here we go

Doug Roberts [hidden email] [hidden email]

I never understand your posts.
  But I can say that I think this one has
a fatally wrong assumption underneath: that "we" can be distinguished
from "technology".  I'm pretty sure we've covered this ground as well.
I can sum it up with the aphorism:

  "The problem with communication is the illusion that it exists."
I believe that tools are part of our extended phenotype.  That implies
(I think) that a tool created by one person only translates to another
person if the other person is similar to the former ... similar
according to the measures defined by the tool's aspect.

A corollary is that if you use a dissimilar person's tool, you are
abusing that tool, or at least using it in a way the first person did
not intend it to be used.
The implications are that any attempts to "repress" technology or
distinguish benign from destructive information is an attempt to repress
ourselves or classify the population into two types: good vs. evil
people (which, in a way, is its own type of repression).
And I'll end with as clear a statement as I can make:  There is no
conflict between technology and any other human trait.  All our traits
are a part of the same phenotype.  They are multiple aspects of the same
thing.
I applaud your attempt to expand out to the forest layer!  But I still
think you're being overly specific about our disagreement.  My summary
about dissimilarity as the common cause for the communication illusion
and tool abuse failed to capture the core disagreement, I suppose.

So, I'll try again, as brief as I'm capable of:  Inter-individual
variation causes everything we've talked about in this thread.

Your acceptance of the singularity rhetoric places you in one bin (axiom
of choice) whereas I'm in another bin.  The same is true of gun control,
3D printers, and the eschatological thinking behind our fear of climate
change (on the "left") and the New World Order (in the whackjob bin).
The same variation causes varying bins surrounding free will and which
tools/traits each of us expresses.

It all boils down to the history dependent, context controlled ontogeny
of each individual.  That's how it's been for the history of life on the
planet and won't change any time soon.

But what has changed is our density.  We are flat out more likely to
have most of our context controlled by others with the same physiology
and morphology as our self.  And that implies that we (all of us) are
much much more alike today than we have ever been in our entire history.

Our inter-individual variation is disappearing at an ever increasing
rate.  That means we're all much more likely to fall into some
(illusory) gravity well, nearby in "thought space".  No matter how
skeptical you might think you are, it's inevitable.  You'll succumb to
some cult-like group think.

As I age, I like to think that old people, with longer hysterical
processes, can better resist their local gravity wells.  But the more
one's _self_ is defined by thought and culture, the more likely they are
to cross the event horizon and stop being capable of thinking
differently.  Only the lone wolves hiding in the forests have a chance
of preserving our biological diversity.

Steve Smith wrote at 01/16/2013 10:16 PM:

Glen -

I'll save you and the rest of the list my long-winded point by point
response (written but ready for delete) and try to summarize instead:

I understand now your connection between communication and tool (mis)use.

I think we disagree on a couple of things but I am sympathetic with what
I think you are reacting to here.  I react to it with others myself:

I honestly don't agree that we *are* our extended phenotype, but accept
that you do.  It is an important difference and may explain much of our
other disagreements.

I accept that we *might not* have as much choice as I suggest about the
development and use of our tools, but I think our choice is maximized by
seeking to exercise it, even if it is limited.

We do disagree about the relative rates of change.  Biological evolution
(scaled at thousands of years) of humans may have kept pace with
technological evolution right up to the neolithic. Sociological
evolution (scaled at tens or hundreds of years) might have kept pace
with technological evolution until the industrial or perhaps the
computer revolution.  I honestly believe that significant technological
change is happening on the scale of years or less.

I agree that our perception of both technological change and it's
effects is *amplified* by how the very same technology has shrunk the
world (through communication and transportation).

I agree that we have fetishised tool acquisition and possession and that
this does not equal facility much less mastery with the tools.   But I
claim this aggravates the situation, not alleviates it.

I am sympathetic with the feeling that there are many Chicken Little's
about shrieking the end of the world with the thinnest of evidence
sometimes.  I may sound like that to you.  I'm trying to pitch my voice
an octave below that, but I may be failing.

I honestly believe that we have reached a scale of technology that risks
self-extermination and that this is exacerbated by the introduction of
new technology faster than we can come to sociological grips with it
(much less biological adaptation). The stakes are high enough that I
would prefer to err on the conservative side. I accept that you do not
agree with me on this general point.

I share your experience that many people who _think_ they are competent
at handling dangerous things (such as guns) are not. Fixing that
(acknowledging the incompetence and acting on it by forgoing the
privilege or by becoming competent) is the only answer. Attempts at gun
control seem to aggravate the problem.   I believe Australia's success
in this matter might be a reflection of their readiness as a culture to
embrace the first solution. We seem to be some distance from that.

Nice!  You wax poetic in the latter part, which I'm incapable of
paralleling.  But I'll try to mimic the spirit.
1. Is concept space discrete or continuous (Axiom of Choice vs Landscape)?
I agree that we can safely slip from discrete to continuous (including tunneling).  But I disagree that they're abstractions (either of them).
 Instead, I think they're either two parts of a paradox or duals of one
another.
  I prefer to consider them duals and I posit that discrete
paradigm is otherwise known as things, objects, or states whereas the
continuum paradigm is aka actions, behaviors, or processes.  It's a
classic Necker Cube type problem, nodes vs. edges, boxes vs. arrows.

They're not different abstractions of the same thing.  They _are_ the
same thing.
  But because any time our attention focuses on some subset
(things) or slice (processes), we have to choose which frame to assume.
 Are we speaking/thinking from the perspective that reality is a bunch
of objects?  Or are we speaking/thinking from the frame that reality is
a smoothly dynamic goo?

2. What is the relationship between humanity and technology?

   We both agree to the abstraction of humans having our phenotype
   extended via technology.  You might say that we *are* this extended
   phenotype, I'm softer on that idea than you are I think, but not
   unsympathetic (see 4 below).  I think of technology in the same
   terms as a metabolic network. I claim that since Habilis, we have
   co-evolved with an ever growing, evolving network of artifacts and
   blueprints for said artifacts which we call "technology"
   collectively.  "technology" has not yet become "life itself" but as
   a network with near autocatalytic subnetworks within it, it has
   enough features of life that I will suggest that humans and
   "technology" are symbiotes.

The problem I have with this is the extent to which you're using
metaphor.  Treat me as if I were autistically literal in my thinking.
(I may actually be that way... I don't know and I'm not going to pay
some pipe-smoking couch potato to tell me whether I am. ;-)
  I don't
know whether you literally think our surrounding artifacts actually have
inherent _properties_ of life, or whether we can merely focus our
attention so that we perceive _attributes_ of life.
I am fully in the latter bin, as much as I may play at liking the sci-fi
stories where those artifacts come to life.  I've spent too much time
with the Rosenites.  I believe that life defines itself through
impredicativity and "technology" does not.

So, if I take you literally, then you are not being metaphorical.  You
truly believe that there exists a way to _slice_ off technology and
consider a technology-free organism.  And similarly, you believe there
exists a way to slice off life and consider a life-free technology.

If so, I fundamentally disagree.  My usual example is life in space.  In
order to send a human to space, we have to build a "closure" around the
human.  That closure is a kind of simulation harness where we plug
functional equivalents into every orifice of the organism so that they
can continue to "live" out there in the vacuum.  We have to do that
because there is no _actual_ separation between humans and their
technology.  There does not exist a way to separate them.

Hence, co-evolution is an inaccurate or metaphorical term.
   Singularians seem to believe that technology already has or very
   soon will become fully "alive" and run off and leave us (except for
   Ray Kurzwiel and an astute other few who might manage to hitch a
   ride on it's tail like fleas on a runaway dog).

   My understanding of our contemporary situation is that the complex
   network we are co-evolving with called "technology" has been growing
   qualitatively and quantitatively in a super-linear (not necessarily
   geometric or exponential as postulated by singularians) since it
   emerged.   This is problematic for us as a self-determining species
   and as self-determining individuals.

Here in the discussion, I face a dilemma.  I can either "tunnel" over to
the perspective you framed (i.e. adopt that one can _actually_ separate
organisms from their artifacts) or I can maintain my own.  I usually
maintain my own when discussing things over electronic media.  That's
lead one guy to call me a "digital autistic", because I never express
any empathy or consideration of the other person's perspective, much
less their feelings or humanity. >8^)

Sorry about that.
  But sticking to my guns, I have to say that the only
way machines could outpace us is to simply change the bias a slight bit.
 I.e. instead of humans driving the whole ecosystem as they did or do
now, the machines would drive the ecosystem.  In other words, even if
the machines do "run away", they still need us as much as a neolithic
man needed his spear.
And if that's the case, some of us can be all buddhistic about it and
remain happy in that state of slavery just as my smartphone might be
very happy having me choose where we have lunch.

3. What are the implications of co-mmunication within a system (e.g.
biome, animal group, human population) on this discussion?

    From hymenoptera to homo, individuals of various species aggregate
   through multi-channel feedback loops of communication.  Hives,
   swarms, flocks, schools, herds, pods, packs, tribes all extend the
   individual's survival through extended perceptions, buffering of
   resources, specialization, etc.  Yet within this spectrum there are
   often examples of rogue individuals or family subgroups who manage
   to exist outside this complex milieu, at least for brief periods of
   time.

   I am in strong agreement with your sentiment that our population
   densities and the logical proximity created (aggravated?) by modern
   communication and transportation technology is a threat to us.  In
   fact, I have argued that these factors are leading us from our
   organizational instincts inspired by our tribal primate anscestors,
   our packing familiars (canines) and our herding familiars
   (ungulates) toward organizational patterns of hives in particular. 
   I hope it is not racist  to observe that the solutions to crowding
   in Japan have lead them as a culture closer to this than say, the
   herdsmen of the stans and the steppes in central eurasia.  Our own
   (USA) urban dwellers, especially at densities such as Manhattan or
   San Francisco or Chicago are at the same risk, despite being coupled
   to a slightly different monoculture spread across Urban, suburban
   and rural coupled by the common grid of popular mass media (formerly
   newspaper, radio, tv).

I don't think we disagree at all about that part of this implication of
commun-ication.  (I prefer to cut the word there to emphasize
"commonality" ... aka similarity.)  But the other implication, which
goes back to Marcus' original post, is that different technologies
(guns, 3D printers) define different predicates, which define different
sets of humans.  This also occurs in communication in that the way we
speak and the different thoughts that appeal (or don't) also serves to
establish in- and out-group distinctions.
My point is that our tools like language don't unify what was previously
disparate.  (E.g. guns combined with 3D printers do _not_ unify gun nuts
with tech-dorks.  It distinguishes the intersection of gun nuts with
tech-dorks.  The new tool, 3D printed clips, helps highlight those of us
who are _already_ gun and 3D printer fans.)

The diversity is in the biology and our tools don't bring us together.
The tools allow for a more varied toolbox of ways to separate us.

Now, to some extent, having a fine-grained toolbox of tools for
discretizing the goo in different ways allows the craftsman more
flexibility to detect coarser or finer patterns in the goo.  And that
can lead to a kind of unifying effect.  The polymath is going to be more
open-minded than the specialist.  But it doesn't mean that the _tools_
themselves are unifying.  The unifying power remains in the organism.
4. What is the extent of self-will/identity/choice in this context?

   Nick and others have reminded us how much our choice and
   self-determinism may be an illusion.  I don't like it, but I accept
   that there is a strong element of this even in my own life, and in
   the implications of arguments such as those I am trying to make here.

   The various feedback loops and resonances of our groups and the
   landscapes of our popular culture(s) and the memes that inhabit them
   further constrain as well as inform us.

   Following the implications of my co-evolution-with-technology story,
   we are also constrained and informed by our toolsets. This ranges
   from physical artifacts to linguistic artifacts.

Yes, I agree more fully with this.  The deep point, here, is the extent
to which the universe is open.  I.e. given the constraints and
opportunities reified by our surroundings, are those constraints and
opportunities sensitive to whatever wiggle we do have control over?  Or
are they enslaving, robust to the full range of whatever effectors we
can control?

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