A Missing Piece

 Listening to various conversations about philosophy, psychology, developmental psychology, a thought arose. It seems like a basic structural element that is left out in many of these narratives is the presence of memory. Take the laws of form, drawing the form out of the form is necessary for memory to arise. Then there are the tensions that are created between this draw and what is. And that tension leads to a proliferation of narratives about what is, was, could be, should be, may be, .... All the while, the presence of memory ( the drawing out of the form ) is often made invisible in the excitement of the tension that is created with memory.

Heard a talk by Harari creating a metric for consciousness as the capacity to suffer. That capacity arises out of the presence of memory.

Another aspect / substructure of memory is the perspective it allows on time - past, present, future, imagined, unimaginable, realized, realizable, ....

Strange how these thoughts and perspectives arise - memories of new / old / possible perspectives.

Boredom of Infinity

 With infinite potential, what does infinity do but everything that is possible. And of course the possible is never ending and continues, never reaching infinity as there is no end possible to infinity.

Crises

 There is much talk about crises these days, leading to the notion of a meta-crisis:

Evolution and Values

 In listening to a number of narratives and explanations of evolution, I think we are caught in a Darwinian trap. An implicit assumption in evolutionary theory is that "success" equates to propagation through time. Has an organism figured out how to continue to exist? This makes longevity / time the highest value. However, from the perspective of the infinite / reality / multiple universes / ...., it is the creation and experience of diverse, unique (?) experiences that is perhaps a higher value since that is what infinity continues to do to the best of our current knowledge. Each moment of experience has a "value" to infinity that is "immeasurable". Otherwise, why would it have been created? All our narratives of what is important are part of the infinite experience set of infinity. We make stories about valuing this over that, often forgetting that creation has given existence to all that exists. And perhaps the value of existence is higher than our notions of longevity or having more time or other artifacts of creation.

Combining Models - Vervaeke, Wilber, McGilchrist

 In Vervaeke's Awakening from the meaning crisis work, he mentions 4 ways of knowing:  1) participatory; 2) procedural; 3) perspectival; and 4) propositional. We can look at this model in light of Wilber's Integral model, and McGilchrist's left/right brain model.

Participatory is a strong relationship dynamic between Wilber's upper left and lower left quadrants with a lesser relationship to the right quadrants.

Procedural is a strong relationship between upper left quadrant and the right quadrants.This can be generalized to a tribal, city state, civilizational level as a relationship between lower left and the right quadrants.

Perspectival is a meta relationship to the quadrants, i.e., what is the agent's viewpoint in the quadrants. One can see "it" from a single quadrant view or multi quadrant view. Or various combinations of some or all the quadrants perspectives.

Propositional is the left brain map / model of "it" / reality. And actions can be based on this basis alone.

System Boundaries and Limits

 

One of the models I came across was classifying cooperation, altruism, selfishness, spite in an "economic" geometry. I have some thoughts about expanding this geometry.

Meaning Crisis ?

 These thoughts arise out of watching Vervaeke's Awakening from the meaning crisis and numbers of conversations and dialogues on such topics. One of the themes in these conversations is the loss of the sacred. And one could say Nietsche's notion of "God is dead" is along the same lines. And an attempt to create a new or reawakened sense of the sacred. Or in Vervaeke's term, creating a "religion that is not a religion". The notion of sacred is a bit of a concern for me. One way to look at the sacred is that it creates a veil ( of our own making ) with which we blind ourselves to what is beyond whatever our version of the sacred is. The sacred is useful in terms of the neurological states it allows us to experience. And of course, the side effects of those states can be quite beneficial.

Another way to think of the meaning crisis is that there is a mismatch of the values we ( as a result of the culture we are in ) get programmed with and our basic biology. Part of our biological frame includes empathy, a sense of fairness. Our current cultures put a high metric on economics ( a mode of having ). This is a maladapted metric to our biology. Hence, in the process of making money we may feel a sense of meaninglessness because of the mismatch of that metric to our biology / neurology. Another factor to keep in minds is that this sense of empathy, fairness is an evolutionary addition to our biology. It seems to be present in other primates, mammals, ....? What are the earliest indicators of this biological feature in evolution?

Scapegoats, Girard, and structural frames

 Girard's notion of the origins of scapegoating:

Whereas the philosophers of the 18th century would have agreed that communal violence comes to an end due to a social contract, Girard believes that, paradoxically, the problem of violence is frequently solved with a lesser dose of violence. When mimetic rivalries accumulate, tensions grow ever greater. But, that tension eventually reaches a paroxysm. When violence is at the point of threatening the existence of the community, very frequently a bizarre psychosocial mechanism arises: communal violence is all of the sudden projected upon a single individual. Thus, people that were formerly struggling, now unite efforts against someone chosen as a scapegoat. Former enemies now become friends, as they communally participate in the execution of violence against a specified enemy.

One of the questions that arises is what are possible underlying structures of this phenomenon. One possibility is that mammalian predator neurologies generate  waste products that build up over time. There is a need to release these wastes. When a group has accumulated enough waste, it seeks a receptacle for that energy or a release mechanism. Scapegoat(s) are found as ways to release this energy.

One can also think of this process as a way to maintain stability and avoid change. If something external is the "cause" of the energy build up, then one doesn't have to deal with one's own part in the build up of this "waste product' / energy.

An example of this structure in the alpha and omega of the wolf pack. Human societies / civilizations also create their own omegas in terms of  a servant class, an ethnic group, an easily differentiated sub-group, ...

Reasoning Frames

 Watching a dialogue between Professor Gilbert Morris and Daniel Schmactenberger on "A History of Racial Conflict", came across the notion of "motivated reasoning". The question arises when is there not motivated reasoning? We have the illusion of being "objective". Since the majority of our thinking is unconscious, and we are biological beings who don't really understand their neurology, reasoning structures, motivations, limitations, ...., we categorically can not be objective in any reasonable sense. Hence, all our reasoning is motivated reasoning based on reasons we may or may not be aware of.

Next, there is the issue of the frame used for reasoning. The frame used in this dialogue was basically a "moral frame", e.g., how could persons like Jefferson, Washington profess such high morals, write the Bill of Rights and yet participate in slavery and oppress other human beings. One can tie oneself in knots trying to answer this dilemma. A more useful frame for these kinds of issues in particular, and other issues in general, is to use a "structural frame", i.e., what kinds of underlying structures create these phenomena. Part of our biology is to utilize and maximize asymmetry in our favor. And to feel special as primates or perhaps even more generally, as living beings with a perspective. We also have a reptilian heritage of identifying "blemishes" in others as a way to identify them and then use that rationalization to increase our asymmetry with them. The asymmetry is what allows us to create hierarchies - servants, slaves, worker bees, bosses, .... This creation and utilization of asymmetry is part of our biological heritage. All human societies do this, continue to do it, we are surrounded by this phenomena in all societies, past and present. It is also the basis of this existence, particles -> atoms -> molecules -> cells -> ..... Each aggregation increasing the asymmetry between itself and its components or "siblings".

The structural frame, imho, gives more of a chance of being intentional and have choice over this basic biological impulse that we have. The universe cares little, if at all, for our moral frames. It does respond to the congruency of our structural understanding to the actual causal structures of the phenomena in question.

Hard problem, Egregores, and AGI

 Given a different frame, a hard problem can become an easy / easier problem. Or point to a different way to understand the "problem". One way to think about consciousness or the hard problem of consciousness is to think of it as an egregore. With a certain combination of neural structures with certain features / characteristics, an egregore is created. We identify that as a "self" or our consciousness. Since we have such a direct experience of it, we have so many words for it - self, I, ego, my name, your name, .... There are many egregores which we have no names for, e.g., family egregore, ethnic egregore, national egregore, mob egregore, .... We can be parts of these egregores, however, we don't have a direct experience of them as an entity since we are only a part of that egregore. Our memory, our senses, etc., don't have a sense of their identity as they are parts of our egregore / consciousness.

From this framing arises the question: what are the necessary and sufficient sub-parts for the creation of an egregore? This may be a useful direction in the study / creation of a strong agi. We have early inklings of intentionality in creating egregores, e.g., metanoic teams ( a team that is greater than the sum of its parts). We don't seem to have deterministic processes for creating metanoic teams. However, on occasion we are do create them on occasion with some degree of intentionality. We are also getting inklings of how to do this from synthetic biology, genetic studies, biology, ...

YATOT - Yet Another Thought On Thought - orders of realities

 More thoughts on the previous post. We are trying to understand what this existence is about, why, what, how, ...

• Story 1.0 ( aka religion ) - Why is predominant. There is a creation story that narrates the why. The why is a veil on the sacred - that which is unfathomable, not to be understood. The how and what is limited by what the why story allows. The feedback loop of story upgrading is slow - centuries and millennia, partly because the absoluteness of the why is a temporal dampener.
• Story 2.0 ( aka science ) - How and what is predominant. Why is relegated to secondary contexts, e.g., theory of evolution explains the why of different forms, their origins, development, etc. The feedback loop speed increases to generations or less. The old priesthood maintains its stories in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary - Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions.
• Story 3.0 - The sacred / mystery is re-introduced. The feedback loop becomes variable - very fast for some situations and very slow for others depending on the potential gains / harms from the change that responding to the feedback would engender.
• Story 4.0 - Consciousness starts creating and becoming the why, what, and how of other contexts, universes, simulations, .... There is bifurcation - creation of alternate universes in virtual reality and explorations in this reality. 
• Story 5.0 - unification / integration / exploration of the bifurcated realities - consciousness begins to create new life forms. Gives these life forms capabilities. These capabilities lead to these new forms starting Story 1.0 again for their reality.
• The recursion is infinite (?). It just keeps going. Where are we in this recursive frame? Which order of reality are we in? If it is turtles all the way up and the all the way down, which one is our turtle.

YAT - Yet another thought on religion / science

 Religion and science are generally put into juxtaposition to posit some idea / hypothesis. Another way to think about the difference between the two in terms of simple structural differences that distinguish one from the other. One can think of science is version 2.0 of trying to understand this reality / existence.

• Religion has a narrative of why and how existence / reality came to be, what it is about, and where it is going.
• Science has a narrative of how existence / reality came to be, what it is about, and where it is going. The why is demoted to specific contexts, e.g., evolution, creation of life as a process beginning with exploding stars, ....

So, if we see them both as attempts to understand and make sense, then we can say the difference between the two is that science has a faster feedback loop. Science narratives have to be validated by evidence. And new evidence can invalidate accepted narratives. Religion's feedback loop is much slower - centuries / millennia for religion and only a few generations or less for science. 

Since it is humans that are practicing / using both these narratives, the behavior is human behavior. Both try to sideline, eliminate any deviance from the currently accepted narrative. Structurally, both processes have their priesthoods, gatekeepers, fundamentalists, ....

Science / Religion

Came across an interesting article trying to distinguish between science and religion.  Unfortunately, the author falls into the pattern he is decrying - us / them. Scientists can be just as fervently dogmatic as religious true believers. They have ruined careers / lives of others because they did not follow the current scientific models / dogma. This continues to happen pretty regularly. Also, he totally leaves out that binding to dogma does not have to be religious dogma, it can be any ideology such as fascism, communism, trumpism, .... These are all non-religious ideologies. Science has its own dogma about what is real and what is not. Although, one can say, as the author points out, that it a self-correcting process. What he doesn't point out is that that self-correction can take a generation or more. Which is an improvement over religion's century / millennia long binding to dogma with little self-correction or upgrading.

Another model to think about these issues is that each one of us is at a different level of development and hence need. Each of us needs an anchor  / foundation to build our lives around. Children's anchors are their parents and parental authority. Adults can substitute other authority figures, e.g., priests, popes, mullahs, gurus, to be their authority figure. This is a way of conserving energy. One can call it cognitive off-loading. Letting somebody else do our thinking and reasoning takes a lot less energy. And nature tends to take the path of least resistance and minimal energy utilization. This pattern is built into the fabric of existence.

So, with a developmental model as the base, the issue becomes how do we help each other be more reasonable, think more clearly, pay attention to the feedback that the universe continually provides us to help us grow. One of our features is the remarkable ability to filter out feedback the universe is giving us and continue our "dogmatic" path no matter how much pain and suffering it causes us and others.

And yet another factor at play is our starting / base state as we think / act on these things. Are we in a state of care / love / compassion. Or are we in a state of looking for a blemish - what is wrong - that would justify our dislike / disgust / hate / ... The starting state can make such a difference in our thinking / reasoning. Perhaps, recognition of this dynamic is what led various spiritual traditions to extol the value of love / agape.

And in the midst of all this confusion about what is going on and why, if we are able to pay attention to the moment, there can be this sense of awe at this existence - we have no absolute idea what it is all about and yet here we are, breathing?

Asymmetry as an Explanatory Structure

 We see many social phenomena that we have names for - mentorship, bias, parenting, corruption, leadership, racism, teaching, oppression, benevolence, bullying, nurturing, ... One can think of asymmetry as a basic underlying structure that allows / facilitates these social behaviors / phenomena. Then, we can model asymmetry and realize that each of these phenomena, rather being binary (present or not), is on a spectrum with more or less asymmetry. And how much does asymmetry contribute to the spectrum of behaviors? Experience with other models indicates that what looks like a very simple underlying structure can generate complex behaviors.

I recently finished a Digital Humanities online course through the Santa Fe Institute. One of the patterns that was mentioned was that parsing the digital corpora for insights led to rather binary analyses of the presence or absence of some attribute, e.g., bias.

My sense is that the field of digital humanities could benefit greatly by starting with a structural hypothesis and then searching the corpora to validate / invalidate that hypothesis. And my sense is that could lead to a much more nuanced, balanced, and causal understanding of the phenomena in question.

Take for example the phenomena of bullying. An hypothesis one could use was that there is an asymmetry between the two (or more) parties involved. This asymmetry could be physical size, social status, follower group size, psycho-social energy, ....  One can then model this asymmetry and see that there is a spectrum to the level of bullying. It is not just a binary yes / no situation. This could then lead to better remediation strategies on a case by case basis.

Note that is approach is based on a systems thinking model that notes the following structure of systems, and of social systems in particular. Events can be part of a pattern which is generated from a systemic structure which in terms of human systems is based on mental models which themselves are generated from a vision / perspective of who / what / where / how / when we are and are part of.

Below the meta crisis

 I have been listening to various conversations about the meta crises we are in. An interesting metaphor I heard from Jordan Hall was that we are on a train on tracks that are leading us straight for a waterfall / cliff. The tracks / train being our biologies, our cultures, and our environment. Other conversations have talked about the meta crises issue from an energy perspective, multi polar traps, biological / evolutionary drivers. What I have not yet heard about is a perspective from a basic time / space perspective.

• Time - each one of us has a certain tempo to our being. As a species, we operate in a certain range of frequencies as far as information processing, sense making, .... go. Our neo paleolithic time frequencies have not kept up with the pace of development of our technologies. In particular, our modern industrial and digital environment.
• Space - we are being of a certain size. We operate, sense reality at that scale. We are mostly sensorily unaware of the micro, meso scopic structures that make our reality possible. Similarly, we are most unaware of the large scale patterns that guide our existence - solar weather, galactic orbit, climate patterns, ...

Some simple thoughts on the weighty matter.

Meta-crisis and Metaphor

 The metaphor / model one uses determines in some measure how one understands and how one tries to resolve an issue. Let us take our situation, the anthropocene. One can look at it as the "reality" trying to form a complex, adaptive structure. Our societies and civilizations are all attempts of this endeavor. So, far they have come and gone. An organism ( super organism ) requires some basic functions such as decision making. Part of this task is relegated to what we call the "neurology" of an organism. When an organism is forming, certain cells migrate / morph into becoming part of the neurology - the modular part of the neurology that makes the "higher" level decision for the organism. Our tribes, societies, civilization have selected certain types of cells (individuals, groups) to be part of the neurology that makes decision for the organism. At this point in our develop, that selection process is inappropriate to the context. The context requires a more caring, systemic, holistic, ... perspective / cells / individuals / groups for good / wise decision making. We don't yet have a way to change the selection / formation process for our super organism to select cells / individuals / groups better suited for our current situation.

Layers, Structure, and Semantics

 Layers of narrative structure:

• Story
• Story as a design object of author
• Genre of stories as possible designs
• Cultures in which such stories aris
• Biologies in which such cultures arise
• Chemistries in which such biologies arise
• Physics in which such chemistries arise

If you accept any layer of the structure as the final layer, the bottom turtle, then that becomes your dogma.

Narratives as evokers:

• what the story evokes in the reader
• what the author intended the story to evoke
• what the culture evoked in the author that is reflected in the story
• what the biology made salient in the culture to create stories to amplify that salience
• what the chemistry allowed the biology to experience
• what the physics allowed the chemistry to form

Layers of semantics:

• story as stopping point (sp) - dogma
• possible story lines as sp - dogma
• possible stories as sp - dogma
• possible cultures as sp - dogma
• possible biologies as sp - dogma
• possible chemistries as sp - dogma
• possible physics as sp - dogma

How does one get beyond these layers, when there is no final turtle in turtles all the way down:

Bathe in infinity -> dogma

Dimensional thinking

I have written a few posts about the notion of spectral thinking, 1, 2, 3. It occurred to me yesterday that that notion may be a bit simplistic. Take, for example, the problem of good and evil / bad. What is good in the short term, may be bad in the long term. What is good for a few may be bad for a larger system. So, in a spectrum there is a line covering the spectrum. However, in the examples above, time, space can also be dimensions that affect the understanding of what is good/bad/evil.

Narrative as psychotechnology

 One can think of a story as a way to manage neurological state. A story can / does change one's state. And it is used as such in everyday life as well as in our mythologies. Part of the issue is how to set up the initial conditions of the receiver so that the story does have a state shift dynamic.

Non-linguistic thinking

 Noticed a pattern in the social sciences. The toolset of the humanities is language and the vocabulary that is available in language. However, reality is far more complex than any language can capture. So, there may be phenomena that are there but they are "invisible" because our languages do not have a word for them. A possible example are Lagrange points. We discovered this phenomenon through mathematics and physics. We have no direct experience of these points. So, if we think of a complex mathematics describing social phenomena, there may be all sorts of phenomena that these maths "show" that we may have no language vocabulary for. However, just as we have not name these points, new names will arise for these patterns.

So, can we begin to be more intentional in thinking beyond a language framework. Perhaps thinking in terms of forces at play, grouping of things, and emergence of features from those forces and groupings. And how scaling modifies the forces and characteristics of a system?

Meta Generators

 The last post on generator functions and processes led to a conversation about how to think more clearly about these - how is a function different from a process. One can think of a function as a "class" as in an object oriented programming model. The usage of that class is the process. The usage of the class is an instantiation of that class in a particular context. So,

Generators

 We are surrounded by overwhelming complexity of form, function, process, .... One way to get some degree of grip on this complexity is to think in terms of generator functions that create this complexity. For example, Daniel Schmactenberger talks about some generator functions that are creating the existential risks to our societies.

So this lead me think about a generator process for another dynamic in our history / societies. Think of our evolution as the universe trying different patterns to form viable organisms. One aspect of the formation of an organism is the modular / functional creation of parts that create a whole organism. We start out as a cell that then differentiates into organs with different functions and capabilities and forming a viable organism as the end result of all that differentiation.

One aspect of this formation process is a generator process that determines which cells go to which function - heart, stomach, blood, brain, .... Similarly, in our societies we have a generator process for determining who ends up being in a "decision making" / "resource allocation" role. This process seems to promote people to these positions who have certain abilities to maneuver the social web. However, by and large, these same people seem to be short sighted non systemic thinkers. Hence leading to the long list of disastrous decisions with which our histories are littered.