Posted by
glen ep ropella on
Sep 02, 2007; 6:07pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/politics-and-cliques-tp524626p524634.html
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G?nther Greindl wrote:
> In this case, objectivity should prevail: as you say, the one is
> _inferred_ and the other is result of indoctrination. ;-)
That's an excellent point! However, since the heart of the
contradiction lies in non-local vs. local control structures, I don't
think objectivity _can_ prevail. Child rearing is one of the most
powerful forms of very local control. Indoctrination by a local
community (church, neighborhood, family, department colleagues, etc.) is
a very important form of control.
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.
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. But, it is not necessarily in the
rational guy's best interests to recruit more rational people!
>> The primary ethical rule I've been taught to hold is that all people are
>> equivalent but never equal and that the extent of the equivalence
>> depends on the chosen equivalence class.
>
> What do mean exactly by this? Does it correspond to:
>
> 1a) People should have the same duties and rights before the law if they
> belong to the same class.
> (I'm not sure I understand you correctly here?)
>
> 2) People are different by genetics and socialisation and therefor have
> different abilities/skills/opportunities/weaknesses.
I mean (2). That we are all idiosyncratic; but we are so flexible and
can combine efforts in so many different combinations that extremely
different sets of people can be functionally equivalent... it all
depends on the function. Basically, this is just an informal statement
that the map between generators and phenomena is non-isomorphic. It's
not 1-1 or onto. There are many ways to generate the same phenomenon
and there are many phenomenon that can result from the same generators.
Hence, it is ultimately disrespectful to say to a particular person
(with particular phenotype) that they are incapable or less capable of
achieving some goal. This applies to variations skin color, variations
in upbringing, degree of wealth, formal or informal training, or even
psychological "disorders". Anyone who makes claims (even those driven
by statistics but with little clarity of causality) that one
sub-group/clique is less capable of achieving some particular outcome
makes those claims in an unjustified way.
That is the ethical indoctrination I received as a kid. It conflicts
with my inference from complexity that there _must_ be a few control
systems that homogenize people and restrict them to particular (low,
high, medium, whatever) achievement levels. E.g. even in a room full of
hard-working geniuses, not everyone can be a Newton or an Einstein.
Some few of the geniuses will get lucky and see great success. The rest
will disappear in apparent mediocrity, despite their genius.
> 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?
> 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 think the libertarian needn't be classic egoistic homo oeconomicus.
> The libertarian can resent central control but still acknowledge that it
> is important for certain problems so that his freedom is preserved in th
> e long run. Being rational does not mean being short-sighted :-)
Yes. I agree. In fact, that's the entire reasoning behind
libertarianism. Without a belief that some form of Hobbesian 3rd party,
the libertarian turns into an anarchist. (By which I mean "anarchist"
in the naive sense... not the crypto-communist sophisticated form of
it.) Libertarianism advocates _for_ some non-local control structures,
just not as many as other -isms advocate. 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.
A very extensive controller like the federal government should (can)
only have a very few objectives. The huge diversity of small, local
control structures (like raising your children to brush their teeth
twice a day versus once a day) are maximally efficient at controlling
the huge diversity of other objectives.
> Striking the balance is all the difficulty, of course - but I think that
> is what it's about - not going into one extreme or the other, but
> teetering on that edge (of chaos SCNR ;-)).
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.
How do we know that our policies are "striking a balance"? It seems to
me that complexity theory could help us answer questions like this. I
don't like that hungry children exist; but, does complexity theory tell
us that at least some children _must_ go hungry?
> Hehe, Lovecraft has his moments indeed :-) One of my favourites is (not
> related to here) - "Do not call up what ye cannot put down" (The Case of
> Charles Dexter Ward, his best story IMHO)
Excellent quote! Thanks. I haven't read that story.
> As I said, I think they need not be contradictory -rather complementary
> - but before I say more I would like to know if I have understood you
> correctly so far.
I can see how they might be complementary. But, I can only see it in
the sense of a _dualism_. It is difficult for me to consider both sides
at the same time. The sides being a) the ethical consideration of
things like abject poverty, epidemic diseases, starvation, etc. and b)
the objective necessity that, with a population-based search method,
some individuals are destined for extrema, often very unpleasant
extrema. And it is especially difficult to simultaneously consider both
sides when the members of the population who are destined for horrible
extrema like AIDS or starvation are innocents who didn't have any chance
to _choose_ their extreme destiny.
- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846,
http://tempusdictum.comPower never takes a back step - only in the face of more power. -- Malcolm X
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