Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

Posted by Robert Wall on Jan 22, 2017; 2:05am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Nautilus-Investing-Is-More-Luck-Than-Talent-tp7588738p7588792.html

Hi Marcus,

All good thoughts.  Thanks!  Just a few things hopefully that can constructively add to the discussion ...

There is research in this area. 

The kind of "rebooting" I am thinking about in this context would not be chemically or surgically induced.  It would be a Hebbian-oriented mental process by way of "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism or the desired state.  In a manner of speaking this is a process of consciously rewiting the brain through a processs of trial and error and observing how such habitualed thoughts and behavior work as positive feedback loops to an individual's happiness and as reflected in those in his social circle. It not a brainwashing or fooling one's self.  It doesn't result in an army of Jason Bourne types.  It is conscious and logical.  It's the beginning of wisdom.  Or, is it just a fool's errand? Not easy.  Not something I have achieved. But I do think it is possible.  I have a few more years yet ... and then I die. 😕  It does beg the question, "What's the point if this can't be perkolated up to the level of society?"  I suppose we need to ask a devoted Buddhist this same question.

And, so my question is how this can work at the level of a society, beyond the individual level. An example, perhaps but not sure, is the societal transformation of profit-oriented, capitalist or stockholder-owned enterprises into employeed-owned cooperatives. It creates a very different kind of economy, still very much market oriented.  If habituated, it may become obvious that this could be a better way. ESOPs under ERISA were an attempt at this but were abused by the capitalists to gain the tax breaks provided by a government that saw the wisdom in this. I won't quote Ronald Reagan again here ... enough said. Many employees in thos ESOPs have asked, "What's the point?"

With respect to the Thiel, Parrish thing, the answer to a better society--or even a better lif--will not be to have everyone, or even just those who can afford it, live longer.  The problem is that they drag their crappy minds along with them. Living longer does not change the animal. The same is true with transhumanism.  What gets uploaded?  The same crappy minds.  Genetic engineering isn't going to get us there either, IMHO. We don't know where to locate the genes or how to comfigure the so called Hox circuits to get better brains or minds.  Again, better for whom?  Then there's the Blank Slate debate.  Cue Steven Pinker ...

This "uploading" is all kind of a fools errand, if you resonate with the idea of embodied cognition [again George Lakoff and especially Anthony Chemero and his Radical Embodied Cognitive Science].  As it turns out, if you follow this stuff, we can't separate the mind from the body or the body from the world.  So forget uploading your minds into immortal robotic contraptions. BTW, that Nautilus article I linked on consciousness being composed of atoms is another look at this. Good luck to Thiel and Parrish.  IMHO, we need to value the lives we have now and try to impriove them while we have our time in the sun ...

Cheers

On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

< In a sense, conscious evolution is a kind of rebooting of a conscious organism with a new "morality" program that has the purpose of changing the nature of that organism more toward altruism and less toward self-interest, kind of resetting the initial conditions built into our DNA, so to speak ... superseding the animal. >

 

There is research in this area. 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763614/

 

“Pathological anxiety is thought to reflect a maladaptive state characterized by exaggerated fear mismatched with actual environmental stimuli.”

 

Special case: economic anxiety.

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/

 

“Routine jobs are often defined as those that involve tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules. A standard definition of routine jobs includes manufacturing and other goods-related occupations, as well as administrative, clerical and sales occupations; nonroutine jobs include professional, managerial and service occupations. For this post, we included farming-related occupations in routine jobs since the BLS projects employment declines in those occupations over the next decade. The correlation between Trump support and the share of jobs that are routine by this definition was 0.65.”

 

Trump piled on copious amounts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and pathological anxiety emerges.

 

“So, it's kind of changing the probabilities of the social game, like we are discussing in this thread, but on an individual level. On the individual level, this is indeed possible by way of Hebbian learning, which itself is possible by way of the plasticity of the brain, its neural network, so to speak. BUT, how can this be done on the level of a society?”

 

As super-rich people like Peter Thiel age, I expect he (and others like him) will start looking at actually applying gene therapy to himself for life extension.   (Thiel is already looking into vampirism.) Elizabeth Parrish already did apply gene therapy on herself.  With full genome sequencing getting cheap and quantum computers able to perform high dimensional discrete optimization, I expect multi-SNP signatures will be found for improved short and long term memory, even intelligence.   The required data, technology, and biological knowledge will likely soon converge.   When it does, there will be strong economic motives -- the same kind of motives that cause parents to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars for prep schools and colleges.  These interventions will have to be regulated, but then we are in position to weed-out anxiety and personality disorders on the germline and to bless various `safe’ enhancements, much like vaccines are used routinely on children.   Sure, people will freak out about this, but if it extends capabilities or lifespans, it better be done in the public interest and not just be confined to making the rich richer.   Imagine if the coastal populations bumped their IQs by 10 points.

 

“It seems like it needs to be more bottom-up.”

 

One way is by making the individual able to learn faster and be more adaptive.

 

Marcus

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove