[ExI] Devastated ideologies (was: italian politics as exi-chat subject)

[Jef Allbright]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote a very extropic
thread of thought:
>
>  My first thought: this technophilia has exhibited itself here before and
>  on wta-talk in the sense of anti-"let's just do it" tendencies.

Did you think "technophobia"?


>  Somebody was laughing at me the other day for suggesting that we build
>  teh tech. Odd. Another thought that I would like to add, from my
>  general observations on the state of those ideologies and the "old
>  world". The status quo takes a lot of time to update. Lots and lots of
>  time.

But many structures reach the limit of their capacity and quickly
collapse, making way for new forms.  Think punctuated change, unevenly
distributed, but tending to ratchet forward.


> The opportunity to update a unit relaying the status quo is rare,
>  so old information is always being propagated throughout society while
>  the freshest and newest information has to find its own context to keep
>  alive (and that's fine).

It's awkward when people speak of information (genes or memes) in
intentional or teleological terms. But you're emphasizing an important
point about memetic inertia and the inherent chaos at the leading edge
of change.


>  But on the other hand, we have significantly
>  large organizations ("Left" and "Right") and ideologies still
>  propagating and still abducting new minds even though there's no real
>  power that is necessarily making news releases to gain eyes and get
>  possible neophytes to convert (peculiar).

Strange statement, considering the obvious and massive power
structures within society which seem to be doing just that.


>  Today I was sitting in a
>  psych class that was talking about 'developmental psychology', going
>  over the theories of Piaget and the like, staged versus continuous
>  development, emotional taxonomies and whatever else. The designs of the
>  studies were simply wrong -- *no*, you _don't_ do longitudinal studies
>  or cross-section studies, not at all -- that's studying a
>  mystical 'normal' brain and the normal status quo does not necessarily
>  represent something that is within the possibility space of the
>  construction or growth of the human brain, it's not psychology at all
>  (perhaps social studies, but only on a "pop" level, since real social
>  studying would involve more, you know, hard (read: real) studying).

I don't understand you particular criticism here, but I think it's
significant that sociology and psychology are at the least
"scientific" end of the scientific spectrum with biology along with
biology not so far down the line.  Interestingly, developments in the
science of complexity seem likely to make these topics among the most
productive in the near future.


>  And the theories of, say, Maslow, were developed so as to promote a
>  more 'humanist' idealization versus the other negative images of humans
>  at the time and while there's nothing necessarily wrong with his ideas,
>  they are not as intense as they could be. And what about marxism? Or
>  libertarianism? Republicanism? Capitalism? Objectivism (cringe)? These
>  are archaic, in more than a sense than "they are old" but that they do
>  not fall into any particular coherency when, on the contrary, it seems
>  that many historical figures were 'fighting' for coherency.

[Insert Arrow of Morality here, with talk of increasing coherence over
an increasing context of values, promoted by increasingly effective
(scientific) means...]


>  So this
>  idea of coherency (sometimes poorly guided, but if one is careful it
>  can be a powerful tool, yes) and defending our own ideologies does not
>  necessarily help the general situation at all

Yes, not when defending one's ideologies means narrowing the context
of their interpretation.  But it bears pointing out here that
perceived "purity" has evolved as a strong moral driver.


> ... perhaps instead we
>  should be working on the art of self-creation, design of new ideas and
>  societies from the ground up, integrating and sharing novelty from
>  where ever it may come from.

Just as all persistent novelty results from evolutionary processes, we
would do well to **intentionally** compete within synergistic systems
of cooperative growth. Our current position on the evolutionary tree
is a result of such processes, but we've just reached the threshold of
being able to play the game intentionally.


>  But it seems that one must have their own
>  internal journey of personal growth and development to come to this
>  conclusion, to some extent isolated from society.

Diversity is essential to evolutionary growth, accelerating with
selection via an increasingly evolved environment.


>  Maybe we can propose
>  some solutions to the Keepers of the Devastated Ideologies in an
>  attempt to minimize their damage while seemingly maximizing their
>  missions? Or alternatively start teaching parents how to help minimize
>  the damage of society on their children as they grow up and prepare for
>  the future ("the future is now / the singularity is now").

My own frustration has to do with the fundamental
(information-theoretic) impracticality of conveying larger contexts to
smaller systems (if they could decode (decompress) it, then they'd
already have the knowledge.)  I think the only practical way for us
involves intentionally building a supporting framework, or Culture,
promoting our evolving values more wisely than could any individual.

- Jef