politics and cliques

[Günther Greindl]

Dear Glen,

> If we all (even newly born babies) were objective and able to think
> rationally about their world, can you imagine the onslaught of
> homogeneity we would see?  It seems like we'd immediately snap into a
> gravity well of conservatism governed by "rationality".  Perhaps the
> indoctrination and irrational, knee-jerk impulses add a necessary "heat
> bath" to society.  And that heat bath might allow the collective to find
> better global optima by sacrificing individuals to wacky extrema.

I like your "heat bath" metaphor; up to now I would have held the
opinion that the rational is always preferable; also that it would not
lead to stagnancy. But maybe the irrational gives some stochastic input
- I will have to think about it.

> Let's just say the earth is populated by indoctrinated, myopic
> individuals and a single individual begins to think rationally.  (This
> is just a reformulation of the argument against Utopia where everyone is
> altruistic except for one or a few exploiters.)  In such a case, it's
> very nice to be the rational guy.  

On the contrary - he will probably despair - because he can see reasons
for human suffering and he alone does not have the power to change it.

>But, it is not necessarily in the
> rational guy's best interests to recruit more rational people!

Only if you think of rationality as the homo oeconomicus kind of guy.
Not if you are talking about Popperian critical rationalism (something
quite different).

>> In the EU we have the principle of subsidiarity for the level at which
>> control should be exerted (this is an ideal, not always found in the
>> real control structures). The principal says that it should be analyzed
>> at which level of oranization a problem is best addressed, and that
>> level should then take care of it. There is no general rule: on has to
>> look at the problems as they arrive (one can classify known problems
>> beforehand of course).
>
> Interesting.  When you say "one has to look ...", I presume the "one"
> you're talking about is a committee of some kind?  Or is it really an
> individual who determines these things?

The processes are quite convoluted - it is never a single person, but it
  can range from committees (the commision which decides when issuing a
directive, for instance - but it has a huge staff which is in constant
contact with the member states ); actually the rough competences were
set out in the treaty of Maastricht (meaning that thousands of people
were involved at the administrative level working out most of the
competence distribution and leaving the contentious parts for higher up
levels of the hierarchy).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity#European_Union_law

>
>> I think we should not mix up the control/diversity question with that of
>> social justice.
>
> But that's where the contradiction occurs!  I _like_ trying to apply the
> principles I infer from my technical work onto problems I find in my
> social interactions.  It's a form of falsification for those principles.
>  And, of course, since FRIAM is supposed to be about "applied
> complexity", I figured this particular contradiction would be a natural
> consideration for this list.

  > Given that, I'd be interested in hearing why you think the two questions
> shouldn't be conflated?

I try to apply my scientific knowledge to "normal" life - that is indeed
what science is about. But what I meant is that these issues would
better be discussed in abstractu, as in:

Control structure S would give more resources to popultion A and less to
B if conditions C hold; versus:

It is of course necessary to also discuss individual issues: but then
one has to concentrate on one, and not _all_ of the ethical issues you
raise (as below: taxes, health care, defense etc etc).

Every one of this issues justifies a discussion in itself. The problems
of the domain are important, not only the _number_ of the objectives
which should be handled.

>In many ways, libertarianism
> is an admission of the inverse power law between the extent of control
> structures and the number of objectives for any single control structure.

I think I can agree with that.

> Yes.  But, the question comes down to which few objectives should the
> large control structures take on?  E.g. should abortion laws be handled
> by the states in the US or the feds?  What about euthanasia?
> "Universal" health care?  Taxes?  Defense?  Production infrastructure
> (like rails and roads)?  Etc.  The number of objectives is _huge_.  And
> I think the federal government is too non-local to handle that many
> objectives competently.

And for some (like environmental policy) it is too _local_.


Regards,
G?nther

--
G?nther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/

Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/
Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org