Communication Confusion and Language

In conversation with some friends, I remarked that people with strong alpha drives tended to  be on the sociopathic side of the spectrum. This can be derived from first principles - to be a strong alpha, you basically have to beat down anybody and everybody who stands in your way to be top dog. This indicates a much lower degree of compassion in the alpha ( by nature ). This lack of compassion can be taken as a direct measure of degree of sociopathy. The counter argument was made that people like Gandhi and Martin Luther were strong leaders with quite the  opposite traits. They were "moral" leaders. They had no authority in the civic sense of any coercive power through a police or other arm of an organization. This led to the realization that the word leader can point to two very different phenomena - a leader with civic authority and a "leader" with moral authority. Because the word is the  same, people conflate two very different dynamics as being equal. This then led to the realization, that we do this in a number of different contexts with language. The same word can point to two (or more) very different things. And people may argue endlessly when one party is taking the word as pointing to a different dynamic than the other person.

Science, Religion, Beliefs, and Confusion

Science is often touted as an opposite to religion. There are confused arguments that science's models change over time. So, Einstein superceded Newton. Godel redirected a lot of mathematical work on a "complete system" with his incompleteness theorem. There are also examples of models that were shown to be totally wrong, e.g., 1, 2, 3. With these examples, science is equated with religion. There are several dynamics at play here.

• The artifacts of science are confused with the process of science. The artifacts are all temporary and may be superceded at any time.
• Any belief system practiced by humans will have their imprint on them. There is a spectrum of human behavior on how tightly a human binds to their belief system - ideologue / fundamentalist to liberal (?) (with leaky margins on absoluteness). One can have ideologues in science, just as in religion. This behavior can be conflated with the endeavor and the two endeavors can be equated. This pattern of equating behavior with identity leads to confusion in a number of different areas, e.g.,  saying a child is stupid when they have done something from lack of understanding or emotion. The "to be" verb equates the child's identity to a behavior.

So, there are similarities in behavior in all human endeavors even if the identity / character of them is different.

Perspective on Belief Systems

After reading The Dark Side of the Buddha, a thought occurred to me about the nature of belief systems. All belief systems are based on a perspective on reality, on its nature, direction, structure. Which of course is accounted for by the nature of this context: space, time, and entities in that space time. However, each perspective is based on a set of givens ( assumptions, presuppositions, axioms, ... ). Then these givens are generalized to all contexts and situations. Which of course simply cannot be because there is far too much diversity to be covered by a single lens. Take for example Buddhism. There is the notion of the four noble truths. This perspective takes as a given that there is suffering. However, there is not suffering all the time in all contexts. Similarly, one can take the basic perspective of any philosophy / religion and find the givens in it and also the problems with those givens in different contexts.

Critique of Critiques

A friend sent me a link on The Dark Side of the Buddha. The video was really funny and insightful as humor can be in an oblique way. As I started reading the page and thinking about what was being said and how it was said, it occurred to me that there was a certain pattern at work in the critique of Buddhism. Here is my deconstruction:

Humans / primates have a certain set of characteristics (behavior rules / patterns). These behaviors / patterns occur in all contexts that humans are involved in: politics, religion, coops, corporations, .... These behaviors have to do with dominance, sex,  and emerging consciousness, among other factors. Different philosophies / religions originate as aspects of this emerging consciousness trying to understand the who, what, why, where, and how of this context we are in. The limits of this consciousness are reflected in the articulation of theses philosophies and religions. And the practice of these philosophies are subject to dominance and sexual behaviors since they  are part of our makeup. How could it be otherwise other than in our fantasies?

What this web page does is a common pattern in critiques. There is an unarticulated presupposition of "perfection" in an undefined way of how it should be. Then examples are provided where that perfection is not present, and in particular, examples where its opposite is present ( in the view of the author ). The examples pointed out have generally to do with the dominance and sexual characteristics of humans. There is a strange sort self dislike / hatred of our own nature and its various manifestations in these types of critiques. A side effect of the critique can be a damning of a glimpse of this emerging consciousness and this attempt to articulate, understand, or experience this context we are in. If there is value in that glimpse to  our own emerging consciousness, we can miss that value or turn away from that which may be valuable.

A useful way to look at these philosophies, e.g., Buddhism,  is to evaluate what aspects help our own emerging consciousness. It is sometimes difficult to ignore the enticing characteristics of gurus and attribute dominance of understanding to them in lieu of our own consciousness. We are geared to look for dominant alphas ( or be one ) and give up our own emerging consciousness in subservience to an alpha ( or our own "alpha ego" ).

Thoughts on Structure ala System Dynamics

There is a certain ontology in System Dynamics that looks at reality / phenomena as composed of events which we perceive. These events sometimes come in patterns. Over time we can see these recurring patterns of behavior, e.g., the seasons, i.e., summer comes year after year and we know to expect it. These patterns of behavior arise from yet another (deeper) level - structure. Structure is a perspective on what forces, values, geometries, ... are causing the patterns of behavior being seen and the events being experienced. This layered perspective can be described in many ways: 1, 2, 3. Structure is thought of in terms of physical structure, belief systems, organizational values, ... However, if we take a different ontology, ala Conway's Game of Life or Wolfram's New Kind of Science. In this ontology, simple rules generate all the complexity that we perceive. For example, with primates we can hypothesize that there is a simple "alpha" grouping rule. Primates are born with various levels of "alpha"ness. All the group member gather around the one with the highest alpha. Letting this simple rule run over time shows complex behavior such as schismogenesis, wars, hierarchical organizations, .... Taking on this ontology, then structure becomes these rules. The previous notion of structure - belief systems, values, become patterns of behavior arising out of this deeper structure of simple rules.

Came across some papers (1, 2, 3, 4, ) on potential synergies between Systems Dynamics and Agent Based Modeling. Also came across the potential for abductive fallacies in modeling.

Panarchy - An interesting complex model

Came across the panarchic model through one of those serendipitous link perusals on the web. There are appealing characteristics of this model:

• It is layered
• Layers operate at different time scales
• It is cyclical. Going through repeating cycles of exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization.

These characteristics give it a fractal nature which has deep resonance with the nature of the universe we happen to inhabit. Here is an abstract of these ideas from the source:

Panarchy focuses on ecological and social systems that change abruptly. Panarchy is the process by which they grow, adapt, transform, and, in the end, collapse. These stages occur at different scales. The back loop of such changes is a critical time and presents critical opportunities for experiment and learning. It is when uncertainties arise and when resilience is tested and established. We now see changes on a global scale that suggest that we are in such a back loop. This article assesses the possibility of using the ideas that are central to panarchy, developed on a regional scale, to help explain the changes that are being brought about on a global scale by the Internet and by climate, economic, and geopolitical changes.

There is of course a book on the topic. There is also a paper applying this model to the global situation.

Gnosticism, Orthodoxy, and Personality Types

We attended a couple of lectures on the Gnostic Gospels by a local preacher at UW, Richland as part of their Love of Learning Lecture series. As we were talking about the gnostic approach versus the orthodox perspective on religion, in particular, Christianity, it occurred to us that one could look at that bifurcation simply as the variation between the Myers-Briggs type of iNtuition vs. Sensing. The gnostic approach focuses on an inner experience / knowing. The orthodox approach focuses on externally sensed feedback: going to church, good deeds, tithing, ....

In a more general sense, one could say that there is a spectrum of types. And that to these different types, different forms of belief are appealing. What often seems to happen in culture and religion is that the dominant type / person in / of that religion coerces in various ways those whose type is a mismatch to theirs to get in line. When this does not happen, you get schism / bifurcations of the belief system.