questions

[Prof David West]

suppose you are trying to grow a diverse community.

you want a shared culture for that community.

you want to respect existing sensibilities that subgroups (and
individuals) bring to the new community.

in many cases, gender and youth for example, a significant portion of
those sensibilities are not intrinsic to the group or to individuals
within the group, they are social constructs imposed on the group.
(feminism invests energy in challenging and changing many of the
sensibilities deriving from social construction, AARP does the same for
elders, relatively little is done regarding youth.)

in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural
universals!  [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes
otherwise.]

conflict (intensity varying along a continuum) is inevitable: between
the umbrella culture of the new community and the existing cultures of
its members; between and among member cultures.

question 1: how does the umbrella culture come into existence? (culture
IS a complex system)
question 2: to what extent does the umbrella culture trump the
ethnocentric sensibilities of its members?
question 3: should sensibilities based in social constructs be directly
challenged and/or ignored?
     corollary question 3a: if you want more women in your community
     should your interactions with them be constrained to
                                    socially constructed norms?
     corollary question 3b: if you want more youth in your community
     should they be constrained (in terms of exposure,
                                     participation, interaction, and
                                     communication) to that which is
                                     consistent with the social
                                     construction
                                     of youth?
question 4: how are the inevitable conflicts mediated?  (recognizing
that the patterns, procedures, powers, and sanctions required for
                 mediation must be "built into" the umbrella culture)

[Merle Lefkoff]

How do you define/describe "sensibilities?"

Merle Lefkoff

> suppose you are trying to grow a diverse community.
>
> you want a shared culture for that community.
>
> you want to respect existing sensibilities that subgroups (and
> individuals) bring to the new community.
>
> in many cases, gender and youth for example, a significant portion of
> those sensibilities are not intrinsic to the group or to individuals
> within the group, they are social constructs imposed on the group.
> (feminism invests energy in challenging and changing many of the
> sensibilities deriving from social construction, AARP does the same for
> elders, relatively little is done regarding youth.)
>
> in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural
> universals!  [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes
> otherwise.]
>
> conflict (intensity varying along a continuum) is inevitable: between
> the umbrella culture of the new community and the existing cultures of
> its members; between and among member cultures.
>
> question 1: how does the umbrella culture come into existence? (culture
> IS a complex system)
> question 2: to what extent does the umbrella culture trump the
> ethnocentric sensibilities of its members?
> question 3: should sensibilities based in social constructs be directly
> challenged and/or ignored?
>      corollary question 3a: if you want more women in your community
>      should your interactions with them be constrained to
>                                     socially constructed norms?
>      corollary question 3b: if you want more youth in your community
>      should they be constrained (in terms of exposure,
>                                      participation, interaction, and
>                                      communication) to that which is
>                                      consistent with the social
>                                      construction
>                                      of youth?
> question 4: how are the inevitable conflicts mediated?  (recognizing
> that the patterns, procedures, powers, and sanctions required for
>                  mediation must be "built into" the umbrella culture)
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>  

[glen ep ropella]

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Prof David West wrote:
> in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural
> universals!  [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes
> otherwise.]

Sorry to break off a tangent; but, given that you're willing to discuss
the existence of cultural universals, I assume you have a relatively
solid method of distinguishing culture from biology.  Is that right?  If
so, what is that method?

My current strawman would be the supposed cultural/biological universal
that "People don't eat their children."  It's not a biological universal
because I've heard that some dogs eat their pups and I assume other
animals will eat their offspring.  Yet I've never heard of any society
where humans eat their offspring.  Perhaps I'm just ignorant (quite
likely since I know very little anthropology) and there is evidence of
societies where humans eat their offspring?  Or perhaps there's clear
biological evidence of an immediate health consequence of eating one's
children?  If not, that makes it seem like a cultural universal rather
than a biological one.

I'd also like to avoid equivocation on the word "universal".  One
_might_ say there are no cultural universals because there simply are no
universals, at all, except the ideal ones we find in mathematics.  I
assume you're not using the word that trivialized way and "within
epsilon of universal" can be called "universal".

In any case, what I'm _actually_ interested in is the _method_ by which
one determines a primarily cultural behavior from a primarily biological
behavior.  The rest is, as I say, just a strawman to help me clarify.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact
that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. -- H. G. Wells

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[Prof David West]

Sensibility is intended to be a very general term; basically a
sensitivity to a sensory stimulus accompanied by a change of state
(positive or negative, but usually negative) in the perceiver of that
stimulus.  Examples would include:  hearing a word or phrase; being
hugged or touched; viewing a graphical depiction; being challenged about
a core belief or value; being praised in public; smelling perfume at the
office; being asked to change your religion; ...



On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:46:12 -0600, "Merle Lefkoff"
<merle at arspublica.org> said:

> How do you define/describe "sensibilities?"
>
> Merle Lefkoff
> > suppose you are trying to grow a diverse community.
> >
> > you want a shared culture for that community.
> >
> > you want to respect existing sensibilities that subgroups (and
> > individuals) bring to the new community.
> >
> > in many cases, gender and youth for example, a significant portion of
> > those sensibilities are not intrinsic to the group or to individuals
> > within the group, they are social constructs imposed on the group.
> > (feminism invests energy in challenging and changing many of the
> > sensibilities deriving from social construction, AARP does the same for
> > elders, relatively little is done regarding youth.)
> >
> > in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural
> > universals!  [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes
> > otherwise.]
> >
> > conflict (intensity varying along a continuum) is inevitable: between
> > the umbrella culture of the new community and the existing cultures of
> > its members; between and among member cultures.
> >
> > question 1: how does the umbrella culture come into existence? (culture
> > IS a complex system)
> > question 2: to what extent does the umbrella culture trump the
> > ethnocentric sensibilities of its members?
> > question 3: should sensibilities based in social constructs be directly
> > challenged and/or ignored?
> >      corollary question 3a: if you want more women in your community
> >      should your interactions with them be constrained to
> >                                     socially constructed norms?
> >      corollary question 3b: if you want more youth in your community
> >      should they be constrained (in terms of exposure,
> >                                      participation, interaction, and
> >                                      communication) to that which is
> >                                      consistent with the social
> >                                      construction
> >                                      of youth?
> > question 4: how are the inevitable conflicts mediated?  (recognizing
> > that the patterns, procedures, powers, and sanctions required for
> >                  mediation must be "built into" the umbrella culture)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
> >
> >
> >  
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Prof David West]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:41:31 -0700, "glen e. p. ropella"
<gepr at tempusdictum.com> said:


>
> Sorry to break off a tangent; but, given that you're willing to discuss
> the existence of cultural universals, I assume you have a relatively
> solid method of distinguishing culture from biology.  Is that right?  If
> so, what is that method?

No,  there is no definitive method, set of criteria, precision
instrument that allows unambiguous differentiation and classification of
an observed phenomenon into "biological" or "cultural" - unless you
happen to be a socio-biologist and everything is biological.  A recent
example:  religion has long been held to be "purely cultural" but recent
advances in neuro-theology suggest that some of the base phenomenon -
seeing a white light at then end of a tunnel in a near death situation,
losing the distinction between self and the world, believing in an other
- can be induced by changing the state of the biological (neurological)
organism.

The boundary between biology and culture is always subject to change and
an observable categorized in one area might be re-categorized into the
other or recognized as a consequence of interaction between the two.


> My current strawman would be the supposed cultural/biological universal
> that "People don't eat their children."  It's not a biological universal
> because I've heard that some dogs eat their pups and I assume other
> animals will eat their offspring.

that is why the zoo saving some shark babies was in the news recently -
it is rare because sharks eat their young


>Yet I've never heard of any society
> where humans eat their offspring.

Depends on how ritualized and total you want to get.  In cultures that
practiced human sacrifice accompanied by ritual cannibalism - the mom
and dad of the sacrificed individual partake in the ritual along with
everyone else.



>Or perhaps there's clear
> biological evidence of an immediate health consequence of eating one's
> children?  

Not that I am aware of - other than the general consequences of
cannibalism in general - ease of transmission of disease, especially the
equivalent of mad-cow type diseases.

However, people have tried to make a case for the "universal" taboo
against incest on biological grounds.  Problem is - as any livestock
breeder knows - incest leads to improvements far more often than
defects.


If not, that makes it seem like a cultural universal rather
> than a biological one.
>
> I'd also like to avoid equivocation on the word "universal".  One
> _might_ say there are no cultural universals because there simply are no
> universals, at all,

Universal is not being used in any special way except a sense of
wholeness in the behavior pattern you are calling a cultural universal.
For instance, all cultures, of which we are aware, believe in the
supernatural but the form of that belief, the ways it is expressed vary
from culture to culture.  Or, all cultures have an incest taboo - but
the definition of incest is not constant across cultures: parent-child
is OK in some not others, brother-sister, child-to-moiety, child to
mythical but not biological clan, all are OK/not OK somewhere.

If you were to find a pattern of behavior that was expressed in all
cultures, most anthropologists would expect a biological "cause" (quotes
because of another long running FRIAM debate about causality).

> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact
> that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. -- H. G. Wells
>
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> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[glen ep ropella]

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Prof David West wrote:

> No,  there is no definitive method, set of criteria, precision
> [...]
> The boundary between biology and culture is always subject to change and
> an observable categorized in one area might be re-categorized into the
> other or recognized as a consequence of interaction between the two.
> [...]
> Depends on how ritualized and total you want to get.  In cultures that
> practiced human sacrifice accompanied by ritual cannibalism - the mom
> and dad of the sacrificed individual partake in the ritual along with
> everyone else.

Right.  But that would fall into "within epsilon of universal" I think,
given that the focus is on the ritual sacrifice and eating of the
_sacrificed_, not really eating of one's own children.  I.e. the "child"
transforms from being one's offspring into being some other thing, even
if only metaphorically.  If we asked a parent of the sacrificed, "What
are you eating?", they would answer, "The sacrifice" not "My child."
That's what I _suspect_ anyway.

> However, people have tried to make a case for the "universal" taboo
> against incest on biological grounds.  Problem is - as any livestock
> breeder knows - incest leads to improvements far more often than
> defects.

I didn't know that.  Thanks!

OK.  Everything up to this point seems to argue that there ARE (in some
usage of the word "universal") cultural universals.

> Universal is not being used in any special way except a sense of
> wholeness in the behavior pattern you are calling a cultural universal.
> For instance, all cultures, of which we are aware, believe in the
> supernatural but the form of that belief, the ways it is expressed vary
> from culture to culture.  Or, all cultures have an incest taboo - but
> the definition of incest is not constant across cultures: parent-child
> is OK in some not others, brother-sister, child-to-moiety, child to
> mythical but not biological clan, all are OK/not OK somewhere.

But this text seems to equivocate on the word "universal".  What you're
saying is that any _formulation_ of an alleged cultural universal can be
dissected to show that the formulation is only universal in its overly
abstract form.  And when the formulation is applied to concrete
circumstances, we can see blatant distinctions that make it non-universal.

The problem is that this can be said of _any_ formulation of _any_
thing.  Completely concrete descriptions (were they logically possible)
cannot ever be non-local and completely abstract descriptions are always
non-local.  Abstraction is required (necessary but insufficient) for
generalization.

So, is that all you mean by "there are no cultural universals"?  All you
mean is that cultural universals are always too abstract and can be
picked apart and shown to be (somewhat) local as they are applied and
made concrete?

> If you were to find a pattern of behavior that was expressed in all
> cultures, most anthropologists would expect a biological "cause" (quotes
> because of another long running FRIAM debate about causality).

Given that we have no predicate for biological vs. cultural, this seems
a bit sloppy on the part of the anthropologists.  Not because of the
ambiguity in "cause", but because of the circular rhetoric of holding
all 3 premises simultaneously: 1) there are no cultural universals, 2)
if a cultural universal is apparent, it's likely biological, and 3)
there is no predicate to distinguish cultural vs. biological.

It would be _less_ circular to toss one of them out.  My choice would be
to toss out (1).  That way any apparent universal could be a little bit
biological and a little bit cultural (e.g. as with intertwined
feedback), which is what we see everywhere else in biology and medicine.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in
order to enjoy ourselves. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

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[Merle Lefkoff]

Prof David West wrote:

Thank you.

Q.#1.:  The umbrella culture comes into existence with a gradual change
in members' identity that seeks out, accepts, and internalizes the
founding story of the new culture.  Q. #2.:  The umbrella  culture
trumps the  ethnocentric sensibilities  of its members only after a very
long period of time.  Sometimes even a long period of time is not
enough, if the sensibilities are not adequately acknowledged and the
stimuli transformed (former Yugoslavia).  But why would we want to do
that?  Don't we want to risk the possibility of conflict in order to
maximize requisite variety?  Q.#3.  We ignore those sensibilities at our
peril.  The social constructs are infused with high emotion.  Q.#4.  A
new set of skills for mediating the inevitable conflicts awaits the
reunification of the soft social sciences and humanities with the hard
science of natural systems.  (And perhaps throw in a  little
spirituality, as well.  The Dalai Lama, as you know, is exploring deeply
the intersection between science and spirituality.)

Merle Lefkoff

> Sensibility is intended to be a very general term; basically a
> sensitivity to a sensory stimulus accompanied by a change of state
> (positive or negative, but usually negative) in the perceiver of that
> stimulus.  Examples would include:  hearing a word or phrase; being
> hugged or touched; viewing a graphical depiction; being challenged about
> a core belief or value; being praised in public; smelling perfume at the
> office; being asked to change your religion; ...
>
>
>
> On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:46:12 -0600, "Merle Lefkoff"
> <merle at arspublica.org> said:
>  
>> How do you define/describe "sensibilities?"
>>
>> Merle Lefkoff
>>    
>>> suppose you are trying to grow a diverse community.
>>>
>>> you want a shared culture for that community.
>>>
>>> you want to respect existing sensibilities that subgroups (and
>>> individuals) bring to the new community.
>>>
>>> in many cases, gender and youth for example, a significant portion of
>>> those sensibilities are not intrinsic to the group or to individuals
>>> within the group, they are social constructs imposed on the group.
>>> (feminism invests energy in challenging and changing many of the
>>> sensibilities deriving from social construction, AARP does the same for
>>> elders, relatively little is done regarding youth.)
>>>
>>> in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural
>>> universals!  [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes
>>> otherwise.]
>>>
>>> conflict (intensity varying along a continuum) is inevitable: between
>>> the umbrella culture of the new community and the existing cultures of
>>> its members; between and among member cultures.
>>>
>>> question 1: how does the umbrella culture come into existence? (culture
>>> IS a complex system)
>>> question 2: to what extent does the umbrella culture trump the
>>> ethnocentric sensibilities of its members?
>>> question 3: should sensibilities based in social constructs be directly
>>> challenged and/or ignored?
>>>      corollary question 3a: if you want more women in your community
>>>      should your interactions with them be constrained to
>>>                                     socially constructed norms?
>>>      corollary question 3b: if you want more youth in your community
>>>      should they be constrained (in terms of exposure,
>>>                                      participation, interaction, and
>>>                                      communication) to that which is
>>>                                      consistent with the social
>>>                                      construction
>>>                                      of youth?
>>> question 4: how are the inevitable conflicts mediated?  (recognizing
>>> that the patterns, procedures, powers, and sanctions required for
>>>                  mediation must be "built into" the umbrella culture)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>      
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>    
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>  

[Jochen Fromm-4]

Really interesting questions.

How does an umbrella culture come into existence?
An umbrella culture is perhaps a bit like Franchising
in business: someone defines a code, a set of rules and
a certain strategy (including business strategy,
marketing strategy and operations strategy), and
the rest is implementing it while remaining largely
independent.

So one way is to invent a code that connects the agents
in the system without bringing them together physically
(for example a Franchising system, a language like English
combined with traditional media as television or radio,
or a modern Web 2.0 community with certain customs and
standard rules, etc.), so that you have unity in diversity.
The physical barrier is important to maintain the
diversity, the shared code is necessary for unity.
The complexity of a culture in this case is a
result of imposing unity (the shared culture) on
diversity (the diverse population).

Basic models about diversity in culture are Axelrod's
model for dissemination of culture (based on local
convergence and global polarization)..
http://ifisc.uib.es/research_topics/socio/culture.html
..and Schelling's segregation model. Both are very good.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation

Diversity is important for any group, especially
if the famous "wisdom of crowds" is needed. However,
the "wisdom of crowds" depends of the type of
the crowd: is it a crowd of teenagers, or a crowd
of colleagues? If you want more women or youth in
your community, it is of course useful to make the
community more attractive for them.

Sensibilities of single members should be ignored
as long as they don't impair the code of the
umbrella culture. What can be changed and what
not is usually well known in most groups, it is
the classic distinction between the sacred/holy
on the one side and the secular/profance on
the other. Sacred or holy things affect the
group integrity and may not be changed by ordinary
members of the group.

Ways to mediate inevitable conflicts are subject
of politics. That's what politicians do all the
time, trying to balance interests and needs of
the population. Common sense says that one possibility
is to keep agents with different sensibilities apart
from each other. If they don't know what the others
are doing, they won't care.

-J.

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Jochen

Well, if I understand the intent, I think that to make a school of
modeling a real 'umbrella' one needed 'code' is to look beyond one's own
understanding of the 'rules' for how they 'fit' with the whole
environment of different (sometimes changing) views under the umbrella.
It's not really possible to build a self-consistent model of something
with independently designed and behaving parts, as 'umbrella' seems to
require.

This is one of the standard non-deterministic systems problems, also
exemplified in the fact that natural systems emerge directly from their
own local environments, and so are not 'built' to a 'design' nor have
mutual 'awareness', and so have unspecifiable independent design and
behavior.  Their individual organizations come from their individual
processes of development, and then also usually continue to change over
time.  

You suggest
> So one way is to invent a code that connects the agents
> in the system without bringing them together physically
On way to do that is to connect people's physically separate and
independently conceived experiments in relation to a common issue raised
in complex physical processes.   All individual natural systems exhibit
developmental processes like growth, for example.  Studying those, or
any other aspect of natural complexity could be used to discover its
useful secrets by sharing different perspectives.

Keeping one's eye on a shifting subject is part of that, like stopping
work to ask if you're working on the right model, and looking around
outside your problem definitions for new information in the environment
that might relate to it before going back to work.  That approach of
exploring things inside and out would suggest both incremental and
conceptual adjustments, and keep people connected to the same subjects
as they themselves may change.  It might also be seen as emulating how
natural systems themselves continually evolve their own designs in
constant interaction with their environments.

How to learn computer code from physical systems is a question, of
course, since they don't have 'code' of that sort.  Any particular
natural system, say a certain stage of market competition, perhaps, may
have periods of stability during which it has reliable dependencies you
can model.  A common problem is those dependencies may unexpectedly
start showing new behaviors that require redesigning one's model.  A
useful indicator, then, is how often that happens, to help indicate
whether you're just noticing new things, or needing to reconceive the
problem.  

What I think is the key discovery to be made about that is that when you
have 'problem creep', or as some call it 'scope creep' for problems
given to you by someone else, it's important to notice.   If the problem
changes configuration exponentially it has the same affect for a natural
system as it does for anyone modeling it.  Successively more rapid
redesign is an unstable progression at some point and switches to either
settling down or being interrupted.

How to get ABM's to do those things, to emerge on their own and form
their own environments 'in silico' with independent communities of
things having different designs and behaviors, that both grow and
stabilize, I don't quite know.   I just think watching closely how
natural complex systems do it will be helpful.  Since natural systems
don't have 'code' to copy, you have to use the behavioral discrepancies
they display to suggest 'code'.  

Some things may never be able to be modeled, of course, with one of the
tough ones being how natural systems so effectively exploit their
resources but also stay out of each other's way.  It's as if they're
able to both explore their environs and recognize threats of conflict
without ever having encountered them before.  My speculation is that
part of their behavior is to avoid what's unfamiliar to them, something
like negative pheromone trail mapping, and that way stay out of trouble.
People might learn something from that perhaps... ;-)



Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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NY NY 10040                      
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-- "it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding what's
interesting in what they say" --

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:51 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] questions
>
>
> Really interesting questions.
>
> How does an umbrella culture come into existence?
> An umbrella culture is perhaps a bit like Franchising
> in business: someone defines a code, a set of rules and
> a certain strategy (including business strategy,
> marketing strategy and operations strategy), and
> the rest is implementing it while remaining largely independent.
>
> So one way is to invent a code that connects the agents
> in the system without bringing them together physically
> (for example a Franchising system, a language like English
> combined with traditional media as television or radio,
> or a modern Web 2.0 community with certain customs and
> standard rules, etc.), so that you have unity in diversity.
> The physical barrier is important to maintain the
> diversity, the shared code is necessary for unity.
> The complexity of a culture in this case is a
> result of imposing unity (the shared culture) on
> diversity (the diverse population).
>
> Basic models about diversity in culture are Axelrod's
> model for dissemination of culture (based on local
> convergence and global polarization)..
> http://ifisc.uib.es/research_topics/socio/cult> ure.html
> ..and
> Schelling's segregation model. Both are very
> good. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation
>
> Diversity is important for any group, especially
> if the famous "wisdom of crowds" is needed. However,
> the "wisdom of crowds" depends of the type of
> the crowd: is it a crowd of teenagers, or a crowd
> of colleagues? If you want more women or youth in
> your community, it is of course useful to make the
> community more attractive for them.
>
> Sensibilities of single members should be ignored
> as long as they don't impair the code of the
> umbrella culture. What can be changed and what
> not is usually well known in most groups, it is
> the classic distinction between the sacred/holy
> on the one side and the secular/profance on
> the other. Sacred or holy things affect the
> group integrity and may not be changed by ordinary
> members of the group.
>
> Ways to mediate inevitable conflicts are subject
> of politics. That's what politicians do all the
> time, trying to balance interests and needs of
> the population. Common sense says that one possibility
> is to keep agents with different sensibilities apart
> from each other. If they don't know what the others
> are doing, they won't care.
>
> -J.
>
>
>
>
>
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>