[ExI] Social computability

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 02:00:40 UTC 2011


Richard, I won't try to address all the emotionally charged questions
you posed but instead I can only invite you to try to dispassionately
analyze the problem of efficiency - What arrangements are in general
more likely to work in terms of achieving whatever goals are set for a
complex system, i.e. a network? What network topology is more robust -
one that contains redundancy or one that doesn't? Which networks
compute better - ones with or ones without feedback links?

I understand you are a student of artificial intelligence - try to
apply your knowledge of efficient network computation to conceptualize
the society as a network that calculates the methods of achieving
goals inscribed in the structure of the network's nodes.

I am sure you will be able to achieve a deeper understanding of social
reality and, more importantly, the vistas for future social
development, once you rise above emotions, especially empathy, and
envy.

Rafal

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com> wrote:
> spike wrote:
>>>
>>> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore
>>
>>> ... people coming together and realizing that it is in everyone's best
>>
>> interest if the community is forced to pool their resources to pay for
>> things like roads and theaters and bridges and schools and police
>> forces...
>>
>> Indeed?  The critical difference in my thinking and yours is found in this
>> one sentence.  People coming together for roads, bridges, schools and
>> police, yes.  Theatres?  No.  That is exclusively the domain of private
>> industry, and the root of the tension between libertarian and statist.  It
>> is not in everyone's best interest to pool resources to build theatres.
>
> The inclusion of "theaters" was strictly optional:  not essential to my
> argument.  A throwaway.
>
> So let me see if I understand:  you are saying that without the word
> "theater" in my description, what I said bore no resemblance to the
> philosophy of libertarianism?
>
> Would it be more accurate, then, to say that Libertarianism is about
> SUPPORTING the  government funding of:
>
>   Roads,
>   Bridges,
>   Police,
>   Firefighters,
>   Prisons,
>   Schools,
>   Public transport in places where universal use of cars would
>      bring cities to a standstill, or where poor people would
>      otherwise be unable to escape from ghettos,
>   The armed forces,
>   Universities, and publicly funded scholarships for poor students,
>   National research laboratories like the Centers
>      for Disease Control and Prevention,
>   Snow plows,
>   Public libraries,
>   Emergency and disaster assistance,
>   Legal protection for those too poor to fight against the
>      exploitative power of corporations,
>   Government agencies to scrutinize corrupt practices by
>      corporations and wealthy individuals,
>   Basic healthcare for old people who worked all their lives
>      for corporations who paid them so little in salary that
>      they could not save for retirement without starving to
>      death before they reached retirement,
>   And sundry other programs that keep the very poor just above
>      the subsistence level, so we do not have to step over their
>      dead bodies on the street all the time, and so they do not
>      wander around in feral packs, looking for middle-class people
>      that they can kill and eat...
>
>
> .... but it is about NOT supporting the government funding of theaters?
>
>
> In that case I misunderstood, and all western democracies are more or less
> libertarian already, give or take the 0.0001 percent of their funding that
> goes toward things like theaters and opera houses.
>
>
>
>
> Richard Loosemore
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>



-- 
Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD
Chief Clinical Officer,
Gencia Corporation
706 B Forest St.

Charlottesville, VA 22903

tel: (434) 295-4800

fax: (434) 295-4951



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