love your bench example. You thought there should be a bench, you wanted it to benefit people. Then, when it did benefit people, you were pleased. Even when they were a minor annoyance, you still did not resent others for using the bench without having helped pay for it. There were "free riders", but they were not "a problem". Thumbs up! As for the commons: Let's say you are one of 4 farmers sharing a plot of land that is ideally sized to support 12 cows, and each farmer has 3 cows. If you saw one of the other farmers suddenly show up with 4 cows, very slightly reducing your yield, I'll bet you are the type of guy who would strongly consider sticking to 3 cows, and trying to convince the other farmers to do the same. Just because one of the farmers is being a bit of a jerk doesn't mean you have to destroy the commons. Probably you would even go talk to the errant farmer, to at least try to understand what's up with the fourth cow. Maybe he really needs the money for some reason, and maybe some other solution could be found. -- At any rate, just because 1 person decided to get a little more meat production really does not mean everyone else has to as well. If the others value the commons, they could simply choose not to escalate the situation, and thereby the valued-commons is preserved. Presumably we could arrange the world so that a larger % of adults didn't complain about having successfully helped people they intended to help, and so that a larger % of adults did not turn the commons into a tragedy. On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 3:12 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: Before I make my ur-objection, I'll say: - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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Glen wroth: . The combinatorics of trying to fix the "problem" with the public bench makes such a method infeasible. Nick replyeth: Not to mention inheritance and natural selection. Nick Thompson https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles I think we probably pretty much agree. "It's a convenient fiction, or perhaps an approximating simplification" --- Yes! But we need some of those, and "the individual" is one that appeals to me. I do see the potential contradiction you are poking at, but I'm not sure it is fatal. In the case of the "tragedy of the commons" the lack of will is on the part of the farmers who fail to avoid a self-inflicted ruin. In the case of the so-called "free rider problem", the lack of will is on the part of the person providing the free ride. I love your bench example. You thought there should be a bench, you wanted it to benefit people. Then, when it did benefit people, you were pleased. Even when they were a minor annoyance, you still did not resent others for using the bench without having helped pay for it. There were "free riders", but they were not "a problem". Thumbs up! As for the commons: Let's say you are one of 4 farmers sharing a plot of land that is ideally sized to support 12 cows, and each farmer has 3 cows. If you saw one of the other farmers suddenly show up with 4 cows, very slightly reducing your yield, I'll bet you are the type of guy who would strongly consider sticking to 3 cows, and trying to convince the other farmers to do the same. Just because one of the farmers is being a bit of a jerk doesn't mean you have to destroy the commons. Probably you would even go talk to the errant farmer, to at least try to understand what's up with the fourth cow. Maybe he really needs the money for some reason, and maybe some other solution could be found. -- At any rate, just because 1 person decided to get a little more meat production really does not mean everyone else has to as well. If the others value the commons, they could simply choose not to escalate the situation, and thereby the valued-commons is preserved. Presumably we could arrange the world so that a larger % of adults didn't complain about having successfully helped people they intended to help, and so that a larger % of adults did not turn the commons into a tragedy. On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 3:12 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
We do agree in our values. But we disagree in our optimism. The ecology you propose burns more energy than mine. Your setup attributes more commitment/energy from the agents ... energy they don't have or are unwilling to spend on that organizing setup. I tend to regard the agents as less intelligent than you consider them, likely because I'm less intelligent than you are ... we all generalize from our selves. I grok 0-intelligence agents because I am a 0-int agent! You, having rolled up a good character at the start of the campaign, are deluded into thinking everyone else also rolled well. 8^D
In Utopia, all the agents spend reasonable amounts of energy, along diverse channels, to drive the ecology. But in this world, government is a necessary efficiency. Throughout history, when we *rely* on the individuals to do all this diverse work, they don't, even if, in an ideal world, they could. So we build infrastructure, eg government, to make the individuals more effective, to channel whatever energy/intelligence they have. Where our worlds meet, though, is that SOME infrastructure is debilitating. And SOME infrastructure is liberating. We agree that liberating government is good. And debilitating government is bad. Our task, then, is to classify which infrastructure increases liberty. And to engineer it into place. But that's very hard when so many of us maintain, despite the evidence, that all infrastructure is always bad. On March 24, 2021 8:24:38 PM PDT, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote: >I think we probably pretty much agree. > >"It's a convenient fiction, or perhaps an approximating simplification" >--- >Yes! But we need some of those, and "the individual" is one that >appeals to >me. > > -- glen ⛧ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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I'm not sure "optimism" is the point of disagreement, beyond maybe optimism regarding our ability to probabilistically manipulate development trajectories. Our task... is to classify which infrastructure increases liberty. And to engineer it into place. Yes, at least in the abstract I think we agree on that. The next question, I think, is whether we can find a way to characterize the types of infrastructure that tend to be good vs types that tend to be bad. (Acknowledging all the potential pitfalls of trying to categorize.) My bias is that, so much as efforts show to be possible, we have infrastructure that builds better people, rather than towards infrastructure that makes it impossible for people to behave badly. Your setup attributes more commitment/energy from the agents ... energy they don't have or are unwilling to spend on that organizing setup. I tend to regard the agents as less intelligent than you consider them, likely because I'm less intelligent than you are ... we all generalize from our selves. I grok 0-intelligence agents because I am a 0-int agent! . If I gave that impression, I apologize! Obviously your insinuation that I generally prefer dealing with intelligent people is correct, but also I am quite adverse to the idea that the world would be better if everyone suddenly became much more intelligent. Intelligent people do stupid and horrible things all the time, in the few intellectual/polymath groups . To try to be more clear, I do not think we need to make people so intelligent that they understand the "tragedy of the commons", and avoid it due to their superior intellectual skills. I'm just saying that we make people who, when they find themselves in such situations, behave in ways that don't lead to tragedy. Can we do that with 100% accuracy? Probably not. Or, at the least, not without methods I would probably judge unethical. Could we arrange learning situations so that a much larger % of the population avoided tragedy in such situations? For sure. Childrens TV, video games with different rule sets, curricular lessons that engage students in relevant situations without ever once mentioning the "tragedy" or trying to reason it out explicitly, etc. The goal is to produce "0-intelligence agents" that achieve better outcomes in commons-types of situations, without having to think it through. Some, who specialize in education, or other related topics, will later learn why the curriculum is constructed in that way, but that's a different conversation, for a much latter stage of life. This happens all the time, quite effectively, but usually to shitty ends. Laws, regulations, and engrained habits that disallowed the showing of interracial couples on TV created generations that finds such things "unnatural". Ditto any non-vanilla variety of sexual behavior and gender identification. Flooding the airwaves the other direction is creating a generation that, when in 0-intelligence mode, navigates through the world quite differently. My kids are only a few years apart and I can see it between them. We were watching the a cartoon and my older said something like "It's great to see a show with all this gender representation and without being judgy about sexuality", and my younger looked confused and honestly asked "Why is that odd?" I don't think it is overly optimistic to think we could make significant progress on the issues you and I both care about with investment in that type of infrastructure. On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 5:48 AM ⛧ glen <[hidden email]> wrote: We do agree in our values. But we disagree in our optimism. The ecology you propose burns more energy than mine. Your setup attributes more commitment/energy from the agents ... energy they don't have or are unwilling to spend on that organizing setup. I tend to regard the agents as less intelligent than you consider them, likely because I'm less intelligent than you are ... we all generalize from our selves. I grok 0-intelligence agents because I am a 0-int agent! You, having rolled up a good character at the start of the campaign, are deluded into thinking everyone else also rolled well. 8^D - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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OK. I have to make a technical correction, first. Then I'll move on to the meat. By 0-int, I mostly mean "algorithmic". I'm not suggesting that 0-int agents are simple or uncomplicated, only that they are limited in the open-endedness of their "algorithms". By claiming I'm a 0-int agent, what I mean is that I'm a fairly limited set of canned solutions/heuristics to common situations. Coming up with a *new* solution for every tweaked circumstance presents a combinatorial explosion that my pathetic toolbox of heuristics is incapable of handling.
E.g. your rancher example -- Sure, it's reasonable to suggest that all the ranchers get together on a dynamically allocated schedule to [dis]agree politely about who's (not) doing what. Such on-demand problem solving is certainly possible. And the more open-ended the participants' toolbox solutions are, the more likely that will happen [⛧]. But sometimes ... sometimes, even open-ended, benefit-of-the-doubt, polite people need some time off from all that custom, on-demand, solution finding. That's why I order off the menu instead of what actually tastes better. Why I take my coffee black and my whiskey neat. Etc. I just don't have the energy, or algorithmic flexibility to custom-design a solution to each and every circumstance. I.e. I DON'T WANT to be a better person. I want to live in a society that solves the majority of these problems for me, on a regular basis, in a regular way, with a regular solution. That's the technicality. The meat of our disagreement, I think, is bottom-up vs top-down. To the extent we could indoctrinate every individual toward open-endedness, spread them out and give them the energy and curiosity required, it would provide for better coverage, both in time (rates of solutions) and space (variables addressed, composition of solutions, etc.). I agree with you on that point. But by disagreeing with you, I'm NOT taking a top-down perspective ... like some kind of state communism. I'm arguing for a middle-out approach. Starting from the bottom, with no destination in mind, ensures you'll never arrive. Starting at the top, with no atomic model of composable parts, ensures your castle will sink into the swamp. The only rational approach is middle-up and middle-down (not least because assertions about the bottom and top are metaphysical). So, targeting your concrete language directly, What does "better individuals" mean? Without a rock-solid idea of what an individual is, and without a rock-solid value system of what's "better", any system designed to optimize individuals will have more unintended than intended consequences. Would hyper-specialized magnet schools be better than broad spectrum liberal arts? Are "screens" bad and ink-on-paper good? Should all children be taught category theory *first*? Etc. There's plenty of work to do in this area. But ultimately, unless the higher order systems in which the individuals live are studied and engineered, the work done at the individual scope is Pyrrhic. [⛧] In fact, it does happen, regardless of how intricate the landscape. No matter what bureacracy you put in place, no matter how detailed and complete, the open-ended people will wiggle within or around it. On 3/28/21 2:37 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > I'm not sure "optimism" is the point of disagreement, beyond maybe optimism regarding our ability to probabilistically manipulate development trajectories. > > Our task... is to classify which infrastructure increases liberty. And to engineer it into place. > > > Yes, at least in the abstract I think we agree on that. The next question, I think, is whether we can find a way to characterize the types of infrastructure that tend to be good vs types that tend to be bad. (Acknowledging all the potential pitfalls of trying to categorize.) My bias is that, so much as efforts show to be possible, we have infrastructure that builds better people, rather than towards infrastructure that makes it impossible for people to behave badly. > > > Your setup attributes more commitment/energy from the agents ... energy they don't have or are unwilling to spend on that organizing setup. I tend to regard the agents as less intelligent than you consider them, likely because I'm less intelligent than you are ... we all generalize from our selves. I grok 0-intelligence agents because I am a 0-int agent! . > > > If I gave that impression, I apologize! Obviously your insinuation that I generally prefer dealing with intelligent people is correct, but also I am quite adverse to the idea that the world would be better if everyone suddenly became much more intelligent. Intelligent people do stupid and horrible things all the time, in the few intellectual/polymath groups . > > To try to be more clear, I do *not* think we need to make people so intelligent that they understand the "tragedy of the commons", and avoid it due to their superior intellectual skills. I'm *just* saying that we make people who, when they find themselves in such situations, behave in ways that don't lead to tragedy. Can we do that with 100% accuracy? Probably not. Or, at the least, not without methods I would probably judge unethical. Could we arrange learning situations so that a much larger % of the population avoided tragedy in such situations? For sure. Childrens TV, video games with different rule sets, curricular lessons that engage students in relevant situations without ever once mentioning the "tragedy" or trying to reason it out explicitly, etc. The goal is to produce "0-intelligence agents" that achieve better outcomes in commons-types of situations, without having to think it through. > > Some, who specialize in education, or other related topics, will later learn why the curriculum is constructed in that way, but that's a different conversation, for a much latter stage of life. > > This happens all the time, quite effectively, but usually to shitty ends. Laws, regulations, and engrained habits that disallowed the showing of interracial couples on TV created generations that finds such things "unnatural". Ditto any non-vanilla variety of sexual behavior and gender identification. Flooding the airwaves the other direction is creating a generation that, when in 0-intelligence mode, navigates through the world quite differently. My kids are only a few years apart and I can see it between them. We were watching the a cartoon and my older said something like "It's great to see a show with all this gender representation and without being judgy about sexuality", and my younger looked confused and honestly asked "Why is that odd?" > > I don't think it is overly optimistic to think we could make significant progress on the issues you and I both care about with investment in /that /type of infrastructure. > > > > > On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 5:48 AM ⛧ glen <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: > > We do agree in our values. But we disagree in our optimism. The ecology you propose burns more energy than mine. Your setup attributes more commitment/energy from the agents ... energy they don't have or are unwilling to spend on that organizing setup. I tend to regard the agents as less intelligent than you consider them, likely because I'm less intelligent than you are ... we all generalize from our selves. I grok 0-intelligence agents because I am a 0-int agent! You, having rolled up a good character at the start of the campaign, are deluded into thinking everyone else also rolled well. 8^D > > In Utopia, all the agents spend reasonable amounts of energy, along diverse channels, to drive the ecology. But in this world, government is a necessary efficiency. Throughout history, when we *rely* on the individuals to do all this diverse work, they don't, even if, in an ideal world, they could. > > So we build infrastructure, eg government, to make the individuals more effective, to channel whatever energy/intelligence they have. > > Where our worlds meet, though, is that SOME infrastructure is debilitating. And SOME infrastructure is liberating. We agree that liberating government is good. And debilitating government is bad. > > Our task, then, is to classify which infrastructure increases liberty. And to engineer it into place. But that's very hard when so many of us maintain, despite the evidence, that all infrastructure is always bad. > > > On March 24, 2021 8:24:38 PM PDT, Eric Charles <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: > >I think we probably pretty much agree. > > > >"It's a convenient fiction, or perhaps an approximating simplification" > >--- > >Yes! But we need some of those, and "the individual" is one that > >appeals to > >me. > > > > > -- > glen ⛧ -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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Hey there bub! You don't get to pawn your hard problems off on me! I mean whatever you would mean :- ) I want to live in a society that solves the majority of these problems for me, on a regular basis, in a regular way, with a regular solution. Yeah, agreed, that would be great. And it would be even better (right?) if the problems never arose, because society preempted them, rather than solving them after the fact. What does "better individuals" mean? People who don't create the problems you are concerned with solving... whatever those problems might be. In this particular case, we started out talking about tragedy-of-the-commons problems and the false free-rider problem. We could have people who encounter exactly those situations, with default algorithms that avoid the "problem" part. If there are other things that you think would make the world better, we can tack those on too. I'm arguing for a middle-out approach. I'm once again not sure that what you're describing is much different than what I'm arguing for. You list pitfalls of being too invested in a purely bottom-up approach or a purely top-down approach, and I agree those are problems to be avoided. it's reasonable to suggest that all the ranchers get together on a dynamically allocated schedule to [dis]agree politely about who's (not) doing what. Such on-demand problem solving is certainly possible. And the more open-ended the participants' toolbox solutions are, the more likely that will happen That sounds nice, but definitely isn't what I'm suggesting. Let's say you have 3 people grazing on the commons, and that the land could provide ideal conditions for 12 cattle, with a standard tragedy of the commons set up (where 13 cows produces less meat, but whoever has an extra cow has more meat than that individual would have without the extra cow). You could build people for whom the 0-int, algorithmic response to such a situation was simply to bring 4 cows each. If you had those people to start with, it would take effort to explain to them why they might want to be open-ended in considering bringing an extra cow. Everything about trying to make an extra buck by undermining the collective would be unintuitive to them. They wouldn't have to talk through solving the problem, their default approach the situation would simply not lead to "tragedy". This is a means by which society can "solve the problem for you". One way or another the solution is: People who don't do "tragedy" when presented with a commons. The question is how we get such people. Maybe we get such people because we fine or arrest anyone who starts down the tragic path. Maybe let people head that direction, but we have a tax system that continuously removes extra funds from their pockets and funnels that extra monies into the maintenance of the commons, thereby creating people who indirectly pay to clean up the the almost-tragedies they would otherwise create. Presumably many other solutions are available. However, the ideal solution, I assert, if we could achieve it, would simply be to have people who don't want to do "tragedy", despite having the opportunity. If no one wants to bring an extra cow, then we're good from the get go. P.S. I take my whiskey neat because that's the best way to have it. When I drink coffee, it gets a lot of milk and sugar. If I'm not in a mood to specify, then there are plenty of things to drink that tastes good without modification ;- ) On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 11:19 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: OK. I have to make a technical correction, first. Then I'll move on to the meat. By 0-int, I mostly mean "algorithmic". I'm not suggesting that 0-int agents are simple or uncomplicated, only that they are limited in the open-endedness of their "algorithms". By claiming I'm a 0-int agent, what I mean is that I'm a fairly limited set of canned solutions/heuristics to common situations. Coming up with a *new* solution for every tweaked circumstance presents a combinatorial explosion that my pathetic toolbox of heuristics is incapable of handling. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; explain "profit" and you have no fish -- rec -- On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:12 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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But the exploitation that results from profit is not the problem. Such exploitation is a good thing within some scope. Part of how one might define "tragic" is unscoped, unbounded exploitation. But this highlights the structure of my response to EricC's, now more clear, tack.
My OE *mis*interpretation of Eric's argument was my steel man. I'm disheartened to learn his actual argument is one I would dismiss out of hand. What Eric's done, here, is pass the buck. He's passed requirement for a strict, pre-DEFINITION of 'better individuals' on to the equally opaque 'tragic'. E.g. graffiti - My ex brother in law thought graffiti a tragic abuse. I think it's a creative, stigmergic act. Where I scope/bound it is what's different between us. Me and my exBiL agree that a (expensive) commissioned mural is great! But "low lifes" tagging a neighbor's fence is bad. But we disagree somewhere in between. Those very artistic paintings on train cars are a great example. I even enjoy well-done tags marking a gang's territory. This scoping is aesthetic. Eric's idea of engineering individuals to fit some prior conception of 'tragic', defeats the individual liberty purpose. The purpose of liberty is to explore the state space, including all the tiny cracks, including cracks that violate *any* particular local contract, including the cracks that can only be reached with *immense* accumulated wealth (e.g. NIH budgets, or landing rovers on Mars). In contrast to Eric's pre-indoctrinated individuals, with government [⛧], we mix both the liberty to violate with the option to conform. Government facilitates such libertine violations, whereas Eric's focus on prior definition and indoctrination of the individuals would debilitate healthy disruption. [⛧] Not merely any government, but one based on jury trials and the essentials of our Constitution. On 4/1/21 6:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; explain "profit" and you have no fish > > -- rec -- > > On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:12 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: > > Hey there bub! You don't get to pawn your hard problems off on me! I mean whatever you would mean :- ) > > I want to live in a society that solves the majority of these problems for me, on a regular basis, in a regular way, with a regular solution. > > > Yeah, agreed, that would be great. And it would be even better (right?) if the problems never arose, because society preempted them, rather than solving them after the fact. > > What does "better individuals" mean? > > > People who don't create the problems you are concerned with solving... whatever those problems might be. In this particular case, we started out talking about tragedy-of-the-commons problems and the false free-rider problem. We could have people who encounter exactly those situations, with default algorithms that avoid the "problem" part. If there are other things that you think would make the world better, we can tack those on too. > > I'm arguing for a middle-out approach. > > > I'm once again not sure that what you're describing is much different than what I'm arguing for. You list pitfalls of being too invested in a purely bottom-up approach or a purely top-down approach, and I agree those are problems to be avoided. > > it's reasonable to suggest that all the ranchers get together on a dynamically allocated schedule to [dis]agree politely about who's (not) doing what. Such on-demand problem solving is certainly possible. And the more open-ended the participants' toolbox solutions are, the more likely that will happen > > > That sounds nice, but definitely isn't what I'm suggesting. Let's say you have 3 people grazing on the commons, and that the land could provide ideal conditions for 12 cattle, with a standard tragedy of the commons set up (where 13 cows produces less meat, but whoever has an extra cow has more meat than that individual would have without the extra cow). You could build people for whom the 0-int, algorithmic response to such a situation was simply to bring 4 cows each. If you had those people to start with, it would take effort to explain to them why they might want to be open-ended in considering bringing an extra cow. Everything about trying to make an extra buck by undermining the collective would be unintuitive to them. They wouldn't have to talk through solving the problem, their default approach the situation would simply not lead to "tragedy". > > This is a means by which society can "solve the problem for you". One way or another the solution is: People who don't do "tragedy" when presented with a commons. The question is how we get such people. Maybe we get such people because we fine or arrest anyone who starts down the tragic path. Maybe let people head that direction, but we have a tax system that continuously removes extra funds from their pockets and funnels that extra monies into the maintenance of the commons, thereby creating people who indirectly pay to clean up the the almost-tragedies they would otherwise create. Presumably many other solutions are available. However, the ideal solution, I assert, /if we could achieve it,/ would simply be to have people who don't want to /_do_/ "tragedy", despite having the opportunity. If no one wants to bring an extra cow, then we're good from the get go. > > P.S. I take my whiskey neat because that's the best way to have it. When I drink coffee, it gets a lot of milk and sugar. If I'm not in a mood to specify, then there are plenty of things to drink that tastes good without modification ;- ) -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders
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Glen et al -
I'm probably completely out of my depth (again) here. > Eric's idea of engineering individuals to fit some prior conception of 'tragic', defeats the individual liberty purpose. The purpose of liberty is to explore the state space, including all the tiny cracks, including cracks that violate *any* particular local contract, including the cracks that can only be reached with *immense* accumulated wealth (e.g. NIH budgets, or landing rovers on Mars). I have to split a hair: The "purpose" of liberty can be that of the collective and that of the individual (that ever illusory, phigment of my imagination) and in my tin-man (somewhere between straw and steel... chosen for it's relative ease in construction and it's relative durability compared to straw) understanding, these two are in dynamic tension. The myth of "the individual" supposes (I suppose) that there is here here, that this illusion of a (self) consciousness has some reality to it, at least enough to motivate/define the actions of the locus of activity that is the mirage of an "individual". If we compare/conflate "the individual" with what we more commonly refer to as "the ego", I think your formulation of "to explore state space" is still apt, but it is the series of "adjacent possibles" expanding out from the infinitesmal subset of "state space" that (self) identifies with said "illusory individual ego". Girls just wanna have fun. Free Mumia! Don't Tread on Me... If we insist that all there is is the collective, the state-space of the entire universe, then we naturally have a quantitatively intractable problem (for the puny state space available for modeling such implied by puny individual humans, their mobile phones, laptops, supercomputers and surely even Marcus' latest quantum computer). In fact the entire state space of all the pieces of paper, chalkboards, whiteboards, windows-decorated with grease pencil and dry erase markings, and all the world's computers harnessed together in one grand ensemble of seeking the "meaning of life, the universe and everything" will come up infinitesimal in that context? So the split hairs must be split again (or not) to talk about something like (relative) meso-scale collectives. If the Universe itself (or worse, some abstraction of a multiverse) is too gainourmous to apprehend or use as the denominator in this grand equation, then we can scope down to just the Solar System or maybe our Bio/Cryo/Lithosphere... or maybe just the first-world-culture-of-privilege *we* mostly surf on top (automobiles, academic degrees, currencies, speculative markets, credit, mass media, political parties, etc.) > I even enjoy well-done tags marking a gang's territory. This scoping is aesthetic. I suppose your use of "scoping" (in this sense, in the sense of an aesthetic) helps me to think about this spectrum of alone<-->all-one with (very subjective I suppose) aesthetic segmentation. > In contrast to Eric's pre-indoctrinated individuals, with government [⛧], we mix both the liberty to violate with the option to conform. Government facilitates such libertine violations, whereas Eric's focus on prior definition and indoctrination of the individuals would debilitate healthy disruption. > > > [⛧] Not merely any government, but one based on jury trials and the essentials of our Constitution. I'm currently niggling around the edges of the implications of the work of the Cardano Foundation and their open self-governance model of designing/building/evolving their particular vision of blockchain to be applied to something a *lot* broader than cryptocurrency and NFTs, to the point of the idea of something as sacred as a "Constitution" and "Rule of Law" can be formally described and extravagantly tested/validated for logical consistency. Maybe it will become it's own nightmare of "grey goo" consisting of macromolecules of Administrivium. In a recent conversation with a "very bright fellow" not on this list, he referenced an anecdote of one of the more well known modern mathematicians/proto-computer scientists like maybe Godel or von Neumann or similar applying for (British?) citizenship and during the final interview pointing out to the examiner/bureaucrat one (or more) of the logical inconsistencies in the Constitution he was swearing to uphold. I haven't looked hard yet, but maybe someone here knows of this anecdote? And lastly... >> give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; explain "profit" and you have no fish >> >> -- rec -- Capitalism in it's more positive light would be "give a man a net to catch fish" or "help a man make his own net like yours and you feed him and his friends and progeny ad-infinitum" More cynical consequences are: " teach a man to weave a net and soon there will be no more fish in the lake" and "don't teach a man to fish until he swears fealty to you (and lets you hold his eldest daughter in the castle) and agrees to give you half of the fish he catches". Even more recursive/leveraged: Get a patent on net-making and use the force of law to ensure that anyone who ever catches a fish with a net must pass the best parts of it back up and through all the middlemen to the fish-part counting house of the patent-holder (even if the patent holder wasn't the original genius-of-macrame who figured it out first). -sass - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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