________________________________________________________________________

"Democracy and Palestine"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4310
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Mar 12, 2003
Subject: Re: Kurds, Turks, Iraqis, Americans roasting in a pot of oil


>But I would urge you to be careful about using the word
>"democracy" as a synonym to "desirable government".

Hi John,

I agree with this statement. Democracy is based on majority
rule, which is only one step above war -- you can prevent war
by determining who will win in advance. So you save the cost
of war, but who would win isn't necessarily who should win.
There are still situations when it's useful -- for example when
there's no clear precedence of rights, or free-trade solution
ala Coase, but unified action is still required (the cost of
war is acceptable to the majority). But as a general form of
government, democracy isn't very good. Fortunately, our
founding fathers knew all this. Hawks can sell wars with it,
though, so we hear plenty of it. [I'm told you won't find the
term in American discourse prior to the beginning of American
imperialism at the end of the 19th century.]

I'm afraid I can't agree that the atrocities of the Reich
were driven by a democracy, however. Hitler was a Monarch.
Incidentally, very few forms of government can beat Monarchy
at its best. Trouble is, it's unreliable -- you can be sure
it will only be at its best a fraction of the time, without
further checks and balances. Historically, free-trade has
provided those (ancient China, for example). But give a despot
control of lots of production (Nazi = socialist), and look out.

Irdisregardless, I condemn the actions of Israel in Palestine.
They appear to be in clear violation of international convention,
by settling an occupied territory.

Lastly,

>In fact, democracy can spawn some of the worst abuses of
>government. In its purest form, it is mob rule. Look at
>the crucifixion of Jesus, for example. Pontius Pilate knew
>that Jesus was not guilty of the trumped-up charges against
>him, and tried his best to use a traditional loophole to
>save his life. The people assembled to witness judgment
>could pick one man among the condemned to spare, and Pilate
>urged them to spare Jesus.

This is apparently not verifiable, and most likely added to
the biblical account at a late date for anti-semitic reasons.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Monopoly Power"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4319
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Mar 13, 2003
Subject: Re: Kurds, Turks, Iraqis, Americans roasting in a pot of oil


>>I'm afraid I can't agree that the attrocities of the Reich
>>were driven by a democracy, however. Hitler was a Monarch.
> 
> If he was a Monarch, he was one who was brought to power
> through the democratic processes,

I don't see how this is relevant to a judgement of democracy.
How do monarchies ever come to power? How does any system of
government come to power? It's outside the question.

>>>In fact, democracy can spawn some of the worst abuses of
>>>government. In its purest form, it is mob rule. Look at
>>>the crucifixion of Jesus, for example. Pontius Pilate knew
>>>that Jesus was not guilty of the trumped-up charges against
>>>him, and tried his best to use a traditional loophole to
>>>save his life. The people assembled to witness judgment
>>>could pick one man among the condemned to spare, and Pilate
>>>urged them to spare Jesus.
>>
>>This is apparently not verifiable, and most likely added to
>>the biblical account at a late date for anti-semetic reasons.
> 
>No kidding! I was unaware that this story may be apocryphal.
>Do you, however, doubt that such things have often happened,
>whether or not this particular story is true?

Oh no, your point is valid. Mob rule is nasty business.

>[Monz:]
>>in general, i believe that American-style capitalism really
>>sucks, and is responsible for a lot of the woes experienced
>>by both our society and many others all over the world. 
>
>If by American-style capitalism you mean the government in bed
>with large corporations that give campaign payoffs, I'm with
>you 100%. If you refer to companies rampaging around the world
>despoiling pristine lands and impoverishing native peoples while
>reaping oil dollars, again no argument. It is wrong, however,
>to blame such actions on "capitalism", a word which simply means
>that each of us owns the fruits of his labors, and must be free
>to trade peacefully with others.

It simply means that, but we must ask if that leads to any large-
scale characteristic behavior when we judge it. In fact, 'simple'
capitalism does have characteristic emergent behaviors, and one
that bears on us here that is a result of the fact that an agent's
ability to control the flow of capital through markets is tied to
how much capital he has. Therefore, polluting corporations can
afford to "buy" the right to pollute from poor nations, while we
feel that the value of clean air should not be less for them than
for us.

>>the best scenario is a truly democratic government allied
>>with a socialist economy. (i think Canada's system is a
>>fairly close to that ideal.)
>
>There I would very much disagree, but let us save that argument
>for later.

Indeed; truly democratic government is a terrible idea, as
discussed. And there's no such thing as a socialist economy.
The optimization of markets is simply intractable from the
top-down. There's always capitalism at work behind the scenes.
The key is to get it to do the right stuff. The first problem
is to decide what the right stuff is. The second is to make
sure it happens. We're fortunate that for the first time in
history we may see tools that can model this stuff and solve
the second problem.

I'm afraid I don't have a good answer first problem. I'm
partial to the libertarian ideal that the set of disallowed
behaviors should be the same for all individuals, and as small
as possible. Finding that set is the trick. Common law seems
a good approach, but the history of precedents has gotten
carried away, taken on a life of its own. Perhaps we need
some clever rules as to how precedents can be created and
applied. Maybe they can even be forbidden entirely. . .

Getting back to "socialist economy"... since Monz cited Canada,
perhaps he's simply advocating more public works projects.
What's the difference between a public and private solution to,
say, healthcare? There really isn't any, except that the public
solution is a guaranteed monopoly. We've seen that free markets
don't have any trouble creating monopolies, in fact monopoly
power can lead to poor nations being ravished, and that we have
to *stop*. [Occasionally, excessive competition causes some waste
in the beginning, as before Rockefeller came to oil, but
Rockefeller always comes, and for the price of the initial waste
you have some assurance that's he's a fit monopolist.] The trick
is, we mustn't stop monopolies when they're beneficial. For
example, by splitting up the radio spectrum, the FCC (eeeevil, I
tells you) created "competition" in the mobile phone market where
there wouldn't have been and shouldn't be any (the technology is
all basically the same -- yes, I know about the triumph of CDMA
over TDMA and GSM; we don't need to build all three to decide
that!). The result is that everybody pays $50 a month in Berkeley
to put up antennas, and there still isn't a single provider that
covers the whole town! In the end, we will all have spent four
(AT&T, Sprint, T-mobile/Cingular, Verizon) times too much on our
phones in order to erect four times too many antennas.

So it seems the control of monopoly power is the central issue
of capitalism.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Political Methodology"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4335
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Mar 14, 2003
Subject: Re: Kurds, Turks, Iraqis, Americans roasting in a pot of oil


>To Carl L: you strike me as having an irrational fear
>of monopolies.

You strike me as having an irrational fear of anything
other than 'laissez-faire capitalism'. Politics is a
trap -- it isn't a valid methodology for solving problems.
I fell into the trap of libertarianism for a few years.
It's full of tempting oversimplifications.

The reality is that humans have both an individual and a
social nature. We are born with certain rights as
individuals, and certain obligations as social animals.
This dichotomy expresses itself in our government and
economics, and is an unsolved problem. Only serious
attempts to study this issue should occupy our time.

One of the comfortable ideas often implicit in
libertarianism is that pure capitalism is somehow more
'natural' than what we've got. And if we would just get
together and implement it, everyone would be better off.
The fact is, anyone who's proposing to change what we've
got is proposing an un-natural solution. If pure
capitalism is so great, why hasn't it ever implemented
itself, in all of history? Governments are free-market
entities that must survive, like everything else. Now,
if I claim that the motive and means by which governments
survive are meritless (say, money for them via appeals to
pity and promises to the weak, ala Rand), that's one
thing. But in a sense this is a less-pure version of
capitalism than what exists.

>They always end up collapsing under their own weights
>eventually,

Everything ends up changing eventually. Monopolies can
lead to serious and protracted market inefficiencies.
This is well acknowledged in economics. It's the same as
lock-in effects in... tuning, for example.

>Freedom works.

"Save the Whales".

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Personal and Public Freedoms"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4355
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sat Mar 15, 2003
Subject: Reply to Carl L


>I own the fruits of my labor,

And what are the fruits of your labor? Do you own a car?
Did you create it? Who created it? Who has the right to
set its price?

>and I claim the right to trade peacefully with others,
>without interference.

Who gives you that right? Who protects you from pirates?
I say, you are not protected from pirates, but the pirates
have been bred fairly tame.

>>Governments are free-market entities that must survive, like 
>>everything else.
> 
>No they're not. Bill Gates doesn't force sales at the point
>of a gun.

But it's getting to the point where I couldn't survive without
Bill Gates. Certainly, where I was raised, I couldn't survive
without a car. Was I coerced into working 40-hour weeks for
years to afford one?

>George Bush does.

I long for the day without compulsory financing. Meanwhile I
suspect that people are forced to pay taxes for a reason --
they otherwise lack the clarity to behave. So it's a choice
between freely-chosen chaos and order at the point of a gun.
I'm honestly not sure which I'd rather have.

Of course the 'point of a gun' bit is not really true. If
people *really didn't want to pay taxes*, George Bush wouldn't
have much luck getting them. But most people I know, though
they disagree with many things, still feel their taxes are
for the best. I also know some who don't feel this way, and
who don't pay their taxes. I don't feel this way, but I do
pay my taxes, because the time it would take me to avoid them
is worth more than the cost of the taxes.

>>>Freedom works.
>>
>>"Save the Whales".
> 
>Let's see, what point are you making with this clever quip?
>That freedom is naive?

No, sorry; I thought I should have given more detail here.
It's a reference to a bit by Hofstadter. "Save the Whales"
is a statement that's easy to agree (or disagree) with.
But what does it mean? Save the whales from who? For what?
How?

What's Freedom? What does it work for?

Hofstadter (after Dawkins) implies that politics and religion
are more about sensationalism than content, and I'm saying
it outright.

>>I notice the strike-the-root site only accepts articles
>>that support certain fundamental doctrines. A very
>>distressing sign of political methodology. On the tuning
>>tuning list we don't delete posts advocating 12-tET.
>
>LOL! Are you condemning any site that takes a stand? Would, 
>according to the Carl Lumma school of Perfect Society, everyone 
>be forced to post a representative sample of every viewpoint?
>Now THERE's a Utopia for you; I can't wait!

I simply stated that this is not a scientific methodology, a
fact of which I'm sure you're well aware. Naturally, he has
the obligation to post only what he wants. But if he wants to
restrict scientific discourse, our ability to trust his
publication goes down. Leave the shirt-tearing at home.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Clever Modeling"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4358
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sat Mar 15, 2003
Subject: Re: Reply to Carl L


JdL: 
>Nasty stuff, I agree.
> 
>And so what? So we'll have the government "fix" things? To my
>view, this is ALWAYS worse.

I don't know if it's ALWAYS worse, but I think a monopoly-killing
government is a bad idea. That's why I'm proposing clever modeling.

And what is clever modeling? It's running simulations and finding
out what rules and initial conditions lead to the most efficient
outcomes. We probably have to wait only 5-10 years before the
fastest supercomputers can brute-force a meaningful model.

Then you take politics out of economics completely. A computer
(or lots of local computers) oversee(s) all the variables in the
economy. All the ones the model says they should oversee. Maybe
the hard anarcho-capitalists will be vindicated, and the answer
is no manipulation of anything.

As for the 'dangers' of computers running the show, it's possible
to make such a setup far safer from corruption than any gov'mint.
In fact, computers are the most reliable technology humans have,
and they should be running things as soon as possible.

Incidentally, I think the government monopoly on currency
production, though probably necessary in the early days of the
union, is completely obsolete and probably the most deleterious
thing our government has its hands in. With clever modeling,
there might be all kinds of special-purpose currencies that get
created and wiped out in different places at particular times.

>It comes down to the basic fact that governments only operate by
>coercion, never by voluntary agreements

The free market is not free of coercion. Coercion is a consequent
of human psychology. Governments must provide useful services
otherwise they couldn't survive! Government is not above Nature!

>The face of government is force. Consider the dying cancer
>patients in Santa Cruz CA whose marijuana co-op was raided by
>federal thugs.

Yeah, that sucked. Unfortunately, people have the right to both
recreational and medical use of Cannabis sativa, but are pursuing
the latter under the guise of the former. The Feds will bust it
all as a result (the club I'm in is marked for death).

>No number of ruthless capitalists, with all the techniques at
>their disposal, can approach such evil.

Don't be so sure.

My father was a very senior scientist at two of the largest
pharmaceutical companies in the world. They were both tremendous
forces for good in the world, I think, but still capable of
some truly evil things.

I've seen what oil companies are doing in Ecuador. Makes the
Santa Cruz bust look tame.

The first international corporations ravaged the world.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Rights Management"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4385
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Mar 17, 2003
Subject: Re: Reply to John S


> I keep returning to this vital distinction, which seems
> to keep getting lost in this discussion.

There's something else that's getting lost. Rand missed it
too, when she claimed some actions (such as inventing a
stronger alloy) are without detriment to anyone. If this
were true, perfect voluntary trade would be completely fair.
But it isn't true. There's nothing I can do that won't
affect the guy next to me in some way. And he has a right
to be pissed off about it, for whatever reason. The
textbook example goes something like... 

In my backyard, I decide I've got to have a paintball field.
My neighbors say that ruins the neighborhood, lowers property
values, etc. How do we resolve this dispute? Does my deed
entitle me to do whatever I want on my land? What about my
neighbors' rights to peace and quiet, an undisturbed view
of the grasses?

One way to answer this is to say that in a residential area,
the right to peace and quiet is more fundamental than the
right to play paintball, so I'm not allowed to build the
field. Another way is to force my neighbors and I to draw up
a contract that places restrictions on the size of the field,
and what times of day it can be used. Another would be for me
to pay my neighbors for the rights to play paintball in my
back yard. Another would be to set aside land somewhere else
for non-residential purposes, and have me buy a piece of that.

Many of these solutions have traditionally been implemented
through government of one form or another. But that isn't
what makes them tricky.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Capital Flow Control"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/4401
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Mar 19, 2003
Subject: Re: Reply to John S


>>I could not force competing products into complete
>>un-availability.

This a question of degrees. But we might also ask:
Should capital empower the control of capital flow
through markets *at all*? "It takes money to make
money." But should it?

To find out, we've got to come up with ways it could
be prevented from doing so and test them. To storm
the brain a bit....

() Capital could be subject to a 'reverse interest'.
It goes bad. This rate of going bad could hinge on
all sorts of things. Maybe, on how old it is and
how fast you're trying to get rid of it -- try to
spend a million bucks you made thirty years ago in
a day and you get hammered, or similar.

() For every market x, there are two currencies: one
which only works in x, and one which only works
outside of x. The existence of an exchange rate
between the two might do all sorts of wild and crazy
things. And if not, the exchange rate could be
manipulated in some way -- say, computers could manage
1% of the assets of all mutual funds, and use them to
trade in these currencies, to influence their values.

() Minor banking annoyances. In real life, you deposit
money in the bank, only to find that it isn't available
until the next day. Why? I think banks do this on
purpose to slow people down a bit, and keep banking
cool. When banking gets hot, runs can result. What if
certain markets got held up just slightly more than
others at certain times? Would it have any predictable
large-scale effects? 

() All this might not work -- maybe value really tends
toward total abstraction. But in real life, exchange
rates do affect things, and this suggests that total
abstraction can be prevented with minor barriers -- the
current differences between nations seems to be enough.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Profits and Growth"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6032
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 10, 2003
Subject: Re: at least brazil moves forward


>yes lets turn it into a business where profits will become
>the bottom line, or like the electrical or phon business.
>Every act of deregulation has been a complete failare if not
>a rape of the people.

Electrical deregulation in Pennsylvania is universally
considered a huge success. The airline deregulation of the
'70's was as well.

And I don't think "profits" is the right term. I hear a lot
about "profits" in the bleeding heart circuit, but I don't ever
get the impression that it's coming from someone who has the
foggiest idea what a profit is, besides an emotionally-charged
word that gets them and their friends fired up. Around the
Bay Area, it was even suggested that Dick Cheney wanted the war
on Iraq because he stood to gain personal wealth from the
oil -- a laughable hypothesis.

What you may mean is "growth". Contemporary businesses often
suffer by trying to grow too fast, including by going out of
business (.coms), or worse, by running up huge negative
externalities they can't cover (Kaiser Aluminum's liquidation
of Pacific Lumber). This is especially true among publicly-
held companies. The public's ethic of public ownership is
miserable in the US. People tend to think of shares as money
rags or pension tickets and forget (or never bother to learn)
about the companies attached to them.

Anywho, I believe it's been shown very thoroughly that a
strictly-regulated *environment* is necessary for markets to
work effectively. However, I am not aware of a single case
where removing direct controls (such as price controls) has
not resulted in an improvement in the affected market. Part
of the reason this realization took so long is that price
controls have a counter-intuitive effect. If I say, "no one
shall charge more than $1000 for a studio apt. in Berkeley",
this has the effect, over just a few years in most cases, of
*raising* the mean price of studio apartments in Berkeley.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Taxes and Education"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6034
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 10, 2003
Subject: Re: at least brazil moves forward


>> "I" would not propose to do anything other than to get the 
>> government out of the education business, as they are proven
// 
> how will this create more qualified candidates among
> minorities from the ground up?

I'm interested to hear John's answer, but as far as I can see
the free market doesn't give us any means to single out
minorities. You can debate the merits of this until the cows
come home.

I do believe that deregulating schools would probably improve
them in the US (though things are so bad I think any change
would probably improve them!). Don't know about Brazil.

I'm a believer in taxes to support education. If parents
can't afford it, the state should step in. We all live
together on this rock, and we all bare the consequences of
education (or the lack thereof). Whether the state should
itself operate schools is another matter. I think
standardized testing has done far more harm than state
ownership in the abstract. I think we need competition among
curricula far more than competition among facilities. And
teacher's unions are a far greater harm than state ownership
in the abstract. Unions are a disastrous blight upon the
Earth, says I, but I can't figure think of a way to prevent
them -- you can't very well forbid people from forming clubs.
Though I reckon most large unions are probably crooked enough
to bust with criminal law...

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Health Care and Public Transit"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6043
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 10, 2003
Subject: Re: at least brazil moves forward


> Bush's secret energy task force plan all of this,

All of what, exactly?

> Airlines were not deregulated in the same way, they
> were never owned by the government, as they are in europe.

The routes that airlines were allowed to fly, which
carriers were allowed to fly them, and how much they
could charge were controlled by a government
bureaucracy.

In Europe the airlines are no better. I've flown on
all the major European airlines. British Air destroyed
our luggage in a bizarre manner. Swiss Air went
bankrupt three times in 2 years, or some such.

> I am still waiting for EC airlines. public transportation
> is way better,

Europe has a much higher population density, making
public transportation *much* more cost effective. Same
with Japan.

> they have health care,

Yeah; crappy health care. Most of the innovations in
health care are developed here, and given away to
Europe and the rest of the World at a loss.

>Bush and the forces he represents will do anything to
>stay in power include starting another war.

Of this I have little doubt.

-Carl
 
________________________________________________________________________

"Unions and Industry"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6048
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 10, 2003
Subject: Re: at least brazil moves forward


> most picket lines are against businesses no other preople
> wanting to work.

When I lived in Manhattan (49th & 9th), there was a huge
construction project at the end of my block that was being
performed by non-union labor, against a strike. They had
to build a wall and have constant police patrol to protect
the site. The union guys stood at the corner with a 15'
inflatable rat marked 'scab', pulling on the wire that moved
its little arms and blowing a goddamned air horn all day.

> who really want to go work for less than
> what others are making doing the same task
> 
> being competitive?

If people in Mexico are willing to build Volkswagens for a
fraction of what Americans are, they are winning the
competition for the chance to build VWs for a living.

> And what dso they do with their money? invest it over seas.

That's good. If they didn't, they'd be pegged as uncaring
about the hardships industrialism has laid upon the 3rd world.

> it seems to me they got you all fooled as to who is driving
> up the cost of things.

What was driving up the cost of things in the 70's, when
inflation was 20% and the economy was in the shitter?

> When i first started at the bottom level i could buy more
> and live better than i can now being on the absolute top
> even though it look like i make 7 times more than then. it
> cost me 10 times more to live.

Probably mostly due to your location. You live in a popular
area. Americans still enjoy the highest standard of living
outside of Scandinavia, which in the case of Norway is
provided largely by oil, and elsewhere probably due to the
genetic homogeneity of the population.

Although I find it incredible that only a generation or two
ago, the average American family was single-income. Now, most
need two incomes to survive. That's a radical change in how
industrious we are. Part of it is likely due to the unnatural
postwar strength of the dollar wearing off, and part simply to
competition from families who are willing to be two-income.

-Carl
 
________________________________________________________________________

"Magic and Medicine"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6049
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 10, 2003
Subject: Re: at least brazil moves forward


> What good is all this research if you can't get it when
> you need it. Of cvcourse the well to do have no problems
> along these lines.

You do get it. If it weren't for the current system, we'd
all still be putting warm rocks on our thighs to treat
cancer. Though of course some folks still prefer this to
anything that actually might treat the cancer, though that's
partly the fault of "Western" medicine for ignoring the
importance of bedside manner.

Yep, bleeding edge healthcare is expensive. There's no way
around it. People have to devote their lives to invent it
and practice it. In some cases you need an expensive
apparatus like an MRI. You want *magic*, check out one of
those babies sometime.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"The Flight to India"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6127
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 24, 2003
Subject: Re: The flight to India


> over-population *was* the number one global problem.

Just what is overpopulation, and why is it a problem?

> the way i see it, the current main style of capitalism
> (as opposed to "capitalism in its pure form" as described
> by John deLaubenfels in his post):
>
> () encourages people to be greedy for money,

How does it do that?

Gun-control folks say that having guns around promotes
murder. Guns are a sort of abstract murder presence in
this view. Having been raised with guns I find this dubious
from a personal standpoint. But I could see a similar
argument for capitalism. By attaching a value to everything,
it encourages greed, or at least a 1-dimensional reduction
of everything in sight. If this is the case, what we need
are testable alternatives.

> () exploits those who don't really have a stake in the
>system,

Wealth seems to take on a power-law distribution, if that's
what you mean. There looked to be some interesting commentary
on this in the abstracts I linked to recently.

> () creates mountains upon mountains of trash, and
>
> () sucks the planet dry of valuable natural resources which
> should be safeguarded and used in a slow and sensible way,
> if they really need to be used at all.

I don't see how it could do any of this. Capitalism is really
just a method of collecting votes on issues.

> and i see all of that as being based on the need for an
> ever-expanding market in order to ensure and ever-expanding
> growth of profits, which in turn will continue to get worse
> as more and more people in an ever-expanding population
> take an interest in *having* a stake in the system, which
> in turn makes the system and all of the problems tabulated
> above grow larger.

That's the burn-out question. Under certain conditions
markets burn out. I understand there are species, including
certain kinds of plants, that can locally wipe themselves out
by exhausting resources. Lemmings may have evolved a suicide
reflex to prevent such an event. The "ghost" coal-mining town
is another example. Ebola is apparently too virulent to
spread widely in most human populations. etc.

Under other conditions, markets stabilize or adapt to changing
resources. In Western Europe, population growth was negative
for much of the 80's and 90's and only recently stabilized.
The last company I worked for was completely flat in the black
for 20-some years. They experienced huge growth in 1998, and
in 2001 experienced violent contraction that led to the
termination of half the company.

Capitalism is just a method of moving information around.
I'm not sure it has anything to do with the above. If you're
in favour of replacing it you ought to be able to show an
alternative that can move information around at least as
effectively and why it would be less prone to burn-out.

> for a great vision of a society very different from this,
> i suggest reading Ernest Callenbach's novel _Ecotopia_.
> as a work of literature i think it falls short, but if
> you read it for Callenbach's vision it's inspiring, which
> i think was his main objective anyway.
>
> ... Carl, if you haven't read it, it will give you a
> whole new feeling about what could happen in Berkeley.
> here's a succint description:
>
> http://www.strangewords.com/archive/ecotopia.html

There isn't much info here, but the idea is hardly novel.
Anyway, it might not surprise you to learn that I've
thought a great deal about what could happen in Berkeley.
Unforch, the population *density* is too high to really do
what I'd like. What brings tears to my eyes, though, is
when I travel out to Hercules, on roads not a month old,
to teach kids in a school not a decade old, on the edge of
one of the most inspiring urban interfaces on Earth, and
see gated communities of stucco look-alikes going up all
over the place, with 10 feet from one window to the next
and a Home Depot strip mall going in.

Businesses like Home Depot have revolutionized the efficiency
of goods distribution in the States. Their sites are the
perfect test beds for new ideas... micro-generation, local
organic sewage treatment....

As for Berkeley itself, everything West of Sacramento is
fill. Destroyed one of the most beautiful tidal marshlands
on Earth right there. Did capitalism do it?

Once that was done, they needed roads. I'm told they brought
in an architect, who drafted system in which the East-West
roads would follow the creeks, and the N-S roads would bridge
them. They decided to ignore this idea, bury the creeks, and
put down a grid. Capitalism again?

Seems since capitalism is what's happening, it could be the
cause of anything one observes. On what grounds could we
exclude it? If someone donates money for a Mozart concert,
is that capitalism?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Paranoia"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6344
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Dec 10, 2003
Subject: Re: The Sault Imbroglio


> I look at it this way: suppose a bunch of us who have discussed
> tuning, as well as other issues, over the years were sitting in
> a coffee shop, discussing away. In comes a newcomer, who
> introduces himself and joins the conversation. Suddenly, one of
> us says "Hey- didn't I see you the other day in the park on a
> soapbox ranting about "Jewish conspiracies"? Wouldn't it be
> natural for the group to pause a moment and say "Huh?" in
> disbelief? Wouldn't it be natural to ask, "Is that true, Mr.
> Newcomer? Do you actually believe that stuff?" If then the
> newcomer responded to this the way Sault has done with threats
> and accusations, and refusing to come clear and either fess up
> or set the record straight, would we just say "oh well, no
> matter, all we want to talk about is tuning.?"

There's a lot in this paragraph.

We're not in a cafe, we're on this electric medium, which
has unique characteristics.

It might take a lot of verbiage for the newcomer to "come
clean or fess up". What exactly is he fessing up to?
For a guy like me who doesn't have a clue what an "Antisemite"
is, it might be very confusing and upsetting.

Most importantly, if he does fess up, what do we do? It's
the 'legislate morality' issue. Why, Dante, do you reckon
murder is illegal -- why do you, Dante Rosati, not have the
Right to murder? Because it is wrong? What if I'm a Satanist,
who believes murder is good? Who are you to claim supremacy
over Satanism? Murder is illegal because it takes away the
victim's Right to live, a right which is more fundamental.
What is 'fundamental' can be defined by applying the notions
of the status quo (derived ultimately from our nature as
animals -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- and
otherwise by what's currently happening) and mutual exclusion
(I cannot live and you murder) to determine the maximal Right-
set for all individuals in a society. This is generally an
intractable mathematical problem, and it isn't always clear-
cut. Heroin use, for example, isn't a *completely* victimless
crime (although criminal law is clearly inappropriate). That's
why there's a protocol (the judicial system) to decide it on
a per-case basis.

When this isn't effective, power can be invoked. There's the
power of majority (democracy). The power of money (capitalism).
One of these is usually the next-best resort.

Sometimes external moral judgements cannot be avoided, and the
ability to make them when necessary and only when necessary is
the mark of a great leader.

When external moral judgements are your first and only resort,
you have fascism.

In this case, I do not believe the tuning list requires a
judgement about whether racism is wrong in order to function.

> John, its funny, I thought of the same example that you mention
> of Bush joining the tuning list! All I can say is that,
> personally, I would NOT be able to just discuss music with him.
> No way.

No? I have to admit I personally have trouble discussing anything
with someone I know feels overwhelming hate for jews. But this is
probably a weakness on my part.

> Carl has espoused Jesus' "resist not evil" view, and I have to
> admit that on one level I sympathize with this. there is
> something to be said for the view that only love will disarm
> evil.

No, only ignorance will disarm evil. Reality is determined by
what we spend our time on. This is why politics is so dangerous,
and generally not considered polite conversation. Ask anyone in
Washington, and they will tell you they are there to 'change
Washington'! War, it is said, is fought for justice on both
sides.

> Its worth remembering that when fascists take over, the first
> people they eliminate are the intellectuals. why? cause they
> know that the intellectuals know what they are up to and can
> call them on it.

You see this as a conscious action on the part of an enemy.

Rather, fascism can only arise through a lack of intellectualism.

What fascists do consciously is not eliminate all intellectuals,
but only those who disagree with them. If all 'antisemites'
were forbidden from playing chess, for example, one of the
greatest players in history would never have shared his gift
with the world.

Anthropomorphizing the 'enemy' (ie, "Antisemite") is the first
step toward fascism.

Paranoia is the final step. Antisemitism is everywhere, waiting
to infect our kids. Or don't you see that the actual subject
matter is immaterial to the dangers of paranoia?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Politics as usual"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6832
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sun Feb 29, 2004
Subject: Re: democrats in november

 
> Politicians are fun. It's grand to watch them scurry
> around like cockroaches, trying to find a place to hide
> from the light of a controversial issue. Of ourse if
> they don't play that game they are in trouble.

What bugs me more than dodging of controversy is the way
the details of the non-controversial issues are summarized.
For example, everybody wants 'healthcare for all', but
what does this mean and how can we bring it about? In most
cases the politician has advice on these matters from
experts of one sort or another. But will they tell you what
the details actually are, what other plans were considered
and why the plan they are advocating won out? No. Instead
we're left with simplifications like 'we're going to reverse
Bush's tax cuts to pay for it'. Well why did Bush cut
taxes? Because he chose a different expert's plan for
flawed reasons? No, it's because he wanted to line a few
people's pockets, including his own. Who would do such a
thing? What sort of explanation is this? It is typical,
and it requires a view of human nature that is perverse
indeed. Pandering to and encouraging such a view is pure
evil. It leads not to understanding but to blame.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Debt and stupidity"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6838
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Mar 1, 2004
Subject: Re: democrats in november


> > > > There's a lot more to say. There are those, some who
> > > > even get paid to write scholarly papers on the subject,
> > > > who believe tax cuts for the rich can help the poor.
> > > 
> > > And you think Bush believes this because of his deep
> > > understanding of those scholarly papers?
> >
> > For some reason he's listening to them. If you want to
> > prove him wrong you have to prove them wrong.
> 
> That's awfully easy. Reagan took their advice, and it was a
> disaster,

Was it? Reagan's presidency saw the end of stagflation,
the Keynesian oxymoron that had baffled economists since
Nixon.

In any case it isn't a proof. That's the problem with
using History to prove things -- there are two many
variables that cannot be repeated.

> which stunningly huge deficits your children will still be
> paying for.

Ultimately the decision is the same as a personal loan. You
can become more competitive by borrowing against your future
productivity. Doing so helps motivates you in the future.
As long as you don't mind being busy and don't fail to repay,
you win.

Also, if you believe Kurzweil et al that exponential progress
in technology will continue, any fixed debt today should be
manageable.

> George I had to undo it, and Clinton stayed the
> course and handled the economy very well,

Clinton happened to be in office during a tremendous economic
expansion. Caused by one or more of:

() It was that time in the business cycle, and the end of
the Cold War added unusual euphoria.

() New technology raised the return on capital while the Fed
held rates down, causing unusual euphoria.

() Reagan's brilliant policies set the stage for unprecedented
economic growth.

> only listen to actual academics, whose paycheck does not 
> depend on giving an answer the person who pays them wants
> to hear. Then try to locate the consensus, not the finge.

I try. Keep in mind I'm presently playing devil's advocate.

> > I seem to remember reading that we spend less on defense,
> > as a portion of the GDP, than the major European powers.
> 
> Where did you get that baloney from?
>
> http://www.steve.burrow.name/article/weapons.shtml
> 
> http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/allied_contrib96/usa.html

According to the 2nd link, in 1995 the US spent 3.9%, while
France and the UK spent 3.1%. And US spending did dip below
3% at some point in the 90's. Neoconservatives might argue
that countries like Germany only survive on roughly half this
because we give them defense services.

Ooo, I see that "Regime Change in Iran" is a news item at
newamericancentury.org. What a bunch of wack-jobs.

> > Deficit spending is another debatable practice. Many
> > economists believe it's the thing to do in a recession.
> 
> Within reason, it might be. When you are morgaging the next
> 100 years to your credit card (and interest rates can easily
> rise on whatever debt you accumulate) it goes well beyond
> the point of sanity, into the realm of fantasy, stupidity,
> and greed.

Yes, well, since I agree arguing against this is rather
difficult. I could see it better if we were spending on say,
education or something nice like that.

> We don't even have the luxury of repudiating our debt, as it
> would cause the world economy to collapse.

What does it mean to repudiate a debt? I've never heard this
term.

> > In the present recession, many economists feel American
> > housholds are still dangerously overextended (in such a
> > case further government borrowing would be ill-advised).
> > This can be blamed on the Fed holding interest rates
> > too low for too long, retailers offering zero interest
> > to clear inventories, etc. Many blame the Fed for
> > waiting too long to raise rates in the 90's.
> 
> As I remark, what do you think happens to service on that
> debt you've accumulated when rates rise?

Personal debts are usually taken against fixed rates (which
is an interesting topic in and of itself). National debts
don't have rates as such. They are partially financed with
bonds which can turn to junk, but bond yields are usually
fixed I think (I don't understand bond markets that well).
But they are also financed by creating money, which is more
like theft than a loan, since it immediately (in effect)
dilutes the value of assets held by others. The farther away
you are (in the trade chain) from the new money, the more you
get screwed.

> > It seems Bush and co. are banking on a limitless Asian
> > demand for dollars, and huge (perhaps unrealistic)
> > increases in American productivity in coming years.
> 
> It's merely stupidity and greed.

Is Snow merely stupid and greedy for trying to redress our
trade deficit by letting the dollar slide?

> The same crowd who ran us into the ground under Reagan, and
> whom George "read my lips" H. W. Bush was forced to rescue
> us from, is in charge. They are quite happy inventing
> their "facts", and do.

I think they're operating rationally under a couple of core
beliefs:

() The world would fall apart without the American empire.

() It's worth acting on a worst-case oil shortage scenario.
If things get dodgy around 2010 or 2015, the person holding
the world together should be the person who controls where
the oil goes.

> > > Bush wanted to believe Saddam was building the bomb,
> > > because Saddam tried to kill his daddy. So, Bush quite
> > > honestly did believe it
> > 
> > Now this I don't believe for a second. I think Bush was
> > convinced by hawks in the Pentagon to flex American
> > imperialism a bit, and simply said whatever he thought
> > would allow him to go to war, knowing that after war is
> > waged it doesn't so much matter why.
> 
> I don't share your cynical view of Bush. I think he is
> stupid, not Machivellian.

You think the President of the US is stupid? How does a
stupid person get to such a station in life? Either he
only acts stupid to win the affection of the masses (or for
some other reason), or he was put in place by people who
are not stupid. The presidency of the US cannot be
controlled by stupid people, because it's valuable enough
that a smart person somewhere would come in and take over.

Clearly, people like Wolfowitz, or however you spell that
jacobite's name, are Machiavellian.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Parecon"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/6989
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2004
Subject: Re: Chomsky sites; Znet; Parecon

Here are some quick thoughts on...

http://www.parecon.org/writings/albert_lac.htm

"Capitalism is a zero sum system in which to get
ahead one must trample others."

Capitalism is not zero-sum. Every transaction in
a free market is mutually beneficial, or else it
wouldn't take place. "Beneficial" is defined by
what free agents choose to do, so it's a bit of a
tautology, but it's still meaningful. "Free"
implies symmetrical information and amortizable
transaction costs, which don't always obtain. So
you can argue about how to improve information
symmetry and lower transaction costs. You can
also dispute the above reasoning. But Michael
Albert instead gives us...

"You must ignore the horrible pain suffered by
those left below or you must literally step on
them, pushing them farther down. In capitalism,
a famous baseball manager of a team called the
Yankees, used to say…"nice guys finish last" which
is actually a horrible critique of market exchange.
My version of the insight is that in capitalism
"garbage rises." Witness, again, our exalted
leaders."

//

"In a Participatory Economy for those who can
work, remuneration is for effort and sacrifice."

Uh-oh.

Despite that the essay presents Parecon as
something new, I'm having a hard time seeing any
difference from plain-jane socialism.

If you want to renumerate effort, you need a
way to measure effort. How do we do that?

The essay talks a lot about other "values" of
Parecon. Some of which are quite admirable.
Such as everybody having "a say in decisions in
proportion as we are affected by them". But how
do we achieve these values?

The answer in all cases seems to be: with
democratic councils. In Parecon, councils define
the jobs. But how do they know what jobs are
needed? Are they creative enough to envision new
jobs?

Historically, democratic councils have been
miserable at aggregating information. They
haven't been able to measure or adjust to
conditions quickly or completely enough to manage
prices.

Parecon's improvement on this historical
performance is called "participatory planning".
Its description is given two paragraphs near
the end of the essay, which I will quote in full:

""
Participatory planning is a system in which worker
and consumer councils propose their work activities
and their consumption preferences in light of
accurate knowledge of local and global implications
and true valuations of the full social benefits and
costs of their choices. The system utilizes a back
and forth cooperative communication of mutually
informed preferences via a variety of simple
communicative and organizing principles and vehicles
including what are called indicative prices,
facilitation boards, rounds of accommodation to new
information, and other features – all of which
permit actors to express their desires and to
mediate and refine them in light of feedback about
other's desires, arriving at compatible choices
consistent with remuneration for effort and
sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory
self-management.

Actors indicate their preferences. They learn what
others have indicated. They alter their preferences
in an effort to move toward a viable plan. At each
new step in the cooperative negotiation each actor
is seeking well being and development, but each can
get ahead only in accord with social advance, not by
exploiting others. It is impossible to describe this
whole system and all its features, and to show how
it is that they are both viable and worthy, in a
short talk like this. I'd like to recommend the
website www.parecon.org – which has all kinds of
material about Parecon, from interviews, to questions
and answers, to essays, to whole books, on the one
hand – and also give just a brief summary of the
situation...
""

Raise your hand if you feel like you could implement
one of these.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Capitalism"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/7023
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Apr 7, 2004
Subject: Re: parecon and capitalism


> > "Capitalism is a zero sum system in which to get
> > ahead one must trample others."
> >
> > Capitalism is not zero-sum. Every transaction in
> > a free market is mutually beneficial, or else it
> > wouldn't take place. "Beneficial" is defined by
> > what free agents choose to do, so it's a bit of a
> > tautology, but it's still meaningful. "Free"
> > implies symmetrical information and amortizable
> > transaction costs, which don't always obtain. So
> > you can argue about how to improve information
> > symmetry and lower transaction costs. You can
>
> Yeah . . . when "beneficial" means "being barely able
> to eack out survival", I'm not sure how meaningful the
> term is. Sadly, that's the way it is for most people
> in the world. . .

But that's the way it is even without capitalism. Life
is hard. Social organization of one kind or another
can make it easier. If you keep the population *density*
low, everybody can be comfortable hunter-gathering.
But as the density rises, increasing demands are placed
on specialization, etc. etc. If you don't meet those
demands, you get squalor.

There's "exploitation". For example, the chefs at the
cafe where I used to work were being exploited because
they weren't citizens and didn't have proper paperwork.
That's because the laws of this country have artificially
raised the *transaction costs* of the getting paperwork.
A pure capitalist would tell you the answer is to get
rid of those laws. Lots of people are exploited, to use
the favorite example, when they buy a used car. That's
because the dealer *knows something* about the car that
the buyer doesn't. Nobody knows how to correct this, but
establishing trust databases can help (like a website
that rates dealers). So can buying insurance (a warranty).

There's colonial exploitation. It's tough, but places
like India are showing that you can, in a few generations,
begin to rise out of it. There's also the idea of having
ex-colonial powers pay reparations. Colonial exploitation
was ultimately a problem of asymmetric information --
Europeans had technology that blew the worldview of many
other cultures out of the water, like the coke bottle in
The Gods Must Be Crazy. It wasn't military -- the Spaniards
conquered South America on not much more than willpower.
Disease was crucial perhaps. But Pizarro won at Cajamarca
simply because the natives had no idea what was going on.

> > also dispute the above reasoning. But Michael
> > Albert instead gives us...
> >
> > "You must ignore the horrible pain suffered by
> > those left below or you must literally step on
> > them, pushing them farther down. In capitalism,
>
> I don't see what's so unreasonable about this?
>
> Most of us do this every day . . .I'm ignoring a lot
> of pain right now, and having a great time chatting on
> an e-mail list.

It isn't wrong or unreasonable, it just fails to address
anything about capitalism.

> 1) The emphasis in Albert's theory is on "participatory".
> I.e. -- bottom-up democracy. In that way, it would be
> significantly different from "socialism" as we've come to
> know it. . . which is mostly "command economy" where a few
> officials at the top decide what's good for most of
> the people.

We're living in a bottom-up democracy. It turns into a
command economy real quick. The genesis of political parties,
to the nightmare of the Gilded Age. Power has a way of
aggregating itself. How do you prevent this? Laws and
charters don't work. The system itself must have feedback
loops that reinforce the desired structure. I don't think
Albert understands this.

> 2) Aspects of socialism in countries like Sweden, Norway,
>etc. work very well, from all that I've heard. For example,
>health systems.

The argument I've read and adopted is that this requires
racial hegemony. Oil money helps in Norway.

> In the other case. . .here. . . well, I am a proud
> member of the 40 millioni un-insured citizens.

And me.

> > If you want to renumerate effort, you need a
> > way to measure effort. How do we do that?
>
> Does capitalism do a better job?
> Do CEOs really put in 5000 times more effort than janitors?
> (I may have low-balled that number. . . )

Capitalism doesn't measure effort. It measures value.

> But to take a contemporary example, if WALMART wants to
> build a superstore in a community, it should be up to the
> community // not WALMART's vast lobbying $$$, to decide
> whether the store arrives in town.

I agree, but the issue here is tricky. You've got to watch
out for, say, towns in the South voting black families out
of arriving in town.

> But there's lots of "information agreggation" that
> capitalism sucks at. // a corporation is just too crude
> a social mechanism to take other factors into account:
> like environmental effects, the standard of living
> of its workers, and so on. It just doesn't care about
> those things. Whatever's cheapest. Only a few rag-tag
> laws prevent things from degenerating into a situation
> even more horrible than what we've got.

I wouldn't call that information aggregation, but rather,
ignoring externalities. Coase showed that externalities
aren't a problem if transaction costs are zero. Now,
transaction costs are never zero. So lowering them is a
great idea. How do we do it?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Epistemology"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/7834 
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Jul 5, 2004
Subject: Re: Belief-O-Matic


> The only thing we experience directly is our own awareness,
> and then percepts. Percepts are colors, shapes, smells,
> emotions, concepts, etc. Percepts must be interpreted
> before we can make sense of them, otherwise instead of
> seeing a "table" all we will see is colors and shapes. So,
> any conception of our "bodies", "brains" "matter" etc, are
> constructs and interpretations,

The difference here is rather artificial. Percepts are
interpretations too, of even lower-level sensory data,
which are in turn interpretations of (say) vibrations in
the cochlea. And interpreting a "table" is usually sub-
conscious, just as interpreting "red" is usually subconscious.
And in either case one can consciously step in with a
little practice.

> arbitrary although perhaps useful.

If the interpretations are useful, they are not arbitrary.

> I do not see how one can be a "materialist",

The debate revolves around denying the existence of either
physical reality or mental interpretations (which we might
call "models").

One way of looking at it: Information is all there is.
Sometimes it admits to lossless modeling, and we say our
model is accurate to within the limits of experiment.
Other times, lossy compression is more useful, and we say
we are merely modeling an underlying physical reality.
Most of the time it's completely random, and we ignore
it completely.

> All of this can only be even considered by first
> completely ignoring the primacy of one's own consciousness
> and the contingency of all mental constructs such as
> "physicality" on that consciousness. Its not that
> "physicality" may not be a useful construct, just that
> it is not going to elucidate anything deeper than the
> cultural constructs from which it arose.

The old 'do you believe you will die?' question. Most
people do believe they'll die, and they go to the trouble
of writing wills, because they have a model that tells
them they're human, and that humans are mortal. In
short: models *can* provide information outside of the
context in which they arose.

>What I suggest is that the only thing that can be positied
>as such is awareness itself.

Awareness is vastly over-rated. It can be wonderful to
experience, but it isn't terribly important as far as the
ground rules of epistemology are concerned.

> Perhaps the greatest mystery of consciousness is how it is
> able to forget itself and get lost in the thicket of its
> concept-constructs. I find that the most sophisticated
> religious philosophies, like Buddhist Dzogchen, are nothing
> more than calls to remember the primacy of awareness.

And they're wonderful at that. Awareness is a boon for
self-management, but again, not terribly important in
epistemology. This is driven home in basic undergraduate
courses on epistemology, through which a majority of
students cannot stay awake.

> I'm not sure what you mean by "mystery"? To me, a mystery
> is something that is glimpsed or half-guessed at without
> being seen clearly. Consciousness is a "mystery" if you
> think >about< it, but if you simply abide in awareness,
> there is no mystery, as the knower and the known are one
> and the same.

Sounds like Eckhart Tolle.

Intelligence is always something of a mystery, otherwise
it wouldn't seem so intelligent. Consciousness enjoys no
such protection that I can see. Maybe it's just the
sensation of general-purpose neurons at work.

The "stream of consciousness" itself (just whatever is
going through your head; not awareness) is, in
behaviorist terms, merely the output of some internal
process attempting to reinforce itself by grabbing a
bigger megaphone -- sensory ports usually reserved for
all-important external stimuli.

-Carl
 
________________________________________________________________________

"Mindstuff"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8104
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Jul 9, 2004
Subject: Re: Belief-O-Matic


> > People really seem to have humans on the brain,
> > as it were. From where I'm sitting, humans are
> > at best impressive considering the fact that
> > they're not very impressive.
>
> What's your standard of impressive if not human?

To me, humans are the most impressive things in the
known universe. But I suspect more impressive things
are possible.

> > But why should the intoxicated view be
> > "distorted", while the sober view is
> > raised to the level of defining reality?
>
> This is a question I've always wondered about...and
> a good one. 'In vino est veritas'.....

To me, it means that mind can't be primary.

Castaneda draws the opposite conclusion: taking
mescaline can *actually* cause you to fly.

A friend of mine, with whom I shared many an altered
state, felt there was always some core bit that never
got altered.

But to me, it's just stupendously obvious that
mind is within brain/body, and that brain/body is
just a machine, and that similar machines can and
will be built.

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"Consciousness and the Mind"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8107
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2004
Subject: Re: Enlightenment, Buddhism, mind as non-algorithmic


> > > I don't understand how you think that. 'Insight'
> > > is a non-algorithmic phenomenon.
> > 
> > What evidence do you have to support this view?
> 
> Because no algorithm thus far has illustrated the
> 'creative spark' of insight.

Given that computers are only two (human) generations
old, it seems like shaky evidence.

> > > A machine cannot have insight unless it has a self.
> > 
> > What's a self?
> 
> If you have to ask, you'll never know. And I'm not
> being fatuous!
> 
> Look, we could go on endlessly, with me giving a
> definition from a dictionary, and you saying 'define
> that', and we'll get nowhere.

We'd get philosophy!  :)

> Awareness--let's turn the tables, and perhaps
> you can define it. ;)

"Awareness" is probably made up of several subphenomena,
all having to do with self-monitoring, as Minksy puts it.
First, though, we'll need a rough notion of how the
brain might work:

Your brain models the external world on networks of
oscillators, and somehow remembers many such models
and can instantly reactivate the right one when exposed
to just a hint of the corresponding stimulus. How it
does this is anybody's guess, but:

() memory/learning is probably a gradual 'burn in' --
the longer you look at this carpet, the better a memory
you'll have of it, at least to a point

() recall might somehow take advantage of mode-locking...

In addition to straight recall, a pattern or perhaps
class of patterns can be selected and pumped with noise,
so that what comes out will be like the memory, but
different. Poof: creativity. It goes reverse-polarity
all the way out the same motor/sense organs it came in.
Actually the neurons in your hands and such are just
part of the network. Here are two remote examples of
this kind of thing:

(1) Diana Dabby maps an artwork to a strange attractor,
then changes the initial coordinates of the attractor
by a small amount (IIRC)...

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lizb/chaotic-dance.html

(2) Bressloff, Cowan et al suggest that drug-induced
visual hallucinations are caused by noisy overactivity
in certain areas of the brain. They attempt to derive
the basic types of hallucinations reported by users
by injecting noise into a model of neuron connections
in the visual cortex.

Back to awareness. Part of it, as I said earlier, has
to do with things like linguistic creativity feeding
back to the sensory cortex -- the 'inner voice' that
philosophers and spiritualists tell us to quiet. But
even the qualia that seem to exist below concepts are
built of a myriad of inner reflections.

When you're observing something, it's burning in, and
this displaces other activity in that region of the
brain. Meanwhile, similar activity may be triggered
sympathetically in nearby areas. Myriad processes try
to figure out what they can do with the data.

Farther out, highly specialized neurons transform
sense data into rich representations -- edge detection
and motion detection are two examples in vision.

In short, experience isn't passive. It is a compound
of a huge number of reactions, which are based on our
past experience and our physiological design as humans.

Yes, I guess I'm a reductionist. Things always seem
mysterious until you take them apart.

But I'm a reductionist with a twist! Sometimes, even
if you take something apart, the outside behavior
remains mysterious! Emergent behavior. Anytime you
iterate a function whose output domain is smaller than
its input domain, supplying the extra input bits from
somewhere at each iteration, the bits you didn't supply
will be random (so long as the output states have equal
probability). Networks of ants or whatever often do
this, and the extra bits are supplied conveniently by
the other ants. In short, some things will forever
defy explanation -- you take them apart but it doesn't
help.

BUT: THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T BUILD THEM! And
taking them apart tells you how to do so. And ALL OF
IT IS COMPUTABLE.
 
> > Thing is, there aren't many people working on this
> > problem. Most algo-comp is specifically meant to
> > sound weird. EMI is the only attempt I know of,
> > and it's fairly successful.
> 
> I agree. But we also should note that it is not a
> system that modifies it's own code, or is in any
> way based on neural nets, GA, or anything
> biological.

Yeah: just think what you could do with such a system!

> > > Only the human programmer can make 
> > > the decision to add a new parameter.
> > 
> > Unless you have a program that can edit its own
> > code.
> 
> Can you explain how this would work in practice?
> How would the edited code 'know' it was making an
> effective aesthetic change.

You write a bit of code that's the aesthetic judge,
that monitors the results and gives feedback to the
code editor. Its own code may be self-editable too,
of course. This isn't a useless infinite regress,
either -- remember ants.

> How would it 'transcend' itself? How would it say
> 'This is boring--better do that instead'. How
> would it say 'This is boring in this context, but
> not in this context'.

You reward it when it learns, as demonstrated by
successful manipulation of its environment.

> Write the code for that, if it's simply that
> easy !!!!!

I didn't say it was easy.

> No machine to date has decided it's own goals
> outside of a human programmer's goals...

Why aren't humans machines, again?

> > > I will really only believe otherwise when I see that a
> > > machine possesses insight and joy, and compose a tune
> > > that wasn't based on hard-coded programmers rules.
> > 
> > You might just live to see it.
> 
> That would be mighty cool, and I'd jump for joy. But
> I'd bet otherwise. Right now, my wife and I would
> put $1000 down that Ray Kurzweil is wrong.

Kurzweil says stuff I think is wrong too. And my bet
is even easier to swallow, because the money happens
as late as 2055!

Actually, Kurzweil has this great paper where he bets
you a trillion dollars, or something like that.

> > > > > There is definately something funny and
> > > > > mysterious going on about life !!
> > > >
> > > > It's only mysterious until you understand it.
> > > > And Mark Tilden's work already suggests
> > > > mechanisms that might explain it.
> > > 
> > > Nonsense. Anything can be written on paper.
> > > The proof is in an organically creative robot.
> > 
> > You might not be familiar with Mark Tilden -- he's
> > a robot maker.
> 
> What about him?

It sounded like you were accusing him of being a
pencil pusher. His robots are pretty impressive.
I think you'd like them.

> I don't remember this guy's name (I think it was the
> 1960's or 70's?) who built little analog automatons
> that had a goal: recharge when the
> power is low by seeking out the wall socket.

There was a guy in the 50's who did that, I think.
One of the founders of a cybernetics. Tilden's bots
are analog-based, very simple. His basic bot is
eight transistors! Could have been built in the 50's.

> It turned out that each
> robot developed a different personality !!!
> Some were lazy, others active, etc. in spite
> of the fact that each one had the same
> circuit design. Explain that !!!! (my theory
> would be that there is some
> chaotic interaction with the environment)....

Sounds like a good theory.

> > Here's an argument:
> > 
> > http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2002.06.16
> 
> Like I said, I'd jump for joy, but I have severe doubts
> that the mind as we know it is at all algorithmic.
> 
> OTOH, if quantum computers start to happen, it might be
> possible to have human AI.

Quantum computers are algorithmic, and work on exactly
the same class of problems as conventional computers.
 
> > > It's also a way for scientists who think they've wrapped
> > > everything in the universe into a GUT to smuggly sit back
> > > and put the burden of proof of their unsolved questions
> > > on the semantics of everyday definitions. It's all smoke 
> > > and mirrors, and I've caught on to *that* game. 
> > 
> > I've never encountered such a scientist,
> > but I'll know what to do when I do.
> 
> Daniel Dennett is one. To him consciousness and
> subjectivity are 'not real' because they cannot be
> defined, which seems to be your line of reasoning.

I don't think I'd call Dennett a scientist, but I could be
wrong about that.

Anywho, my line of reasoning isn't: X can't be defined,
let's ignore it. It's: IF X can't be defined, you HAVE
to ignore it, in fact you'd never know about it in the
first place.
 
> > > What is your hangup with 
> > > *definition*? Haven't you played the 'circular 
> > > dictionary game'? All words are ultimately
> > > undefined and are only definable in terms of
> > > each other!!!
> > 
> > I haven't played the game, but I think you're
> > assuming a narrower version of definition than I.
> 
> ok...i'll bite. what version am i using?

I don't know. I just mean:

definable? = does it have a description?

> > > > > It's funny how some scientists don't accept
> > > > > paradox in consciousness studies, but they
> > > > > seem perfectly happy with all the weird
> > > > > paradoxes of QM.
> > > >
> > > > I don't know that they're happy about them, but
> > > > QM does have the benefit of making great
> > > > predictions.
> > > >
> > > > Also, I'm not sure I'd call them paradoxes -- the
> > > > "many histories" interpretation seems fairly
> > > > sensical.
> > > 
> > > Yes, but it violates many individuals faith in Occam's
> > > razor.
> > 
> > Actually the "many histories" interpretation is the
> > simplest I'm familiar with.
> 
> Well, you still have the problem of explaining why the
> universe goes through all that trouble branching like
> that.

That's the good thing about Many Histories -- it doesn't
actually branch. They are just could-have-beens. The
act of summing over collapses the possible histories to
a single actual event. Or something like that.

> Plus, its forever an untestable hypothesis.

That's why it's an _interpretation_. The testable theory
is QM itself.

> > > > > My theory is that mind is
> > > > > the substrate of reality,
> > > >
> > > > Swap "information" for "mind", and we agree.
> > > 
> > > Or, equate them!!
> > 
> > No, mind != information.
> 
> information is a meaningless concept without mind.
> information for whom?

That's a good question. I'll think about it.

> A successful theory of conscious awareness would have
> to account for why the molecules involved in the flavor
> of chocolate actually produce the particular
> *sensation* that is *qualitatively* chocolate.

Oh heavens, I don't give a rat's ass about that.
I must not be interested in a theory of consciousness.
 
> You, my friend, need to read Thomas Nagel's fine essay
> "What is it like to be a bat?". A functional
> description of the nervous functioning of an animal
> is still an infinity of light-years away from 
> a subjective experience of the bat, which is forever
> inaccesable to science.

Don't you mean inaccessible to humans?

I'll look for the 'ssay.

> A description of a vintage Bordeaux is not substitute
> for its tasting ;)

The right description is equivalent to the tasting.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Consciousness and the Mind 2"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8117
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Jul 10, 2004
Subject: Re: Enlightenment, Buddhism, mind as non-algorithmic

 
> > (1) Diana Dabby maps an artwork to a strange attractor,
> > then changes the initial coordinates of the attractor
> > by a small amount (IIRC)...
>
> That's Diana Dabby being creative, not the computer....

I think her technique demonstrates what might be going
on in creativity.

> > http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lizb/chaotic-dance.html
> >
> > (2) Bressloff, Cowan et al suggest that drug-induced
> > viusal hallucinations are caused by noisy overactivity
> > in certain areas of the brain. They attempt to derive
> > the basic types of hallucinations reported by users
> > by injecting noise into a model of neuron connections
> > in the visual cortex.
>
> Cool. I don't deny that the brain has a causal connection
> to the subjective results of mind, that much is clear.
> I deny that the appropriate network topology of neurons
> is sufficient for subjectivity.

Oh, so you're a mystic. There's no use arguing then.
But I find it hard to believe your apparent acceptance of
the Turing test, then.

> > Farther out, highly specialized neurons transform
> > sense data into rich representations -- edge detection
> > and motion detection are two examples in vision.
>
> Representations for what/whom? What needs a
> 'representation'?

Other processes.

> > Yes, I guess I'm a reductionist. Things always seem
> > myseterious until you take them apart.
> >
> > But I'm a reductionist with a twist! Sometimes, even
> > if you take something apart, the outside behavior
> > remains mysterious! Emergent behavior. Anytime you
> > iterate a function whose output domain is smaller than
> > its input domain, supplying the extra input bits from
> > somewhere at each iteration, the bits you didn't supply
> > will be random (so long as the output states have equal
> > probability). Networks of ants or whatever often do
> > this, and the extra bits are supplied conveniently by
> > the other ants. In short, some things will forever
> > defy explanation -- you take them apartbut it doesn't
> > help.
> >
> > BUT: THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T BUILD THEM! And
> > taking them apart tells you how to do so. And ALL OF
> > IT IS COMPUTABLE.
>
> The existence of non-computable mathematics puts this
> optimism in doubt for me.

It is possible, I'll grant you, that Turing universality
is wrong.

> I rather like the fact that the universe is throwing a
> monkey wrench in the assumptions of naive and proud
> computer scientists (OK, I admit, I have an emotional
> attachment to the idea of mind as fundamental)

Yes, just as fear of death and the unknown is a better
explanation of the World's religions than the existence
of deities... I'd say much the same thing is going on
with people's stubborn elevation of man in post-
enlightenment culture.

> I'll believe you when a computer has an emotional
> attachment to something that it wasn't specifically
> programmed to have.

Have you ever played the game Creatures? I haven't,
but based on its description in Steve Grand's book
_Creation_, it might satisfy you here.

By the way, I consider this book the best single
book ever written on the topic of AI!!

> I say poentially, because I concede that humans can be
> quite mechanical (as pointed out by Hofstader in
> Metamagical Themas)

Speaking of Hofstadter, his Metacat is a neat example
of self-modifying code. IIRC the paper on it is
included in Metamagical Themas.

> > You write a bit of code that's the aesthetic judge,
> > that monitors the results and gives feedback to the
> > code editor. Its own code may be self-editable too,
> > of course. This isn't a useless infinite regress,
> > either -- remember ants.
>
> The key word being 'you' (the human programmer). I
> would want the machine to decide that this was
> neccessary *by itself*, as a result of the emergent
> behavior you claim is key to consciousness.

But humans are born with innate and very elaborate
goal-seeking systems hard-wired in*. We don't choose
to want sex, avoid pain, hunger for food, etc. etc.

To the extent you can't predict the behavior of your
creation, I'd say you've succeeded in creating
something independent of your design.

* There's a caveat here. Most of this stuff probably
isn't formed by birth -- it finishes later, in response
to the environment. And you won't find the instructions
in the DNA -- at least you won't be able to recognize
them. There aren't enough bits in DNA to describe a
human, even at birth. That means information is being
created, probably through Wolfram's "intrinsic randomness
generation". Nevertheless, there are many innate
drives -- such as being attracted to girls' asses --
which are shared by a majority of the male population
and which I don't think can be explained culturally,
though they can probably be prevented from forming or
covered up with the right environment. In this sense
only is the term "hard wired" is appropriate.

> > You reward it when it learns, as demonstrated by
> > successful manipulation of its environment.
> >
> > > Write the code for that, if it's simply that
> > > easy !!!!!
> >
> > I didn't say it was easy.
>
> Perhaps because it's impossible?

I don't think so.

> > Actually, Kurzweil has this great paper where he bets
> > you a trillion dollars, or something like that.
>
> That's ballsy....

You gotta read it, it's a hoot. Check out kurzweilai.net.

> > > I don't remember this guy's name (I think it was the
> > > 1960's or 70's?) who built little analog automatons
> > > that had a goal: recharge when the
> > > power is low by seeking out the wall socket.
> >
> > There was a guy in the 50's who did that, I think.
> > One of the founders of a cybernetics. Tilden's bots
> > are analog-based, very simple. His basic bot is
> > eight transistors! Could have been built in the
> > 50's.
>
> Do you know who that 50's guy was?

I think I was thinking of Gordon Pask.

Here's a nice listing of cyberneticists...

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CSTHINK.html

This came up...

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10126&ttype=6

$10!? You gotta be kidding me.

But, damnit, I may have been confusing Pask with someone else.
I remember seeing a photo of little robots hiding in this
guy's closet. Black & White, I think, and I think the robots
were based on vacuum tubes.....

> > Quantum computers are algorithmic, and work on exactly
> > the same class of problems as conventional computers.
>
> That's not what I've read---I've read that they potentially
> open up a class of non-computable problems. I could be
> misremembering.

It's not true, in any case. They make EXPTIME problems
practical, is all.

> > > information is a meaningless concept without mind.
> > > information for whom?
> >
> > That's a good question. I'll think about it.
>
> It's a crucial question....

Information is definitely relative to the observer, even
in Shannon, as we discussed in the car. Feynman's example
was, if I wanted to transmit Hamlet to you and I knew you
already had it on your shelf, I could just say, go over
to your shelf and read Hamlet.

However, this doesn't mean that mind = information,
which was how I read your original statement, which seems
to have been deleted in the quoting-and-replying.

> > > You, my friend, need to read Thomas Nagel's fine essay
> > > "What is it like to be a bat?". A functional
> > > description of the nervous functioning of an animal
> > > is still an infinity of light-years away from
> > > a subjective experience of the bat, which is forever
> > > inaccesable to science.
> >
> > Don't you mean inaccessible to humans?
> >
> > I'll look for the 'ssay.
>
> It's great, and will get you thinking.

It's here in my browser. If I can just get away from this
damn list!

> > > A description of a vintage Bordeaux is not substitute
> > > for its tasting ;)
> >
> > The right description is equivalent to the tasting.
>
> The description that is equivalent to the tasting is
>
> a) non-computable
> b) impossible
> c) therefore doesn't exist

Don't follow you here. I thought one of your proposals
was that non-computable things might be possible, for
example in the brain. Non-computable just means not
computable by a Turing machine. As far as we know there's
nothing that fits that bill, but. . .

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Wolfram on Randomness"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8139
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2004
Subject: re: Penrose's argument

 
> > Turing machines already have access to the most random
> > behaviors known.
>
> They do? Can you elaborate? I thought quantum phenomena,
> like radioactive decay, were the most random behaviors
> known. I thought there were no algorithms that generate
> this level of randomness, unless you count Chaitin's.

Not according to Wolfram. He compares various empirical
sources of randomness to Rule 30 (as well as some more
well-known algorithmic methods that are embarrassingly
poor!). Including:

() Electronic noise
() thermal (Johnson) noise
() shot noise
() flicker (1/f) noise
() Mechanical randomness
() dice
() roulette wheels
() Quantum randomness
"It is usually assumed that even if all else fails a
quantum process such as radioactive decay will yield
perfect randomness. But in practice the most accurate
measurements show phenomena such as 1/f noise,
presumably as a result of features of the detector and
perhaps of electromagnetic fields associated with decay
products. Acceptable randomness has however been
obtained at rates of tens of bits per second. Recent
attempts have also been made to produce quantum
randomness at megahertz rates by detecting paths of
single photons."
He's referring here to Bell-inequality-violating
experiments...
"In ordinary quantum theory, a straightforward calculation
implies that the expected value of the product of the two
measured spin values will be -Cos[theta]. But now imagine
instead that when each photon is produced it is assigned
a "hidden variable" Phi that in effect explicitly specifies
the angle of its polarization. Then assume that a polarizer
oriented at 0deg. will measure the spin of such a photon to
have value f[Phi] for some fixed function f. Now the
expected value of the product of the two measured spin
values is found just by averaging over Phi as
Integrate[f[Phi]f[theta-Phi], {Phi, 0, 2Pi}]/(2Pi)
A version of Bell's inequalities is then that this integral
can decrease with theta no faster than theta/(2Pi)-1 -- as
achieved when f = Sign (in 3-D Phi must be extended to a
sphere, but the same final result holds). Yet as mentioned
on pg. 1058, actual experiments show that in fact the
decrease with theta is more rapid -- and is instead
consistent with the quantum theory result -Cos[theta]. So
what this means is that there is in a sense more correlation
between measurements made on separated photons than can
apparently be explained by the individual photons carrying
some kind of hidden property. (In the standard formalism of
quantum theory this is normally explained by saying that the
two photons can only meaningfully be considered as part of
a single "entangled" state. Note that because of the
probabilistic nature of the correlations it turns out to be
impossible to use them to do anything that would normally
be considered communicating information faster than the
speed of light.)
A basic assumption in deriving Bell's inequalities is that
the choice of polarizer angle for measuring one photon is
not affected by the choice of". . .

Hey, I forgot, the book is now online!

http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1065

You'll need to register, though.

Of course, he seldom gives references to back up his
claims. And he uses an annoying number of self-
references -- wormholes in the book. He obviously
tagged sections with variables that were later replaced
with page numbers once the book was complete. I think
programs like Lynx let you do this, but Wolfram
apparently used Mathematica.

In short, Wolfram says that there's ultimately only one
source for randomness, and that's "intrinsic randomness
generation" (which I attempted to characterize in a
previous post). He accuses randomness in chaotic systems
of having been injected in the initial conditions. And
where there really is randomness being observed, he
thinks its source is intrinsic randomness generation.

One prediction of such a position is that where one does
observe randomness in nature, one might occasionally
expect to see the same random sequence occurring again.
In fact Wolfram suggests the morphology of turbulent
flows (among other things) provides an example of this.

However, he says empirical sources of randomness are
generally poor in quality because whatever intrinsic
random generation is going on underneath is degraded
by correlations stemming from things like conservation
laws. For example, after a spark crosses between two
plates, effects to the medium between the plates make
it less (or more) likely that a spark will travel that
path at subsequent times.

Just don't go trying to *prove* that certain numbers
are random -- you get into all kinds of trouble. Mainly,
you need about as many bits of axioms as it takes to
write the number you're trying to prove is random.

-Carl
 
________________________________________________________________________

"The Holographic Principle"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8143
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2004
Subject: Re: Enlightenment, Buddhism, mind as non-algorithmic

 
> > The holographic principle is far from trivial:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
>
//
> It's the first thing to come out of the study of black
> holes that's interested me.
>
> If we replace the black hole with any region of spacetime,
> I would almost expect it, though. If information is
> radiating from that region on light rays, or whatever,
> we might expect an inverse square law to apply.

Er, let me try again: How much information is in an
infinitesimal point? One bit, or some finite amount
that's the same for every infinitesimal point. Now,
expand uniformly outward to cover a spherical region of
space. Each point on the surface of the sphere
corresponds to a single line back to the point. You
might think a line could encode information about all
the points it passed on its way out to you, but it's
minimally thin -- Planck diameter -- so it can only ever
carry some fixed amount of information. Therefore the
total information is proportional to the area of the
sphere's surface. You could say there's more
information trapped inside -- even without a black
hole -- but it can never get out to you, so it's a
meaningless statement.

I know I said spacetime, rather than space, above,
but I didn't mean it.

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"The Age of Empires"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8164
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2004
Subject: Re: [MMM] Re:Paul's Music Box


>>My $150 computer netted me an AMD K7 running at
>>1.5 GHz, more than sufficient for my requirements.
>
>Wish we had prices like that here in the UK.
>You pay $1000 for the cheapest model
>of laptop here, unless you get it second
>hand. Similar prices for a decent desktop
>computer.
>
>Example - the people I bought my desktop computer
>from are selling a low range laptop for £675.62
>which is 1,253.61 dollars and that would be considered
>cheap for a laptop here - you wouldn't expect
>anything fancy at that price. If you have special
>requirements it might well be over $2000
>and that wouldn't be considered expensive,
>only middle range. Expensive would be more
>like $3000 to $4000.
>
>Lucky you :-).

Honestly, I don't know how Europeans afford anything.

Actually, despite that Americans still enjoy low prices
on many things, I think it's starting to happen here.
For one thing, none among my close classmates are likely
to be as wealthy as their parents. I wonder if this
isn't part of the natural progression of Empires. You
get obscene wealth, but then all that wealth causes
inflation, and that crushes your younger generations.
Did the American Empire top out in 1965? Looks like it
from where I'm sitting. In this view, it's abhorrent
but understandable that Republicans are trying so hard
for another WWII.

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"Functional Humans"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8233
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Jul 12, 2004
Subject: Re: Did the sex question get answered?


> > If human beings are machines that compute a certain
> > function, and you have a Turing machine that computes
> > the same function... then you have a human being.
>
> It doesn't follow from your premises, since there are
> many ways to compute the same function.

The above glosses over the question of whether we're
talking about humans in general, or instances of
humans.

That aside, I'm claiming it doesn't really matter how
you do it -- you get as close to what you want as you
got with your definition of the function.

Time is the most glaring thing -- if your
implementation takes a billion years, it isn't quite
human. But it really *couldn't* compute the same
function on that time scale because many of the things
humans do to their environment would be impossible if
you slowed them down that much.

So if you get really picky in defining this function,
what you get has to look quite Homo sapien. And indeed
a Turing machine computing the function on an atomic-
scale tape might actually produce a Homo sapien.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Conservative Consistency"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8649
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004
Subject: Re: babrjkl


>> A devil's advocate for the conservatives would say: why
>> shouldn't I protect the unborn fetus and *not* provide for
>> it's raising (welfare)? The argument is that I may not be
>> responsible for your whole life, but I will protect from
>> episodes of danger where that life is threatened, just as
>> I might stop you from being mugged on the street, but not
>> pay your salary.
>
> I would argure that one is then being inconsistent. Same
> with death penalty. They will claim the right of the state to
> execute but pull out the bible when it is a many celled animal
> that at one point can be come a human.

I see your point, but forget about religious arguments for a
second (it shouldn't be surprising that they're inconsistent).
I'm sure there's a 'reasoning' that assigns a greater social
cost to abortion than to war or the death penalty, that's as
consistent as any such reasoning.

By the way, I used to think Christianity was logically
indefensible, but in the last few years I've met some really
smart folks who have interpretations I hadn't considered
before, which seem sensible, even poetic.

> It i have a tree and you refuse to let me cut it down,
> you can not hold me responsible for if it falls on you.

Sure I can, unless cutting it down was the ONLY way to prevent
it from falling on me. Abortion is not the only way to
prevent children from growing up to be violent criminals.

> The ethics of religion ( not that i think that two need
> to be related and both will do better without the other)

Agreed.

> is based on its own conviencance, they tell you what to do
> yet will not lift a hand or take responsibility of their
> impositions.

Historically, there's probably a good case for this.

> If we empty out the churches, we would have more than enough
> housing for the homeless. Instead these institutions hoard
> their property when 6 days out of the week, it is dysfunctional.

Lots of churches run homeless shelters, or loan their space
to boy-scout troops or chess clubs.

In one sense, I think the money spent on churches is not being
used to the fullest. But -- I was just thinking about this the
other day on my way to somewhere -- in a wider sense, what if
this is the only way to reach some people? I mean, maybe some
folks would be even worse off if they didn't have that outlet
in their lives. Maybe it's not optimal, but if they're too
closed off to accept therapy, or shamanism, or whatever... maybe
it's still a good thing.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Libertarian Liberals?"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8662
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004
Subject: Re: babrjkl


>> Libertarians might say, if the social services are so good, why
>> not make their funding optional, rather than forcing people to
>> pay for them? An intermediate idea would be to assess a certain
>> amount of tax, but let folks choose how some of it gets spent.
>> It could start with a few small options and expand, if successful,
>> into the Libertarian ideal.
//
> Government seems to act as if everyone must agree. The whole
> issue of majority rule clearly has problems which render it not
> actually democratic,

What is actually democratic? It seems to me the problems to
which you allude are the essence of democracy.

> and models to work that out, like more sophisticated models for
> elections (instant recount, etc.)

That's the Democratic party model. :) You're thinking of
Instant Runoff. See...

http://lumma.org/microwave/#2004.01.07

> have the problem of being sophisticated. Yet it seems to me
> that somehow making it into a bunch of businesses might resolve
> some of this. No one is forced to participate in what they
> don't want to participate in.

Well, that's the whole idea behind anarcho-capitalism.

> If this could be extended to constitutional articles, and like
> some story I read (what was it?) people could chose to live in
> areas where murder is legal, if that's what they wanted.

We were talking about this the other night, but I don't
remember a reference to a work of fiction. The colonies of
Australia and Georgia, to name two, were perhaps in this
direction.

> The downside is perhaps that people who make bad choices may
> still be in the majority, and so the market will be dragged
> down by that, with better offerings looking like bad business
> to the savvy.

If you don't want to impose any external metric, then anarchy
is the only way. If you want to protect individual rights,
you need a common-law layer or something. If you want to
maximize market efficiency, you need a Keynesian layer, or
similar. If you want to maximize civility, you need a socialist
layer (heathcare for all, etc.).

> Not that I feel totally thrilled about the idea of the
> government being just a bunch of corporations. But it
> *would* be more honest perhaps.

It amazes me how many liberals are completely unfamiliar
with libertarian ideas.

> Only the really stupid trust a corporation to love them and
> take care of their best interests.

How is the structure of a corporation less trustworthy than
the structure of government?

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"Ideal Trades"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8673
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004
Subject: Re: babrjkl


> > > > No one is forced to participate in what they don't
> > > > want to participate in.
> > >
> > > Well, that's the whole idea behind anarcho-capitalism.
> >
> > Have some people thought out how this would actually look,
> > maybe in a fictional context?
>
> Haven't you read Rand?

Not that Rand's stuff really explains the ideal by presenting
a fiction in which it is already realized (which is what you
want, I think). It more exaggerates what's wrong with
reality, and complains about it by having characters launch
into 60-page speeches about what's wrong. It's pedantic,
too long, and bit wacked. But some of the speeches are good,
and her work has had enough influence that I at least recommend
Atlas Shrugged.

I'm sure there are works of fiction which express the
libertarian ideal as realized. But I can't think of any
off hand.

> > >> Only the really stupid trust a corporation to love
> > >> them and take care of their best interests.
> > >
> > > How is the structure of a corportation less trustworthy
> > > than the structure of government?
> >
> > Not. But fewer people *trust* corporations blindly
> > (knowing that the exist for profit)
>
> And what is profit?

I'll answer this awhile. In an ideal trade, both parties
come out ahead. Many libertarians will tell you that all
trades in a free society are ideal, otherwise they wouldn't
take place. But that's not true. There's the problem of
imperfect information. The classic example is the purchase
of a used car, which is like a black box -- its real value
is nearly impossible for a buyer to assess. Dealers, on the
other hand, are in a position to know a little bit more.
There are other problems caused by trade asymmetries. If
I'm worried about what I'm going to eat, my ability to make
fair trades is likely to be compromised. Unfortunately,
these obvious exceptions have only been codified into formal
economics very recently, though I think Marx was trying his
best to say something cogent about them.

Anyway, in the ideal case, both sides do come out ahead,
and this improvement is represented as profit. So it's a
good thing, and seeking it is noble. At its most basic
level, it's a representation of the gains of collaboration.
Two people are more productive together then the sum of
their individual productivity.

What do companies do with profits? They pay their
employees, invest back into the activity that earned them,
and pay dividends to the investors who gambled on the
possibility of the activity in the first place. All good
things. And the result is fine-grained regulation of
each activity in the human sphere.

The only trouble comes from exploiting imperfect trades,
outright theft, etc. No human institution is free of
these things, or the threat of them. Many corporations
are publicly-owned, which strangely doesn't seem to
satisfy Berkeley socialists.

etc.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Natural Evolution"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8676
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004
Subject: Re: babrjkl


> > There's a ton of stuff on the web. Did you know they're
> > trying to take over ... is it, New Hampshire?
> 
> Sounds interesting, anyway.

http://www.freestateproject.org/

> >> Maybe AnarchyPlus(tm). Some other "layer" is needed, yet it
> >> seems reasonable that participation in a layer must be by
> >> agreement. Therefore by there must exist places that provide
> >> alternatives to the agreements imposed by any layer. This
> >> almost implies the existance of multiple countries.
> > 
> > I've suggested that sufficiently limber courts could do it all.
> 
> Maybe multiple courts with the right to wage on each other but
> not on the people?  ;)

http://lumma.org/stuff/newlaw.txt

> There was something interesting from the Dosadi experiment
> wherein as I recall the judicial system was relegated
> (outsourced) to a specific race, and that race had particular
> moral values which made them well-suited to the job. As I
> recall there was something like a death penalty for the lawyer
> who lost the case. Immediately after the trial (in the
> courtroom) the lawyer was killed by his colleagues.

Who was it that suggested the best government is by a total
monarch who is shot at the end of his term?
 
> >> Anyway the minimal layer I was thinking of is a layer that
> >> defines groundrules for participation or non-participation
> >> in all other kinds of layers.
> > 
> > Generally written language isn't sufficient -- you need an
> > interpretive body.
> 
> Yes, well thats a "layer" anyway. You need to have consensus
> to honor the courts, etc. So to be fair in that kind of
> absolute minimalist scheme you need a place for people to go
> and be outside of any system, if they wish.

Anarcho-capitalists would agree. In their ideal, instead of
police (for example), you get to choose between competing
protection services. But monopoly has its place, and free
markets don't guarantee its absence. Indeed, the present
reality may have evolved from one in which there were
competing protection agencies. AFAIK there is no general
consensus in the anarcho-capitalist school on how to deal
with such natural evolution.

> >> Smaller government is all I ever heard people talk about.
> > 
> > My friend Dan has written about the "unholy alliance between
> > fiscal conservatives (libertarian-leaning folks) and the
> > religious right" that make up today's Republican party.
> > A Frankenstein monster of a party. He suggests that alliance
> > is beginning to crack, but I'm not so sure.
> > 
> > Bush does have some of it, though. He suggestion to fix
> > social security is to return some of the responsibility to
> > the people.
> 
> That's fine but its also an excuse for dumping it into obvlivion
> without seeming to do so. On the other hand the USPS is not an
> absolute failure.

I'm confused about the nature of the USPS. I've read that it
is a private corporation, but I assume it is subsidized by
taxpayers...

> Just looks pretty disappointing compared to what it used to
> be when it was the US Mail.

Maybe you can fill me in on the history here...

> >> Problem is I just don't get exposed. Same problem most
> >> people have in this country.
> > 
> > That's what I was trying to say in this thread. The 'evil
> > corporations' stuff I hear bandied around Berkeley is really
> > ignorant, for example. Right up there with the "natural"
> > vs. synthetic myth.
> 
> It depends on what you mean. You don't mean to deny that
> value of nutrients in their original context, e.g. cellular
> context, do you? I can take strong chinese antibiotics and
> have no bad digestive side-effects, for example. Well that
> may be a different but related point -- that's because its a
> designed formula, designed to be in balance. The other point
> is more that nature has its own designed formulas: the fact
> that antidotes to most sources of poison exist in close
> proximity to the poison throughout nature.

Is that a fact?

> This is supposedly true of poison oak, IIRC, but I can't
> remember the details.

Sounds like BS to me.

Ecosystems are complex and metastable. It shouldn't be a
surprise that there are many things about which are edible
and nutritious, or that it's hard to synthesize improvements
on this. Yes, most illnesses could be prevented with
lifestyle changes requiring only very basic technology.

But:

() Everything's "natural".
() There are plenty of plants, insects, molds, etc., that
will happily kill you if given the chance.
() There are more than a few synthetic materials around
that are quite nice to have.
() I was referring to the acceptance of anything that anyone
claims is "natural" as good, without further investigation.
I've observed this behavior from a dozen people in the last
year, and they should be taken 'round back and shot.

> > I recommend the Economist. It's $129 for 52 issues.
> > Possibly the best magazine in print.
> 
> The problem is recycling all 52 issues!

You can get an online-only sub.

> >>> How is the structure of a corportation less trustworthy
> >>> than the structure of government?
> >> 
> >> Not. But fewer people *trust* corporations blindly (knowing
> >> that the exist for profit)
> > 
> > And what is profit?
> 
> I'm trying to describe something loosely here. I'm making a
> conjecture about how "the masses" might see things. A precise
> definition of profit is irrelevant to conjectures about the
> opinions/believes of the masses. Again I'm not making an
> argument about what is better, just about how people might
> tend to perceive it, that people *might* perceive corporations
> more accurately than government. I'm not sure, but that was
> my conjecture.

Ah; misunderstood the voice of your comment.
 
> >> than *trust* government blindly, I think.
> > 
> > Both are just ways of organizing people. Publically-held
> > corporations have weaknesses, but I find them FAR more
> > trustworthy than any branch of our government. Our government
> > jails people for pocessing contraband plants. Our
> > government kills thousands in Iraq. Corporations make
> > weapons and drug tests, but they wouldn't do so if there
> > were no market for those goods.
> 
> The lack of government per-se would not mean an end to the
> market for arms.

I didn't say it would. But I believe the actions of the US
government have increased the amount and severity of weapons
in the world 100-fold beyond what was necessary, even without
any governance change of the kind we are discussing.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Fine Tuning"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8686
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004
Subject: Re: babrjkl


> > http://www.freestateproject.org/
> > http://lumma.org/stuff/newlaw.txt
>
> Yikes I don't know when I can read this stuff. Our hot water
> heater is failing and I still haven't taken my car in for an
> estimate... etc. etc.

My document is brief but dense. The free state project is a
"new strategy for achieving freedom in our lifetime". Back
in the mid nineties they drew up an agreement which asked
libertarian-minded folks to promise to move to a single state,
that would be selected by the signatories on the basis of the
possibility of swaying its government in a libertarian direction.
The selection took several years, but they've picked New
Hampshire. Interestingly, that selection was done, IIRC, with
a Condorcet vote. I signed the agreement, but I don't believe
they've reached the number of signatures required to activate
it. There have been rumors of the whole thing turning nasty --
fighting with the locals, infighting, etc. Don't know if that's
true.

> > Who was it that suggested the best government is by
> > a total monarch who is shot at the end of his term?
>
> I can't remember. Sounds like a good plan maybe. ;) But
> in some cases maybe it should happen earlier. Well,
> regardless, it would be the end of his term. ;)

:):)

> > I'm confused about the nature of the USPS. I've read that it
> > is a private corporation, but I assume it is subsidized by
> > taxpayers...
>
> Hmm, I guess I didn't know/remember that it was subsidized.

Maybe it isn't...

> >> Just looks pretty disappointing compared to
> >> what it used to be when it was the US Mail.
> >
> > Maybe you can fill me in on the history here...
>
> Well the experience of the last 40 years has been a gradual
> decay in the quality/competence of the mail. People used to
> depend on it in ways that aren't possible anymore. Probably
> only competition keeps it from being completely useless. On
> the other hand many other things have changed at the same
> time, so you can't just blame the mail. For example the
> availability of employees who are loyal and work hard for
> little money and for the sake of pride, that's a vanishing
> phenomenon. And that also seems healthy in some ways (because
> the old way is too tied to abuse of workers), but has its
> consequences.

Probably the amount of mail per capita per day has gone up
tremendously, also.

But my experience with the mail, in the time I've used it,
has been excellent. I've never had a problem with a lost
item, and I consider the rates reasonable and the delivery
prompt.

> >> It depends on what you mean. You don't mean to deny that
> >> value of nutrients in their original context, e.g. cellular
> >> context, do you? I can take strong chinese antibiotics and
> >> have no bad digestive side-effects, for example. Well that
> >> may be a different but related point--that's because its a
> >> designed formula, designed to be in balance. The other
> >> point is more that nature has its own designed formulas: the
> >> fact that antidotes to most sources of poison exist in close
> >> proximity to the poison throughout nature.
> >
> > Is that a fact?
>
> Pretty well documented. Horticulturalists (at least some) know
> examples off the top of their heads. I'll have to ask Marty.
> She's pointed out some of these things when we've been on hikes.

I'm trying to imagine what it would take to convince me of
this...

> >> This is supposedly true of poison oak, IIRC, but I can't
> >> remember the details.
> >
> > Sonuds like BS to me.
>
> In the poison oak case I don't think we are talking about an
> absolute cure, which I guess is the usual connotation of
> antidote. Maybe I have my facts crossed.

As someone who unwittingly wound up trapped for a night on a
mountainside in Big Sur in the middle of a Poison Oak monoculture,
I'm a bit skeptical. Unless a yellow jacket sting cures it --
'cause I got one climbing down the next morning. :(

In fact the cure *was* naturally occurring nearby -- Technu
brand anti-urushiol soap at the convenience store a few miles
up the road. And a stream of fresh water flowing out of a
culvert just below the road.

> But it makes total sense, is even obvious, with any thinking
> about yin/yang. You have all these dimensions each of which
> has a yin side and a yang side (but call it what you like).
> Plants near each other involve a local polarization. If
> something is concentrated in one plant it is sparse in
> another nearby. Or maybe clearer to spell it out more,
> tentatively: if a given plant requires something concentrated
> in it, it will be removing that from the soil. If something
> else grows well near it, it will not require that thing, and
> better yet if it provides that thing in the soil. Apply
> that to a large variety of dimensions simultaneously, and
> then look at the specific situation of two plants that cohabit
> well: they are likely to be opposite in many dimensions to
> cohabit well. Thus the antidoting. That's nobody's theory
> but my own, but it seems kind of obvious, intuitive. Which
> is the way yin/yang theory/thinking is supposed to be.

I'm afraid it isn't intuitive or even meaningful to me.

> Here's some from Marty:
>
> * arnica is near rocks, and it is good for bumps, etc.
> (that goes outside of my model above)
> * stinging nettle and plantain
> * poison ok: nope, sorry

I'm sure there are many great examples, but it's an selection
issue. It's difficult to define failing cases, so it's
difficult to count them.

> > Ecosystems are complex and metastable. It shouldn't be a
> > surprise that there are many things about which are edible
> > and nutritious, or that it's hard to synthesize improvements
> > on this. Yes, most illnesses could be prevented with
> > lifestyle changes requiring only very basic technology.
> >
> > But:
> >
> > () Everything's "natural".
> > () There are plenty of plants, insects, molds, etc., that
> > will happily kill you if given the chance.
> > () There are more than a few synthetic materials around
> > that are quite nice to have.
//
> To make a long story short, synthetic is therefore confounded
> with "refined". Refinement can be done physically, as in
> refined sugar. Something simpler is extracted from something
> more complex. So refinement can happen without
> analysis/synthesis. But analysis/synthesis tends to depend on
> refinement.

Nonsense. Teflon, for example, is simply the product of
human imagination turned loose on the laws of chemistry,
which the universe has been found to obey.

> In various holistic healing perspectives that I have some
> cursory familiarity with, refinement is seen as a potential
> problem, because something is removed from its context. Thus
> refined sugar as potential health risks that were unlikely
> to exist in people with only raw sugar cane available to them.

Yes, that makes sense. It also happens to be true. Refined
sugar has a high glycemic index, and tends to facilitate
confections with high glycemic indices. Early and steady
exposure to such foods causes type-II diabetes, which is now
at epidemic proportions in the US. Also, metabolism is
generally expensive -- one should not bother to burn calories
unless they are accompanied by nutrition.

But the general principle here involves evolutionary adaptation
of organisms to their environments, and not necessarily a
universal law of "contexts".

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Political Questionairre"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8838
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005
Subject: Re: Political questionairre


> Inspired by 'the Political Compass', I wanted to know how
> you would all answer:
>
> write 'SD' for 'Strongly Disagree'
> write 'D' for 'Disagree'
> write 'A' for 'Agree'
> write 'SA' for 'Strongly Agree'
>
> 1. The government should not put a cap or any 'welfare-to-work
> accountability' on welfare.

D

I would tend to disagree, but "work" can mean many things.
Such caps only benefits society if the "work" benefits
society. I'd like to see alternatives to normal "work" be
developed, rather than forcing everyone to take some
random shit job.

> 2. The government should not put a cap on the amount of
> children that should be born and covered in a single welfare-
> recipient household.

SD

All children should be guaranteed an excellent education.
Beyond that, welfare credits might be capped at 1 child per
household. This would encourage the population of welfare-
takers to decrease, while still supporting the normal
human activity of procreation.

> 3. The left-wing doesn't have an 'agenda', and is always
> honest; only the right-wing have an agenda.

SD

Nobody should be assumed honest.

> 4. Corporations by definition are corrupt.

SD

Nobody should be assumed by-definition corrupt.

> 5. If I come across something on the internet or on TV about
> a government conspiricy, it can be assumed true.

SD

Nothing should be assumed true.

> 6. The U.S. mainstream media reports more lies than it does
> factual truths. I completely distrust all U.S. media.

SD

I would SA here, except the question is apparently comparing
US media to something else. I distrust the news process more
or less equally in all locales.

> 6a. Some U.S. media companies are less than honest, but in
> general I trust what I see and hear in the U.S. media.

See above.

> 6b. European media companies work under different business
> premises than U.S. media companies, therefore they are more
> trustworthy.

SD

The news-spreading process is more or less a basic part of
human nature. Its amazing unreliability can scarcely be
worsened by 'business premises'.

> 7. Anything written in an underground media paper or weblog
> critical of a Republican is to be taken as probably true
> precisely because the mainstream media is avoiding the story.

SD

See above. Though note that blogging probably does slightly
improve, for the first time ever, the reliability of the news.

> 8. European nations do not have secret agendas of their own.
> Only the U.S. is corrupt.

SD

> 9. Terrorism is sometimes justified.

A

> 9a. The 3000 deaths on 9/11 were a fair price.

For what?

> 10. Any and/or all art or artists should be funded by taxpayers.

SD

> 11. Some cultures are inherently more violent or savage than
> others.

A

> 11a. All of humanity is basically savage on some level.

I don't know.

> 12. It was wrong for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan post-9/11
> to oust the Taliban.

D

> 13. The French govt. was right to criticize the U.S. for
> invading Afghanistan without U.N. approval.

I don't know.

> 14. The French govt. was right to invade the Ivory Coast
> several days later without U.N. approval.

I don't know.

> 15. The French govt. is hypocritical. (notice your answers
> to 13 and 14--this will help)

"Join us while we mock the country that twice saved us from
the Germans..."

> 16. Globalization is a force for peace.

A

> 17. The U.N. is a trustworthy, uncorrupt body.

I don't know.

> 18. The U.N. was acting responsibly when it made Libya's
> Khadafi chair of the human rights committee.

I don't know.

> 19. The world would be much better off without religion of
> any sort.

D

The world is probably better off with something else in place
of what the God of Abraham religions. Removing them might
leave a nasty vacuum somewhere. I'm sure religious practice
holds lots of folks together...

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Internal and External"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/8968
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Apr 7, 2005.
Subject: Re: Digest Number 1197


> There are lots of things i am am happy about, and lots of
> things i can enjoy.  But i just can't walk around with a
> smile everyday and say things are good, even though this
> is what everyone is doing.  many of these problems are
> environmental and have nothing to do with the person at all.
//
> we live in this warped belief that there is no outside
> world, just our right or wrong attitude"

Hi Kraig,

I've wrestled with this question for a long time.  It isn't
just a European idea -- many Eastern thinkers suggest looking
inward.  There's great truth to this.  But it's never clear
where to draw the line.  Obviously if everybody just considered
all problems to be internal, there'd be no way to fix a real
problem if one did come up.  So much of what I see seems like
a nightmare come true -- the isolation of industrial life...
overcompetition, advertisements, cities that are forbidden to
provide free wireless internet access for their citizens by
rules lobbied into law at the State level by big telephone
companies (who are all about "competition" until some actually
arrives -- then it's a threat to the fabric of society).  People
locked away for years for using marijuana.  Kids raised in
"the projects" at such a disadvantage, if one does want the
job, house, etc.

Earlier tonight some friends and I stumbled upon an old Kodak
slide projector from, probably the '50s.  It was amazing.
They really *don't* make *anything* like that any more.  There's
nice stuff to be bought if you're rich, but even the rich can't
buy craftsmanship like this.  Sadly, Kodak no longer makes
projectors (as of 2003 or 2004).

A big part of the trouble, I believe, is people not being able
to start families at what I see as a biologically normal age --
early 20s.  Or maybe it's just a lack of touch in general.
Yeah, I think I'd decided that was it.

Thanks for listening,

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Meaning and Science"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9310
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Oct 4, 2005.
Subject: meaning and science


Hi Justin,

> > > That sounds like the cold voice of a scientist.
> >
> > Why is it cold?
>
> I think I must have been a bit too tired when I wrote
> that! Sorry!
> Well, it does seem a bit cold to me. To me it had a
> Darwinian flavour of things only arising in nature by
> total accident and chance, and then being selected
> merely by the competetive forces of natural selection.
> I may of course have been totally misreading you.
> Anyway, I think that Darwinian view is at the very
> least extremely one-sided, and misses out the inherent
> creative force of the universe and all that is in it.
> Darwin's story simply can't explain the facts we have.

Can you show this? Or do you merely find it hard to
believe Darwin's story? It's quite possible that Darwin's
story is incomplete, and its ability to convince you
might and should guide you there. But what you said is
that it *cannot explain the facts we have*. That's a
strong statement. What do you base it on?

> > I'll check it out. I didn't say I didn't think the
> > world was animate, though. :)
>
> I'm glad to hear it. I think one's experience of life
> can be much more meaningful with such a view.

I find my life is most meaningful when I do not alter my
beliefs to make it more meaningful. But then, I suppose
my restraint in "altering" my beliefs is perhaps just as
artificial. :)

> I suppose what I meant is that if science says that we
> live in a universe which is an accident, where all
> events are purely by chance,
//
> and everything about our past and
> future is again merely the product of random
> collisions and chance events all with no inherent
> meaning at all,

What is meaningful? If I say God created it all, how is
that more meaningful? If I say it happened by chance?
If I say there's some deep mysterious purpose but I don't
know what it is? It's really no different that I can see.

> and we are alive on a dead (inanimate) planet by absolute
> chance because of the infinitesimally small chance of
> some random molecules colliding,

I don't think there's any consensus that the chance was
infinitesimally small. In fact the basic reactions have
been done in a test tube with a spark. Though there is
something called the fine-tuning problem in physics.

> > I hardly think it has. Humans succeeded in hunting
> > all of the large land animals on three continents to
> > extinction 60,000 years before you seem to be
> > claiming the nihilistic view arose.
>
> I would suggest that that was not due to any
> nihilistic view, but parhaps due the foolishness and
> imaturity inherent in ethnoi in their early stages of
> development (Ethnoi being the plural of ethnos,
> basically meaning ethnic group. See a fantastic book
> on the subject by Lev Gumilev, available in English
> under the title "Ethnogenesis and the Bioshpere").

So perhaps Western culture is merely undergoing the same
growing pains?

> I think the main trouble seemed to come with the
> advent of agriculture. And that brings a huge
> philosophical shift. Hunter gatherers are in an
> animate world in which they are not seperate from
> nature. Agriculturalists automatically generate a
> division between themselves and nature, and that
> starts off a division in their mind (or amplifies it).
> This is the whole "human" as opposed to "nature"
> thing, which leads on to ideas of a paradise seperate
> from "here", eg going to heaven in another place etc.
//
> This connects with the Christian church
> believing that the next life is more important than
> this one.

I think there's some truth to this. However I'm wary,
because it seems to say that since we're in an agricultural
age, paradise really is somewhere other than here.

My own experience of science has brought me closer to
nature, increased my desire to live in finely-balanced
ecosystems, etc.

> It also leads to the idea that our experience is
> somehow not valid (we are in the realm of form) in
> the same way as the truth which produces it (realm
> of ideas) and so qualities become secondary,
> measurable quantities primary. With measurements we
> can then derive formulae and MATHEMATICS, which is
> a far "truer" reality (realm of ideas).

I think our experience is just another sort of measurement,
albeit a very intricate one, and it's fallible just like
other measurements.

The fallibility of human experience is an important lesson.
When I first read Castaneda, I thought it was a brilliant
argument for what I believed at the time: that reality is
created by our experience. If I take peyote and experience
flying, I really have flown. But David Deutsch convinced
me that models create reality. And that I was hallucinating
because I took a drug and therefore was not flying in the
way I experienced it is a better model than Don Juan's.
( This ties in to solipsism, which I discuss at
http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2003.05.07 )

I've observed a strong desire for people to protect what
they feel is sacred. Most people seem to think machines
will never achieve human intelligence. I've never heard
a convincing defense of this position. Some very smart
people even go to ridiculous lengths to support it, as
Penrose did in _The Emperor's New Mind_. Most of these
people will live to see themselves proven wrong. Except
even when machines pass Turing tests, claim to have
emotions, and do everything else humans do, these people
will probably say they lack some sacred element that
humans have (but that can't be observed).

Many people seem to think their emotions are fundamental
aspects of the universe. Now it may be that if we ever
discover the principles of intelligence (note this is
not necessary for building intelligent machines), emotions
will turn out to be an indispensable technique or
unavoidable by-product. Thus they would achieve the status
of a natural law (fundamental aspect of the universe).
However, for now I think the better model is that these
people are trying to protect some grand interpretation of
their feelings. And I think we've seen it on the Tuning
list...

Model 1: Music is cool, music theory is cool.

Model 2: Music is sacred, anything sacred can't be
explained, therefore music theory is evil and/or doomed
to fail.

Which model makes more sense?

> An effect of this is a removal from emotions. This
> mindset also implies no ethics. Science is science,
> not ethics.
> The destruction we are carrying out today is clearly
> on a radically different scale to ever before.

I'm not sure that's true. The extinction of the megaflora
and fauna, the possible genocide of the Neanderthals, the
burning of forests over entire continents...

> I think that can only be carried out when we are
> disconnected from nature in this way.

I'd love to know if "aboriginal" people really were more
connected to nature.

When I was a kid we watched this movie, The Emerald Forest.
Great flick (especially for the '80s). It tells the story
of a guy who's an engineer on a project to build a dam on
the Amazon. His 4-year-old son Tommy gets kidnapped by
natives, and is raised by them in a utopian setting. When
Tommy is 18, the dam is almost finished, and Dad finally
finds him. But the construction of the dam has destroyed
territory and forced another tribe, the "fierce people",
into contact with Tommy's tribe. Murder ensues, and Tommy
and his Dad must use their hallucinogenic snuff visions
to save the day (and a bunch of dynamite, which his Dad
uses to blow up the dam). The movie had a profound impact
on my life. I've even taken the active ingredient in those
snuffs, 5-MeO-DMT.

In 2002, I decided to watch it again. Yep, good stuff, and
apparently based on a true story! Ok, I tried to look into
it. The tribes depicted are in Ecuador, and the activity of
oil companies there can be likened to the dam project.
Tommy's tribe was apparently part of a group known as the
Huaorani...

http://www.peoplesoftheworld.org/text?people=Huaorani

I got a documentary called Amazon: The Invisible People,
which shows real Huaorani. Boy was I depressed when I saw
their quality of life. Fishing with dynamite (gifts from
the oil company), wearing torn-up t-shirts, feet flattened
into pancakes by years of shoeless walking, toothless
mouths, and general dispair.

However, some Huaorani tribes are apparently still living
in non-contact with the West, so their lives may be very
different than what I saw on this documentary. So there's
hope.

I think the Lenape had it pretty good in Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, pre-contact. The Iroquois, too, and probably
many other Indian tribes.

I was in a motel in 2004 and saw part of a documentary on
a tribe in the rainforest... wish I could remember the name
of the tribe. They seemed pretty happy.

> > Meanwhile, it may be surprising that I'm a tribalist
> > of sorts, who believes odd things like that toilets
> > and routine infant circumcision are the greatest evils
> > in the world
>
> What's wrong with toilets? You don't want to shit all
> over the place like they do in India do you? That
> really does cause a lot of sickness! Or is it flush
> toilets that you disapprove of. i could understand
> that. Compost toilets are good. Or you can even make
> gas for cooking/heating from some toilets! (Hey, maybe
> someone could make a gas powered organ toilet!)

Yes, primarily flush toilets, though a ditch is probably
ideal. Anything that encourages population density while
quietly shuttling away the consequences is pretty-much
daft, I think.

> > and that we should all be living in dome communities
> > in the forest.
>
> Start one in Europe and I might join you!

I'm working on the Pacific Northwest (US). I do love
Europe and the UK, though. If immigration policies
weren't so strict I very well may have moved there some
years ago.

> > I've been quite fond of the Goethe I've read, though
> > none of it mentioned science.
>
> Apparently he considered himself primarily as a
> scientist. People don't remember this because they
> thought his science was total nonsence. One place now
> taking his science seriously is the Schumacher College
> in Dartington, Devon (UK). His was a science of
> qualities. It is very very good. Maybe try Henri's
> book. Basically his approach was that he wanted to
> understand phenomena "from their own side". Understand
> things "as they are". He thought the scientific
> approach of trying to explain things by explaining
> what is "behind" them, eg. in terms of formulae, maths
> etc was misguided and perhaps going further from the
> truth of the phenomena. Something like that.

Hmm.

> > I disagree with most critiques of science I've seen,
> > by Nietzsche and others.
>
> I've never read them. I get the impression they might
> have many many words, which usually puts me off.

Nietzsche was pretty to-the-point, with one-liners like
"all knowledge without purpose is sin" or some such.

> > As for the "determininist scientists", how many do
> > you know?
>
> I've met quite a few. Actually the sciences were alway
> smy favourite subjects at school, and i continue to
> like science, though my emphasis has shifted since
> school as I have been exposed to different methods and
> views. And isn't mainstream science deterministic?
> Linear causation and all that?

So called complexity studies, nonlinear systems, agent-
based models, are all the rage in a variety of fields.

> > I count among my closest friends and both of
> > my parents at least a dozen professional scientests
> > (and many more I've partied with). They're all more
> > religious than I am.
>
> That's interesting. Are you in the States?

Yes. My Mom and Dad are devout Lutherans; both converted
from atheism as adults. One of my best friends is a
neuroscientist, was born on a baptist mission in Brazil
and has since converted to Catholicism. Another close
friend studying cancer was born Catholic. Most of the
scientists I know do not affiliate with a particular
religion, but they all seem more willing than I to consider
the supernatural, and many of them believe in some sort
of god.

> I wonder how they could hold belief in the Christian
> doctrines (if they're Christian) at the same time as
> their scientific views.

This has been my experience.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Observation and Reality"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9316
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Oct 5, 2005
Subject: Re: meaning and science


> > > Anyway, I think that Darwinian view is at the very
> > > least extremely one-sided, and misses out the inherent
> > > creative force of the universe and all that is in it.
> > > Darwin's story simply can't explain the facts we have.
> >
> > Can you show this? Or do you merely find it hard to
> > believe Darwin's story? It's quite possible that Darwin's
> > story is incomplete, and its ability to convince you
> > might and should guide you there. But what you said is
> > that it *cannot explain the facts we have*. That's a
> > strong statement. What do you base it on?
>
> I'm sorry to say that I cannot remember the details. Brian
> Goowin is a scientist for whom I have the absolute greatest
> repect. His books are also very informative about all
> this (and more!). I don't remember if this issue is in
> "Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology " or
> "How the Leopard Changed Its Spots : The Evolution of
> Complexity". Both are great books. The latter is an easy
> read, the former more technical.

My neuroscientist friend was given one of his books by a
mutual friend of ours who turned down 3 job offers from the
NSA when he found Christ. I got CS Lewis' Mere Christianity
at the same time. Maybe we could swap.

> > > I suppose what I meant is that if science says that we
> > > live in a universe which is an accident, where all
> > > events are purely by chance,
> >
> > What is meaningful?
>
> I find love quite meaningful. However if I were to believe
> that love is a randomly evolved biochemical manifestation
> solely for increasing sex and maintaining the population for
> continuing some "selfish genes", I would find it rather
> meaningless in the end.

I suppose that belief makes it more meaningful to me, since
it gives love purpose.

> On the other hand if I see it as an inherent aspect of the
> fundamental nature of all existance (that may be a fair way
> to explain our Buddhist view, but I may also suggest that
> that could conform to the "book" notions of God), then I
> feel it has far more meaning.

I certainly find it cool that I can recognize a full range
of emotion in almost all mammals (I do not think this is
anthropomorphizing). And I believe all life shares something
in the nature of existence, survival, and thermodynamics.

> > If I say God created it all, how is that more meaningful?
>
> Well, I don't hold that view, but if I did then I might feel
> that in that case there was a "purpose", and so it automatically
> has more meaning.

I don't think it adds much meaning. Where does God come from?
Why did he create us? Can we ever know? (Usually the answer
to this last question is "no".) It doesn't seem to tell me
much of anything.

> > If I say it happened by chance?
>
> That alone might be fine. But whether there is meaning or not
> may depend on other views that make up your outlook as a whole.
> but I would think that generally, if something is thought of a
> purely happening by chance, wouldn't that make it meaningless?

I guess I don't expect the universe to provide much meaning to
me, a mere human. On the other hand, I am able to move a lot
of information around, and I try to do that the best I can, and
it all seems to fit with the scheme of things on Earth, and
that's pretty cool.

> > > and we are alive ... because of the infinitesimally
> > > small chance of some random molecules colliding,
> >
> > I don't think there's any consensus that the chance was
> > infinitesimally small. In fact the basic reactions have
> > been done in a test tube with a spark.
>
> What do you think of the chances of ME creating life in a
> test tube with a spark? Infinitesimally small I'd say!

Life took more than a human lifetime. Once a few key
reactions happen, though, the rest go faster. Only the first
reactions happen by "chance". The rest are made more likely
by the system created by the first.

> But aside from that, I love James Lovelock's view. Have you
> read about Gaia theory? That was totally heretical! Finally
> he is being taken seriously though, as his predictions all
> came true apparently. Still, I don't think his theory is
> totally accepted by the orthodox. I think the name freaks
> them out!

I believe the Earth funtions as a whole to a large extent,
and I often fancy trees as little hairs. I haven't read
Lovelock, but maybe I should.

> > > > Humans succeeded in hunting all of the large land
> > > > animals on three continents to extinction 60,000
> > > > years before ...
> > >
> > > I would suggest that was due the foolishness and
> > > imaturity inherent in ethnoi in their early stages of
> > > development (Ethnoi being the plural of ethnos,
> > > basically meaning ethnic group. See a fantastic book
> > > on the subject by Lev Gumilev, available in English
> > > under the title "Ethnogenesis and the Bioshpere").
> >
> > So perhaps Western culture is merely undergoing the same
> > growing pains?
>
> I think it is different here. But, you may be right
> concerning the US. In Europe we are not new Ethnoi.
> The US however...

It does seem that we're more 'together' than the EU. But
maybe the whole thing just takes time. I think the world
is working in greater harmony than ever before, at least
from an economic standpoint. I would like to see a return
of certain fundamental industries (chiefly agriculture and
electricity generation) to the local level. And I am
concerned about the sweat shop problem. But in China as in
Japan and South Korea, things are clearly improving. If the
same could happen in Africa / South America I would rejoice.

> > > I think the main trouble seemed to come with the
> > > advent of agriculture. ... This is the whole "human"
> > > as opposed to "nature" thing, which leads on to
> > > ideas of a paradise seperate from "here", eg going
> > > to heaven in another place etc.
> > > This connects with the Christian church believing
> > > that the next life is more important than this one.
> >
> > I think there's some truth to this. However I'm wary,
> > because it seems to say that since we're in an agricultural
> > age, paradise really is somewhere other than here.
>
> That's an interesting suggestion! I think you are totally
> right! It seems that paradise was never conceived to be
> "elsewhere" in hunter-gatherer societies. It was only with
> the rise of agriculure that such ideas arose.

Hrm. I've always thought the idea of paradise was totally
universal in all cultures. I could be wrong, though.
But I saw your comment of accepting reality as something
one's supposed to do no matter what situation he's in.

> Think for example of the Jewish/Christian Adan and Eve
> story.

Egyptian originally, according to a documentary I once saw.

> They were in paradise in Eden. Then they messed up, and
> were cursed by God to toil the land by the sweat of their
> brows and continually move on. Something like that wasn't
> it? That, is the agricultural curse.

It certainly sounds that way. We're definitely dependent
on agriculture now. We can't go back without a massive
reduction in population. I do think we can gradually improve
things by doing more local farming. Even bringing farms
to city rooftops (which is happenning). Teaching gardening
in elementary school. . .

> > > It also leads to the idea that our experience is
> > > somehow not valid ... so qualities become secondary,
> > > measurable quantities primary.
> >
> > I think our experience is just another sort of measurement,
> > albeit a very intricate one, and it's fallible just like
> > other measurements.
>
> Ooh! Well, sure I will respect your use of language. But I
> would not like to think of my own experience as "measurement".

Ah, herein lies the rub.

> > The fallibility of human experience is an important lesson.
> > When I first read Castaneda, I thought it was a brilliant
> > argument for what I believed at the time: that reality is
> > created by our experience. If I take peyote and experience
> > flying, I really have flown. But David Deutsch convinced
> > me that models create reality. And that I was hallucinating
> > because I took a drug and therefore was not flying in the
> > way I experienced it is a better model than Don Juan's.
>
> In Buddhism we might say that your ordinary life is also
> somewhat comparible to an hallicination. Yes, we live with
> models and all that. In that way, we do create the reality
> we live in.

I totally agree in a sense. "You are what you eat" has been
shown by science, and recently (via brain scans) so has
"You are what you think".

> There is a teaching in Buddhism which refers to that as the
> 1st nature. It is a total illusion, and has no reality if
> its own. The 2nd nature is deeper than that. You see, the
> models we have and all that, are actually based on something.
> That is, there is something which is the object of our
> delusion or whatever. That reality is called the 2nd nature.
> It is real, in a sense, though it does not exactly have what
> we call "inherent existance". It is existing interdependantly
> with everthing else in existance. And it is impermanent. Then
> the 3rd nature is what we might call the untimate essence of
> everything, or also called "emptiness", and so on. It is
> not "nothing". Though, it is "no thing", if you see what I
> mean. Actually it is a positive thing, but it is perhaps more
> easily implied by negatives. Anyway it is beyind all concept.
> That, we can refer to as "ultimate truth". The rest is
> "relative truth". "Wisdom" is ultimately direct perception
> of that 3rd truth.

I can agree with this in a roundabout way. The 1st nature I
might call the world as seen by the ego, and I agree that it
is not real in that it can be transformed by both the mind
(positive/negative thinking) and the hands. If the 2nd nature
is models, I think they really *are* reality, but they're
necessarily forever incomplete. This wouldn't mean they're an
incomplete description of reality, but rather that reality
itself is incomplete! The 3rd nature sounds like what I'd call
existential truth. It's what can be done with the models you
have, in your lifetime, if you're free of the delusionary
1st nature.

> > > The destruction we are carrying out today is clearly
> > > on a radically different scale to ever before.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's true. The extinction of the megaflora
> > and fauna, the possible genocide of the Neanderthals, the
> > burning of forests over entire continents...
>
> In terms of Gaia as a whole organism, don't you think we are
> in a far worse position now than then?

Perhaps. I don't buy global warming or any of that. I mean,
the Earth is clearly warming but I'm not convinced it's
caused by pollution and I'm not convinced it's harmful to the
planet (harmful to poorly-constructed coastal cities and
societies that rely on specific areas to grow 99% of their
food, probably).

The apparent decrease in the diversity of life is troublesome.
Some futurists see the Earth as becoming a human colony, and
humans as inheriting the fortune of all evolution's progress
here. I can't say I fancy that, but if it happens I suppose
it will be what nature intended.

I would guess there are fewer forests today than then, which
I'm not crazy about. But I do note that there has been a
massive reforestation of the Eastern US in the last 75 years.

If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do, you
might say that problems like pollution and such are non-
problems, because they create the technology to solve them
in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .

> > I'd love to know if "aboriginal" people really were more
> > connected to nature.
>
> I firmly believe so. And there are still some remaining
> hunter gatherers. not many. They only survive where the
> agriculturalists have not wiped them out, at the very edges
> of livable land where agriculture cannot succeed. Again I
> recommend Hugh Brody's book. He spent lots of time with them.

That's
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865476381/
for those of you following along.

> > When I was a kid we watched this movie, The Emerald Forest.
> > Great flick (especially for the '80s). It tells the story
> > of a guy who's an engineer on a project to build a dam on
> > the Amazon. His 4-year-old son Tommy gets kidnapped by
> > natives, and is raised by them in a utopian setting. When
> > Tommy is 18, the dam is almost finished, and Dad finally
> > finds him. But the construction of the dam has destroyed
> > territory and forced another tribe, the "fierce people",
> > into contact with Tommy's tribe. Murder ensues, and Tommy
> > and his Dad must use their hallucinogenic snuff visions
> > to save the day (and a bunch of dynamite, which his Dad
> > uses to blow up the dam). The movie had a profound impact
> > on my life. I've even taken the active ingredient in those
> > snuffs, 5-MeO-DMT.
>
> Funny stuff DMT. Did you meet aliens?

5-MeO-DMT is different than DMT. I've taken both and never
met aliens. 5-MeO seems unlikely to cause one see much of
anything (detached trance is more like it), but smoking it
and insufflating it are two different things, and there may
be other significant compounds in those snuffs.

> > Yes, primarily flush toilets, though a ditch is probably
> > ideal.
>
> I've done that a lot! But really, it is important to have
> good hygene. It's not alway s easy to do that with an open
> ditch. in India monsoon is particularly a bad season for
> this as the shit is washed into the water sourses.

Ah yes, it does depend on where you are. I came up with
that for rocky, mountainous Pennsylvania. It works very
well if you sprikle some dirt on every time, and don't pee
in it, and don't have too many people using it. When it
gets half full you top it off with dirt and make a new ditch.
It's completely hygenic. Toilets are where to go to find
disgusting germs. And shitting and peeing in the same place
is a bad idea. Shitting into water is a terrible fucking
idea. The whole thing is daft.

> > Anything that encourages population density while
> > quietly shuttling away the consequences is pretty-much
> > daft, I think.
>
> Well, I think flush toilets were first used in Enland in
> london (maybe the first in the world?). I don't think they
> encouraged the density exactly.

They were, I suppose, a great improvement on dumping the
chamber pot out the window in the morning.

The density was an economic necessity, I suppose. But
there's no doubt that flush toilets encourage density.

> But I wonder what a better way to do it for a city is?
> Anyway, not really my speciallity so I think I'l leave
> it to others!

I have seen hi-tech prototype toilets on TV that dry it out,
and composting toilets in person that seem to work well.
But the real answer is not to have cities. An acre of land
to a family of 4 seems about right to me. Much of the
suburban US has that density, but they use flush toilets
anyway! And they're even worse off the public sewer. You
either have a "sand mound" (lifespan 10-15 years) or a tank
and a "drainage field". Both are very unsanitary (it's
illegal to move the sandmound for so many years after it
fails, and drain fields are easily spotted as the soggy,
gross area where the lawn grows a bit too well). My family
had to spend $15K to replace our clogged tank/field after
living for 20 years (family of 3) on 2.5 acres. Most of our
neighbors had to do the same (all the houses were put in at
the same time). I went to study just intonation in Florida,
and in the 3 months I was there we had to rent a backhoe and
dig a new drain field. It's a terrific disaster.

Victorian homes here in Berkeley all rotting after 50 years.
It makes no sense. It's tragedies like these, caused by a
senseless application of inappropriate technology, that ruin
my environment. But you can't get people to change. They
have to be like everyone else.

The worst thing of all is cars. A family of 4 to an acre
with Segways or bicycles and diagonal paths would be great.
But with cars, the roads, driveways, garages, turn-arounds,
take up so much damn room! A perfect illustration is the
UC Berkeley vs. the Stanford campus. Same number of
students, but Stanford is 3-4 times larger (just a guess)
than Berkeley. It's so large you need a car to get around.
But wait, the only reason it's larger is because of the
roads and parking lots (Berkeley's is a walking-only campus).
The cars necessitate themselves!

> > So called complexity studies, nonlinear systems, agent-
> > based models, are all the rage in a variety of fields.
>
> I love that stuff. Finally science seems to be making some
> sense! I mean, you know, it made some sense already of
> coarse. But, it seems it took this long for science to
> finally cotton on to what the Buddha was already taching
> 2500 years ago, about interdependance, co-dependant
> origination.

One has to build the foundation first. Doing things right
takes time.

> But then, all this complexity theory - is it actually
> having much impact on the worldviews of all the numerous
> schools of science?

A tremendous impact. But you don't see much of it in
grade or undergraduate school unless you're in the sciences,
because you're just getting the stuff from 200 years ago.

Good chatting,

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Exponential Improvement"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9324
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Oct 5, 2005
Subject: Re: meaning and science


> > I certainly find it cool that I can recognize a full range
> > of emotion in almost all mammals (I do not think this is
> > anthropomorphizing). And I believe all life shares something
> > in the nature of existence, survival, and thermodynamics.
>
> Maybe plants have minds too.

I bet they'd respond if you yelled at them every day vs. if
you lovingly handled them.

> > > > So perhaps Western culture is merely undergoing the same
> > > > growing pains?
> > >
> > > I think it is different here. But, you may be right
> > > concerning the US. In Europe we are not new Ethnoi.
> > > The US however...
> >
> > It does seem that we're more 'together' than the EU.
>
> Why compare the US to the EU? The US is a country.

Oh, I thought you were drawing the comparison. But it looks
like you meant European countries have no excuse because
they're older (?). I dunno... if European culture started
with the fall of the Roman empire... how long did it take
Native Americans to strike a balance?

While the US is a country, with a federal government of
steadily increasing power, it is a union of States. I would
compare the US to the EU before I compared it to any one
European country in this context. The cultural differences
between States can be great, though perhaps not as great as
those between European countries... But the shared currency,
geographic sizes involved...

> > I would like to see a return of certain fundamental
> > industries (chiefly agriculture and electricity generation)
> > to the local level.
>
> Local is definetly good. Decentralised, like any healthy
> self-organising system.

Exactly!! It seems to me the assupmtion that a powerful federal
government is necessary may just be wrong.

> > And I am concerned about the sweat shop problem. But in
> > China as in Japan and South Korea, things are clearly
> > improving.
>
> Interesting that you group these countries together. I would
> think of China as pretty much 3rd world, while Japan absolutely
> 1st world,

I should have said, "But in China, as in Japan and South Korea
before it, things are...".

> > It certainly sounds that way. We're definitely dependent
> > on agriculture now. We can't go back without a massive
> > reduction in population. I do think we can gradually improve
> > things by doing more local farming. Even bringing farms
> > to city rooftops (which is happenning). Teaching gardening
> > in elementary school. . .
>
> Good idea. but also we need good farming practise. Organic is
> way better than non-organic. but still monocultures usually
> and so not good. Try looking up a farmer called masanobu
> Fukuoka. One of his books is The One Straw Revolution.

I agree totally. I buy nearly 100% organic food (though I
still eat out too much). And the thing about local gardens
is that they are necessarily less 'monocultural' than large
orchards and such.

> > > > I think our experience is just another sort of
> > > > measurement, albeit a very intricate one, and it's
> > > > fallible just like other measurements.
> > >
> > > Ooh! Well, sure I will respect your use of language. But
> > > I would not like to think of my own experience as
> > > "measurement".
> >
> > Ah, herein lies the rub.
>
> What is a rub?

Sorry; it's an expression for "here's the hard part" or
"here's the interesting part".

> > > In Buddhism we might say that your ordinary life is also
> > > somewhat comparible to an hallicination. Yes, we live with
> > > models and all that. In that way, we do create the reality
> > > we live in.
> >
> > I totally agree in a sense. "You are what you eat" has been
> > shown by science, and recently (via brain scans) so has
> > "You are what you think".
>
> By "You are what you eat" I could agree if you mean your body is
> composed of material made up of food you ingested. Is that what
> you mean?

I just mean that our choice of food affects our bodies. Thus,
mind over matter.

> As for "You are what you think", from a Buddhist perspective
> this is absurd. It would be like saying "You are what you see".

Ah, I see where you're going with this. I just meant that,
if you think sad thoughts all the time, this can now be seen
in the brain.

> For us what we think, is just another sense perception.
> Thoughts arise in the mind. Then they pass away. To think
> one IS one's thought would be ridiculous. Look at them
> closely. Watch them. See them. Are they "you"?

I just meant that thoughts have the power to change the
structure of the brain. Freedom from identifying with one's
beliefs, freedom from obcession, is indicated here.

> > and I agree that it is not real in that it can be
> > transformed by both the mind (positive/negative thinking)
> > and the hands. If the 2nd nature is models,
>
> No. It's more like the first is models. The second is things
> as they exist interdependantly. Models are only conceptual
> constructions.

This is where we disagree. I think models are the primary
stuff of the universe, that there is no physical reality
other than that prescribed by models.

> We're not talking about concepts here. Our conceptual way of
> perceiving is the 1st nature. In Buddhism you see we like
> concepts and all that, but, we think they will not get us to
> how things really are. They do have their use, and in our
> context are used especially to remove doubts so hat you can
> get on with the mind training and so actually experience how
> things really are.

My problem here is the conflation epistemology and
self-management. Some doctrines seem to posit that human
beings have a priviledged view of reality. That our egos
are a valid but false way of percieving reality (they are
not valid), that our concepts are a valid but false way
of percieving reality (they are the only valid and true
way), and that divine experiences of mental clarity or
something similar (religious experiences) are a the only
valid and true way of percieving reality (they are neither).

All the mental clarity / freedom from concepts stuff is
fantastic for self-management. For living better, etc.
But it isn't very good epistemology.

The two are completely separate. I can embrace mental
clarity, enlightenment, as a path to my own future and
better harmony in the world _without_ thinking it gives
me access to special truth about the world around me.

> > I think they really *are* reality, but they're
> > necessarily forever incomplete. This wouldn't mean
> > they're an incomplete description of reality, but
> > rather that reality itself is incomplete!


> > The 3rd nature sounds like what I'd call existential truth.
> > It's what can be done with the models you have, in your
> > lifetime, if you're free of the delusionary 1st nature.
>
> Here it becomes not about doing.

Yes, that's what I meant. I'm very much a practitioner of the
taoist version of this concept (with a debateable degree of
success).

> > I mean, the Earth is clearly warming but I'm not convinced
> > it's caused by pollution and I'm not convinced it's harmful
> > to the planet
>
> I wonder if the media in the US might be influenced by the
> US policy on pollution? We generally view it as horrific.

Oh, I think the pollution should be cut anyway, and Bush's
backing out of the various accords is a big mess. But for
all your science-bashing, global warming is a "science" with
very shaky standing indeed.

> > (harmful to poorly-constructed coastal cities and
> > societies that rely on specific areas to grow 99% of
> > their food, probably).
>
> Very very bg problem. The healthy state for our planet seems
> to be iceage. Things are not looking good.

Oh, humans have weathered them before. Why, Britain freezes
solid every time the Gulf Stream shifts, which it apparently
as recently as 1000 AD.

> > The apparent decrease in the diversity of life is
> > troublesome.
>
> Understanding complex systems makes this problem of decreasing
> biodiversity seem absolutely devastating and dangerous.

Agreed.

> > Some futurists see the Earth as becoming a human colony, and
> > humans as inheriting the fortune of all evolution's progress
> > here.
>
> God created it for us, right?

They just think that stuff like fusion, hydrogen power,
telecommunications, intelligent computers, etc. will solve
all the problems in the next generation or so. Technology
just has to get to critical mass to solve everythnig in
this view, but to get it there you have to break a few
eggs. Mind you, I don't necessarily agree. I'm thinking
of people like Moravec and Kurzweil.

> > But I do note that there has been a massive reforestation
> > of the Eastern US in the last 75 years.
>
> Native or cash crops?

Native! It's wonderful. Not a lot has been written about it,
but if you look at satellite photos, the whole Eastern 3rd of
the nation is solid green. It's not as good as old growth (not
even close), but it was almost barren in the '20s. There was
a great article on kuro5hin (I'm pretty sure) on this but I
can't find it now. Drat!

> > If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do, you
> > might say that problems like pollution and such are non-
> > problems, because they create the technology to solve them
> > in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
>
> I don't mean to go on, but is he from the US?

Yup.

> This seems to be based on some kind of unreal imagination or
> perhaps denial?

It's based on the "law of accelerating returns". Not many
folks believe him, but I do (more or less). He has some
things wrong, but this much I agree with:

() In information technology (he includes life, computers,
telecommunications...), the power of the current generation
of technology is used to create the next generation of tech.
This leads to exponential growth. It may look like linear
growth because you only tend to sample a small section of
the curve, and because humans tend to think in linear ways.
But it's really exponential. This is like Moore's law for
everything. Actually I think puncuated equilibria is more
like it, but the result is probably very neary exponential.

() All significant technologies will soon be information
technologies. So today when you buy a car, about 30% of
the price is information, the design of the car, whereas
70% is raw metal, labor, and the rest. In the near future,
nearly 100% of the value of objects will be informational.
Like a DVD is already.

Check out www.kurzweilai.net.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Worldwide fever"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9330
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Oct 6, 2005
Subject: Re: global warming


Hi Aaron,

> I agree with much of what you say here, except that global
> warming is either very real (the melting of the polar ice caps),
> or we are witnessing a hot natural cycle. Most climatologists
> who are experts think the former, because entering such a
> warming trend usually is not this rapid.

In one of these messages I acknowledge this, but state that
I think the latter isn't very convincing. It is a hard thing
to prove, though; perhaps impossible.

> My own philosophy is that its not worth arguing about in terms
> of policy making: hedge your bets and assume it's real,
> because the consequences, if it is real (which it likely is),
> are devastating to the Earth.

I know they're warning about it, but I'm not so sure. I
don't know if you mean devastating to the Earth or to
people (and some animals, probably). But animals and people
adapt. Catastrophic climate change is par for the course
on this planet. Yes I do think the pollution should be
curbed, but there are better reasons than global warming
to do so. It's also quite possible that if humans are to
blame that it's already too late to avoid catastrophic
change, even if we stopped polluting today.

The fever over global warming though is interesting from
a philosophical point of view. I have noticed that the
things people tend to get most upset about are the things
they personally feel the most powerless to correct. Global
warming is a dangerous preoccupation in this point of view.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Existential Identity"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9337
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Oct 6, 2005
Subject: Re: meaning and science


> > > As for "You are what you think", from a Buddhist
> > > perspective this is absurd. It would be like saying
> > > "You are what you see".
> >
> > Ah, I see where you're going with this. I just meant that,
> > if you think sad thoughts all the time, this can now be seen
> > in the brain.
>
> Hmm. Well, that's the data but what is the meaning? I would
> say, sad thoughts may then lead to the arinsing of sad emotion.

Yes. Thinking about something makes it easier to think about
that thing in the future, and this includes emotions. That's
all. It's just neat that we can see it. The power of
positive (or negative) thinking is very real. Severe depression
can actually cause parts of the brain to atrophy and die over
a period of years.

> But still, is that "me"?

No, I didn't mean it like that. It is not you.

> And in science there seems to be much focus on the brain.
> Again I think it is this linear thinking again that they are
> looking for a linear chain of causes. They always want one
> final cause. So, the brain is the centre of it all. That's
> where the "mind" is.

Actually it's now understood that feedback involving the
sensory/motor systems is inseparable from the functioning of
the brain. What we call "hearing" and "seeing" are not passive
observations but interactive processes. This was not widely
believed 10 years ago when I was studying AI, so that's good
progress. And I'm gratified to have called this particular
oversight (as I'm sure many others did). So 'mind is in body'
is quite true.

> And then biologically, the final cause is the DNA. I think
> they are barking up the wrong tree. No, more than that, they
> are using the wrong dog to bark!

DNA is clearly a major player, but the idea of DNA as a
"blueprint for life" was really something started by the press.
Biologists never believed that DNA alone would allow them to
build the corresponding animal. It functions only in a
complex system. Wolfram argues that DNA functions much like
the initial conditions for certain types of cellular automata.
It's also now known that "junk DNA" isn't junk at all. Though
it is possible that junk base pairs might have accumulated in
that way, it seemed very unlikely. Even the singer of the
reggae band Midnight knew this, though he has no apparent
biology credentials.

> > > For us what we think, is just another sense perception.
> > > Thoughts arise in the mind. Then they pass away. To think
> > > one IS one's thought would be ridiculous. Look at them
> > > closely. Watch them. See them. Are they "you"?
> >
> > I just meant that thoughts have the power to change the
> > structure of the brain. Freedom from identifying with one's
> > beliefs, freedom from obcession, is indicated here.
>
> Do you think you are your brain?

No no. I'm not sure what I am. I'm a pattern -- of thoughts
in my mind, of molecules in space -- that persists over time.

> We might think that the brain, along with the body, is perhaps
> a medium of the mind, or of the consciousness.

Yes, I do think that. Also the environment I'm in is a very
real part of my mind. If I leave a CD out so I don't forget
to return it to my friend... if you put me in a dark room
for a long time, my mental faculties will slowly decay...

> > This is where we disagree. I think models are the primary
> > stuff of the universe, that there is no physical reality
> > other than that prescribed by models.
>
> What does that last sentace mean exactly? And for models, I
> get "a description or analogy used to help visualize
> something ", "an example for imitation or emulation",
> "a system of postulates, data, and inferences presented as a
> mathematical description of an entity or state of affairs"
> and so on.

Models are basically algorithms that compress information.
I think they are the fundamental substance of the universe.

> It would seem to me like some kind of computer that for
> example is programed to recognise certain features in
> reference to its, and then takes what it has to be the actual
> truth of the thing it is observing! Things have inner being
> though! Life itself is not conceptual! Humans use concepts.
> Life is not made of concepts!

Everything is just patterns, from elementary particles on up
to things like me.

> > > We're not talking about concepts here. Our conceptual way
> > > of perceiving is the 1st nature. In Buddhism you see we
> > > like concepts and all that, but, we think they will not get
> > > us to how things really are. They do have their use, and in
> > > our context are used especially to remove doubts so hat you
> > > can get on with the mind training and so actually experience
> > > how things really are.
> >
> > My problem here is the conflation epistemology and self-
> > management.
>
> Sorry that went over my head.

Epistemology is the study of truth, or of how we know reality.
By self-management, I mean, the study of how we, as humans, can
live as happily as possible. More or less.

> > Some doctrines seem to posit that human
> > beings have a priviledged view of reality. That our egos
> > are a valid but false way of percieving reality (they are
> > not valid), that our concepts are a valid but false way
> > of percieving reality (they are the only valid and true
> > way), and that divine experiences of mental clarity or
> > something similar (religious experiences) are a the only
> > valid and true way of percieving reality (they are neither).
>
> I could imagine a group of blind people meeting a seeing
> person. The seeing person explains a few things to them about
> what he can see (in case you are wondering, I am certainly
> one of the blind people!) They have a chat amongst
> themselves, and firmly decide that the man must be out of
> his mind or have a particularly wierd imagination to be
> talking such nonsense. He has no idea of the truth!

A good analogy, but any philosophy could claim to represent
the seeing person.

It's just like with drugs. I have a model that tells me my
ecstatic visions are more likely the result of taking drugs
than of perceiving something deep about the universe (though
it doesn't rule out that both are happening). Likewise, I
have a model that tells me the concept of nothingness is
particularly handy in guiding my human mind through life,
but doesn't necessarily correspond to any deep truth about
the universe.

> > All the mental clarity / freedom from concepts stuff is
> > fantastic for self-management. For living better, etc.
> > But it isn't very good epistemology.
>
> I don't know the word but my dictionary tells me it is about
> a system of knowledge? We do have a system of knowledge in
> Buddhism, but, that is secondary. From what I've heard it
> may be similar to phenomenology? (The Buddhist approach I mean).

The Buddhist approach does seem similar in some ways to
phenomenology, which is a particular kind of epistemology.
Epistemology is thinking about what we will accept as true,
how we can know reality, is there a "reality" outside of
our experience as humans, etc. Kant is the big Western
name in epistemology (I was never a fan of his though).

Here's a nice way to think about it: why should I bother to
leave a Will or Trust to bequeath my stuff to my family and
friends (let's say it costs a fair amount of money for the
lawyer)? Once I'm dead, do they carry on? Aren't they just
images in my stream of experience? But hold on, it does seem
that I'm a lot like them. In fact, a model which says I'm
a member of this species of humans, some humans die and the
rest carry on, explains an awful lot. So I can actually use
the model to escape my own senses. I can use the model to
predict the future. I will die, my senses will shut off (or
they will change in a way I can't predict), but my friends
and family will, all else being equal, be out of contact
with me (as I currently am anyway) but still here to enjoy
my stuff.

> > > Here it becomes not about doing.
> >
> > Yes, that's what I meant. I'm very much a practitioner of
> > the taoist version of this concept (with a debateable degree
> > of success).
>
> You practice meditation? Or work with the internal energies
> in your body/mind?

I have actually practiced zazen on several occasions at the
Buddhist temple here in Berkeley, and on several occasions
on my own. I think it does help with not doing, and I should
be, ahem, doing more of it. But not doing can just be
approached very simply and without fanfare in the day-to-day,
is the way I read Lao Tzu (my favorite philosopher, for sure).

> > > > (harmful to poorly-constructed coastal cities and
> > > > societies that rely on specific areas to grow 99% of
> > > > their food, probably).
> > >
> > > Very very bg problem. The healthy state for our planet seems
> > > to be iceage. Things are not looking good.
> >
> > Oh, humans have weathered them before. Why, Britain freezes
> > solid every time the Gulf Stream shifts, which it apparently
> > as recently as 1000 AD.
>
> My concern wa not humans. Ice age is what we (we being the Gaia)
> need!! The trouble is, we are going in the opposite direction!

We're still coming out of an ice age, so we've been going in
the opposite direction for a while. I don't think humans will
delay an ice age significantly, in Gaia time.

> It seems quite likely that we may end up in a "steady hot
> state" that may be irreversible. Please refer to Gaia theory.

I'll check it out, but I'm doubtful if it predicts this
outcome.

> > They just think that stuff like fusion, hydrogen power,
> > telecommunications, intelligent computers, etc. will solve
> > all the problems in the next generation or so. Technology
> > just has to get to critical mass to solve everythnig in
> > this view, but to get it there you have to break a few
> > eggs. Mind you, I don't necessarily agree. I'm thinking
> > of people like Moravec and Kurzweil.
>
> Give me some money and I'll make you a big profit. Oh, now
> it's time to give you back your money? Well, I can't quite
> do that yet - sorry. But give me a load more money and I'll
> give your money back next week with an even bigger profit!
> And so on.

Yes, this is a good counter-argument.

> Sorry, really go to go now.

Yes, this is time-consuming, isn't it? Still, a pleasure,

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Compression in the Universe"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9345
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Oct 6, 2005
Subject: Re: meaning and science


> > Models are basically algorithms that compress information.
> > I think they are the fundamental substance of the universe.
>
> If we compress the universe surely we don't have the universe
> any more?

Compress isn't eliminate. The Newtonian laws of gravity
compresses a lot of what we see in the sky a few equations.
It has limitations, but when it works it works well.

> What's the name for one of those things which cannot
> be compressed any further? Maybe the universe is that.

Irreducible? Anyway, there are arguments that say most
things in the universe are irreducible, but not all are,
and this argument doesn't take into account "lossy" compression.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Fractional Reserve"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9398
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 7, 2005
Subject: Re: meaning and science


> > > > If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do,
> > > > you might say that problems like pollution and such are
> > > > non-problems, because they create the technology to
> > > > solve them in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
> > >
> > > Pollution creates technology? That's a new one.
> > >
> > > (And no, I don't know what you really meant.)
> >
> > You burn and use everything willy-nilly to innovate as
> > fast as you can, thereby creating less total pollution
> > than if you'd stayed in a lukewarm coal age for 200
> > years.
>
> Highly idealistic, the idea that burning and using everything
> willy-nilly means that you're innovating as fast as you can!

Howabout this:

Fractional reserve banking stimulates growth by lowering the
cost of capital (the interest rate). If you don't practice
it, you can't have bank runs. But fractional reserve banking
so stimulates the economy that those who practice it have
literally wiped out those who don't.

?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Trash"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9407
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 7, 2005
Subject: Re: global warming


> > [nuclear power]
>
> however tempting, that's not the best solution for energy
> needs, IMO.

That's ok. According to Kurzweil, while any given technology
may fail to deliver, there are always plenty that will
deliver to choose from instead. So an efficient means of
getting hydrogen out of water and storing it, for example.
Genetically-engineered photovoltaic organisms that grow on
your roof. Take your pick.

> One of the biggest problems with modern culture, and
> specifically modern American culture, is the general
> lack of concern over:
>
> * how much garbage is produced,

I used to worry about this hugely. But these days I'm more
like, it came out of the ground, how bad can it be to put
it back? There seem to be plenty of desolate areas that,
while I'm sure they're delicate ecosystems and all that, I
wouldn't mind a bit if you turned them into landfills and
roped them off for a few hundred years as far as not living
nearby. Call me evil.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Contra Kurzweil"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9412
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 7, 2005
Subject: Re: contra Kurzweil


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7616

...am currently tracking down Huebner's original work.
But it sounds like it's based on innovations per capita
per year, but this doesn't strike me as the right units
for our experience of technology. . .

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Cargo Cult Science"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9468
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Thu Oct 13, 2005
Subject: Re: more on the science thread


I should have linked earlier to this speech by Feynman,
which is one of my favorite discussions on the nature
of science...
 
http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html

Though it's not perfect. While he's careful to say things
like "I was unable to investigate this phenomenon" when
Geller's keybending didn't work, I doubt he really knows
that rhinoceros horn fails to increase potency (in fact,
deer antler velvet very well might... it makes sense, since
the tissue forms in response to sex hormones... not that I
speak from experience or anything...). Likewise, I doubt
he knows how effective traditional medicine was. But his
point is still well-taken (by me, at least).

Also I'm not sure about his claim that we're in a scientific
age. There are plenty of idiotic things done in the name of
science. Routine irradiation of tonsils, for example. Cost
my mother thyroid surgery when she was 40.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Mystic Origins"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9511
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Oct 14, 2005
Subject: Re: artists/scientists


> > > > > Do people here really think that Astrology and Tarot and
> > > > > such are so pervasive that people are TRULY oblivious to
> > > > > science?
> > > >
> > > > Yes.
//
> > In their current form they don't resemble the things which
> > spawned those sciences. Perhaps they have been polarized by
> > the division.
>
> What current form(s)? How are they different?

Modern astrology and its related disciplines (things people
who are into astrology also commonly believe) use pseudoscience.
They borrow scientific terms but use them in novel and
incorrect ways, with the distinct intention of sounding
scientific. I imagine ancient astrology was quite different.

Many forms of mysticism claim to have ancient origins but
most do not predate the 20th-century. Others, like astrology,
do have ancient origins but were changed beyond recognition
after the enlightenment.

> > > And as practices that can lead to introspection, I think
> > > they're entirely laudable.
> >
> > Sure, but they do more than that.
>
> Like what?

Indulge serious mistruths about reality and dangerously
ineffective ways of reasoning. Lots of people act on
advice from psychics, etc. And they pay lots of money
to quacks. It's serious, bad stuff.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Heart and Mind"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9544
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Oct 17, 2005
Subject: Re: artists/scientists


> > I think there is good reason that scientists have the
> > attitude that one should not tust one's own observations
> > without the corraborations of others....after all, look at
> > how poorly our memory works sometimes (as ilustratated by
> > misaken witness sand testimonials)
>
> By all means if we are trying to establish the fabric of
> consensus reality. In the end though all we have is our
> subjectivity,

That's what I used to think. But these days I prefer to start
with only Occam's razor and from that get that my subjectivity
is not special. We can 'bootstrap' ourselves out of our own
existence (many people see fit to leave a Will). A separate
spirit world isn't ruled out (and many people also believe in
life after death), but the razor gives us no reason to believe
in it.

> The score of a Beethoven sonata may be accesible to consensus
> reality, but the meaning-content is not. In the case of love,
> there is not even that much, unless you consider electrical
> impulses in the brain of the lover of some significance.
> Between music and love, that pretty much covers the things I
> consider most of value in life- and neither is essentially
> available to a scientific/materialist world-view.

You've picked two things we don't have an adequate theory of
yet. In the middle ages, may I suggest you might have believed
more than two things out of reach of consensus reality? Once
we have a theory of intelligence... (though we may discover that
any such theory has necessary limitations, and that would be
cool...)

> if science is all about reproducibility and art is
> never about reproducibility, then I think there's a valid
> distinction.

I tend to use the terms "science" and "reasoning" synonymously,
but maybe I shouldn't.

Throughout history there have been many myths and stories
about two kinds of thinking: heart and mind. I'm reminded of
the Rush album _Hemispheres_, and of course, Star Trek. I've
always thought it was an illusion. Perhaps it is rooted, as
the cover of the album suggests, in the design of the human
brain. It might then manifest itself in language as Aaron
suggests. And maybe if the brain is designed that way, it
means it *is* fundamental to intelligence in our universe...
emotions giving a kind of default behavior when no conditioned
response is available... maybe they're a 'unitless' result of
a 'factor analysis' of many more specific thoughts, necessary
for long-range planning...

> Feelings are personal states whereas thought is universal:
> when we both contemplate a Euclid proof, we are sharing a
> perception of something "real" in a platonic sense, in a
> scientific sense. How that makes us feel is completely personal
> and irreproducible.

If minds use deterministic processes I might have a simulation
of you do the proof and the feeling would be reproduced.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Astrology and Tarot"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9546
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Oct 17, 2005
Subject: Re: tarot, psychics and voodoo mongers


> i will say i'm pretty much a believer in ghosts. i go back and
> forth about it, but i've had some strange experiences myself in
> relation to a place's 'eneregy' or 'vibe' as they say.

It's funny how we group ghosts, tarot, and astrology together.
I think there's a reason for it. One explanation I've heard is
that existing scientific theories can't explain them so
scientists group them together. But I don't think a statement
like 'existing theories can't explain them' is meaningful. Like
you, I believe that if any of these exist, they can be explained.
And I don't think scientists have committed a conspiracy of
grouping.

But I think they're grouped together because they're all things
that either don't exist, or they're wrong explanations of things
that do exist. Astrology and tarot are more the former, though
as you point out the desire to fill in the blanks is a real part
of human psychology. Ghosts are more an example of the latter:

The mind tends to synthesize perceptions into gestalts. You
might have the feeling that somebody's behind you. You can't
see them, and it sometimes (in my experience anyway) feels
like you're sensing their 'energy'. But what you actually
sense are minute sounds, air currents, temperature variations,
and you subconsciously synthesize them into a gestalt. And
indeed, the sensitivity of human hearing, smell, touch is
much MORE magical to me than some forever-unknowable 'energy'
detector.

Auditory scene analysis is another example of gestalt
perception. Humans can locate instruments in an orchestra --
where they are in the room. It just *sounds* like they're
'over there'. But there are at least 3 primary, completely
different mechanisms used to figure it out, and any 1 of them
is usually enough if the environment is making the other 2
unusable, but the sensation is the same. Further, the
conscious expectation of the possible locations of what you're
looking for feedback to the auditory system and fine tune it
to work better over the expected area. For example, priming
experiments show that when you're looking for something (say,
a red triangle), you recognize it faster and recognize other
shapes more slowly. It's how optical illusions work -- they
use context cues to fool the visual system.

Vision is the ultimate gestalt. You see a scene, you think
like a camera. But really your eyes are darting all over
the place (saccades), scanning your fovea over where you
need detail. And the result is you perceive detail everywhere
when really you can only see detail over some small fraction
of the field of view at any time. Higher up, neurons are
sharpening edges and hunting for particular shapes like red
triangles. And because of a design flaw, the optic nerve
has to go through the retina to get to the brain so there are
two big holes in your vision. But your brain fills them in.
If you haven't seen a demo of this, you will *love*...

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html

One of the reasons I love optical illusions and psychedelic
drugs is that they show us that we *make* our world, not that
we perceive it MORE correctly than by any other means.

But anyway, back to ghosts. Memories of similar places, bad
smells of mold, sounds of roach infestations, and John Chalmers
has suggested low-frequency standing waves, might all give a
place a bad vibe. Good vibes the same. And partial or mixed
memories might cause deja vu.

I'm not sure what experiences you've had (I'd love it if you
shared, though), but my guess is that 'contact from the dead'
isn't the best explanation. I've had unexpected things
happen in a house I shared. And I had fun allowing myself
to believe and tell people that it was a ghost. But I knew
someone in the house had probably been sleepwalking, or playing
a prank, etc.

That's not to say I think contact from the dead is impossible.

> > The performance was stopped because someone got possessed
> > in the third row and has taken to the hospital.
>
> i would suspect that someone would have to be suggestible for
> this to work,

Lots of people freak out at concerts. Holy rollers, etc.
Or maybe a seizure of some kind.

Seizures are interesting. Basically just bad patterns of
firing that get going, much like a tornado or dust devil.
Which is more awesome, that music can do this or that it can
cause people to be "possessed"?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Psychics"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9554
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Oct 17, 2005
Subject: Re: tarot, psychics and voodoo mongers


> ok i saw one recently: missing dude in Texas. Psychic
> consulted by family member in Cali.

Psychic also in Cali?

> Psychic names small town in Texas and says "if you dont go
> there right away you will never find out what happened to X".
> Family memeber contacts relatives in Texas who promptly drive
> to small town in middle of night. On road they pass their
> missing relative's truck, being driven by the murderes,

On the road to the town, or in the town?

> Cops are gobsmacked.

Nothing new there.

> Calling it "intuition" instead of "psychic" is only a
> semantic game attempting to defuse a bomb thrown at the
> materialist worldview.

I was coming home from work one rainy night early this year.
Getting on the freeway, I was stopped on the ramp in the
worst traffic jam I'd ever seen. After an hour people had
turned off their cars. Finally we get going, and I see a
van smashed and off the road, a cop car smashed, and another
car smashed. I had been stopped about 100 yards from some
sort of accident. The next day I checked the news. Four
sources, including a local ABC, a San Mateo paper, the
San Jose Mercury, and one other. They all disagreed over
key points of the case. Was the women in the van killed
or flown to Stanford in critical? Was the cop car hit
or not (I happen to know it was)? How many vehicles were
involved? I thought: if it's this bad where I live and
work every day, how can I hope to learn a damn thing about
Israel? And how much less from a TV show about psychic
coincidences? Please.

My mother-in-law is into all this stuff, and she and the
people she consults with have yet to predict anything
correctly.

How can I identify a legit psychic, and what kind of
question can they reliably answer? Let me know and if
I can afford it I'll give it a shot. But in truth if
they could really do stuff like this, they wouldn't need
to charge me money at all -- they could make plenty of
their own, couldn't they?

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"Psychics and Cops"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9563 
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Mon Oct 17, 2005
Subject: Re: tarot, psychics and voodoo mongers


> > > I dont know what to tell you Carl except cops are usually
> > > pretty hard-boiled types and most of them scoff at psychics
> > > until one of them helps solve a case that was stalled. Its
> > > one thing to have a telephone "psychic" tell you for
> > > $4.99/hour that you will soon be changing jobs, and something
> > > totally different when a psychic solves a case in the real
> > > world in a very concrete way, guiding the police with very
> > > definite images and clues to look for a body in a certain
> > > place and bang theres the body.
> >
> > Cops are not exactly known for independent thinking. I'd be
> > willing to spend a few hundred on the test. But, like I said,
> > they could do much better on the stock market. Or the real
> > estate market. Or in just about anything, including preventing
> > murders. Couldn't they?
>
> Sorry Carl but I cant parse what you're talking about here. Isn't
> it simple? A person disappears, presumed murdered, the cops cant
> find the body. A psychic is brought in, gives accurate info, the
> cops go to where the psychic indicates, the body is found. Whats
> controversial here?

What's controversial is the accuracy of the story. Since even
news stories about easily-verified local events get horribly
distorted by mainstream sources, why should I trust your version
of a TV show about psychics' version of a news story?

What's also controversial is the availability of these psychics.
Can I hire one? How much does it cost? I want information I
can't get anything other way, and I'm willing to pay for it.
But why are they charging? They should all be rich already.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Digital Physics"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9591
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Oct 18, 2005
Subject: Re: artists/scientists


> Quantum physics has been around for 75 years now, and most
> scientists, being reductionists, believe that all physical
> phenomena are, at their foundation, quantum.

Some believe in deterministic processes beneath that.

http://wolframscience.com/
http://www.digitalphysics.org/
http://www.digitalphilosophy.org/
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/

> So I must object that a severly outdated view of what science
> is "predicated on" is being promulgated around here.

I'm not sure how you think QM bears on the discussion here.
Deutsch simply says phantom particles are real. Then, you
have stuff like...

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105127

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?
prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000093000022220401000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

-Carl
 
________________________________________________________________________

"Problem Homeostasis"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/9593
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Tue Oct 18, 2005
Subject: Re: artists/scientists


> > 1) never drive a car
> > 2) never use electricity
> > 3) never heat their home except through solar or wind power.
> > 3a) actually I take that back, since solar and wind power are
> > also bits of technology. Just never heat your home, period.
> > In fact, fire is primitive technology, so don't use that either.
> > 4) never buy any product that was manufactured
> > 5) never use a light bulb or light switch
> > 6) never wear synthetic fabrics
> > 7) never go to a doctor for surgery
> > 8) never make an electronic recording of their music, or use
> > electronic musical instruments
> > 9) never use any objects made of plastic
> > 10) never turn on and/or use a computer
>
> There are a number of excellent ideas in here which absent
> hyperbole ought to be pursued.

#6 right now. #1 if things were different.

> Somebody help me out here? What's the George Carlin line about
> the folly of expecting science to solve the problems it created?

Science doesn't create these problems, or solve them. "Problems"
are a result of human psychology and social order, and are
largely homeostatic wrt technology. Technology raises the stakes
is all. You can eliminate epidemics with vaccines or by living
less densely. Science doesn't tell you which to choose.

One possible break point in the homeostasis is the arrival of
AI. Let's say we learn to make machines capable of doing
anything a human can do. And they can reproduce themselves,
and share knowledge with a download (instead of 18 years of
expensive education). And they're designed to get off on
doing whatever we say. It makes them really happy, so there's
no worries about enslaving them. Finally let's say they're
designed to be incurably phobic of physical violence. In such
a case, nobody would ever have to do anything they didn't want.
Money would be irrelevant, poverty would be nonexistent.
Maybe we'd still yell at each other...

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Incinerating Iraq"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/10073
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Wed Nov 9, 2005
Subject: Re: The new napalm: USA burning civilians in Iraq


> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm
>
> >> Incinerating Iraqis; the napalm cover up:
> >>
> >> Two weeks ago the UK Independent ran an article which
> >> confirmed that the US had "lied to Britain over the use
> >> of napalm in Iraq". (06-17-05) Since then, not one
> >> American newspaper or TV station has picked up the
> >> story even though the Pentagon has verified the claims.

Mr Ingram admitted ... "The US confirmed to my officials that
they had not used MK77s in Iraq ... I have since discovered
that this is not the case..."

MK77s are napalm devices, but it doesn't say how he discovered
they'd been used. Let's check the linked article. It has
the Pentagon saying

"new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77"

though 500 of them were deployed in the Gulf War, according to
this page

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/mk77.htm

"The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention
on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation the Geneva
Protocol against the use of white phosphorous..."

White phosphorus is not napalm. And based on my research, I
do not believe it is deployed with MK77s. Meanwhile, the US
has not adopted the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Conventional_Weapons

which is apparently what is meant by

"puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain
Chemical Weapons (CCW)"

even though napalm and white phosphorus are not chemical
weapons.

"and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of
white phosphorous"

If this is referring to the Geneva Conventions, I'd like
to see where white phosphorus is banned. If it is referring
to the two additional protocols of 1977, the US didn't
adopt those, and the term "phosphorus" does not occur in
their text

http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/protocol1.htm
http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/protocol2.htm

Wait, there is something else called the Geneva Protocol,
which the US did sign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol

but which again is about chemical weapons, not incendiaries
like wp.

About the only thing accurate in the article is that the
press in the US sucks the dog. Meanwhile, if this is
really from the UK Independent, why is on the clearinghouse
site with only the author credited?

So backing up, there's very little substance in any of
the claims made at

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

Now let's watch the video

http://videos.informationclearinghouse.info/fallujah_ING.wmv

Yup, war really sucks, especially when you're trying to take
over a country with an armed citizenry. Big news there.
Since I'm not a physician, I couldn't say whether the burns
shown are from wp or napalm or conventional rocket launchers
or from indcidental fire.

The best thing for me was the interviews with marines,
though one incorrectly calls wp a chemical weapon.

Ok, there is footage that looks like incendiaries being
fired down on the city. That sucks.

Ok, there is also more quotage from Mr Ingram in the video.
I can't really read it, but it sounds like MK77s were
probably deployed. But it's not clear who "lied" to Ingram,
or if he wasn't full of it himself.

Now the lady claims the US admitted to using them from
the beginning. Sounds more like Britain was in denial.

The narator claims the US signed a UN Convention banning
napalm. I wonder which Convention that is? ... Whoa,
now he asks "Why didn't the US ever sign the Convention
abolishing these weapons?" wtf?

I did appreciate the woman's last remarks about exposing
Bush. The wacky thing is I can't fathom how he could be
any more exposed. If it wasn't obvious that the WMDs
thing was BS from the beginning (it certainly was to me),
it is now. And 50% of people still vote for the wanker.

-Carl 

________________________________________________________________________

"Bloodless Coup"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/10132
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Sat Nov 12, 2005
Subject: Re: buchanan


> > > As defined by the Constitution of the United States
> > > of America, the "president" is the top official of the
> > > executive branch of government, DULY ELECTED BY THE
> > > MAJORITY OF VOTES IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.
> > >
> > > That's not how Bush got into office in 2000.
> >
> > I thought that it was.
> >
> > > Plain and simple, he's a dictator. What happened in
> > > 2000
> >
> > What about what happenned in 2004?
>
> I've still seen no definitive analysis of what happened
> in 2004. But it's crystal clear that voter fraud was
> instigated by the Republican Party in Florida in 2000.
> So no, he was *not* "duly elected" in 2000.
>
> Yes, he did win the majority of electoral votes -- but
> there were many Floridians who were legally allowed to vote
> in that election, who were illegally prevented from doing
> so -- and the election was close enough and the number of
> uncast ballots was large enough to tip the electoral vote
> in Bush's favor.

In the excerpt of the Constitution you posted above there is
no mention of citizens voting. You have to establish that
the methods prescribed in Florida law for specifying their
electoral votes were not followed.

There may also be an Const. ammendment about blacks not
being blocked from polls. You'd have to show that they
were. Apparently a NYT article showed this, but I haven't
checked it out. Then you'd have to show that the number
of missing votes would have made the difference in Florida's
electoral college. When you do all this, I'll join you
in calling the 2000 election a bloodless coup.

While a fraudulant win in 2000 certainly casts doubt on
the validity of Bush's entire presidency, a legitimate win
in 2004 adds some trust. Ballot fraud is nearly impossible
to prove, but the true ballot was probably within the
margin of error of the system. So the outcome is probably
random, or was perhaps tipped by Diebold in Bush's favor.
But massive manipulation didn't happen. So you can't get
away from the fact that 50% of Americans wanted the
guy (and a preponderance of the country's area was red).

For me, elections aren't 'legitimate' anyway, so I have a
hard time getting carried away about Bush's.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________

"Farewell"
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/metatuning/message/10194
From: Carl Lumma
Date: Fri Nov 25, 2005
Subject: Fairwell


All,

Sorry I haven't been around lately. With luck, I'll be a
Dad before Christmas (the Solstice is actually our due date).
I've dropped off Tuning too, but I'm sticking around on MMM,
tuning-math, and SpecMus, and I hope to participate a bit on
the Tonescape group and on Keenan Pepper's new Wikiproject...

http://tinyurl.com/8lmrn?__TuningWikiProject

Rather than try to reply to the hanging thread(s), I'll
leave you with a final thought: Love is revolutionary.

I read an article on this somewhere recently. The author
said that civilization is to the point where simply loving
is an act of revolution.

I agree, except it must have always been so. While we might
like it if there were more love in the world, I don't know
that this means we're in bad shape, historically speaking.

And in fact all actions are actions of revolution, practical
statements of the place you want to be -- this is the core
idea behind my criticism of politics as it is usually
practiced.

Having a baby is revolutionary. Especially, in the West,
if the Mom is under 30. In the West, having a baby outside
of a hospital is revolutionary. Check out the work of
Michel Odent, who correctly frames the issue "in terms of
civilization".

Whatever school of political thought we're partial to,
whether we want footpaths or superhighways, love speaks the
same message to us, by virtue of our being human. Even
nihilists, I bet. (Just as serialists can recognize JI?)

So here's to everybody who loves anybody.

-Carl
http://lumma.org/microwave

________________________________________________________________________