Science and Social Responsibility

[Frederick D Abraham]

This the quote from Sam Leven in the Heritability of Homosexuality topic:

 

“. . . most of what we've learned can be explained in a common-sensical way -- even with pictures and jokes.

But if we fail to share the science Peirce foresaw and helped frame -- if those of us lucky enough to have learned through semiotics and science don't speak up -- then the beauties of complexity that enable discoveries and better questions may turn into the ugliness of stasis and fear of the new that dogged Peirce to his end.”

In response, I mentioned two other authors with a similar message, Korzybski, Science and Sanity, and Christine Hardy (left her last name out there) Networks of Meaning.

I overlooked Bakhtin, so here is a quote on him from an article which also mentions his similarity to one of Pierce’s comment. 

1.Excursus on MИХАИЛ MИХАЍЛOBИЧ ƂAXTИH

―Russian philosopher and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin‘s theory of "dialogue" emphasized the power of discourse to increase understanding of multiple perspectives and create myriad possibilities. Bakhtin held that relationships and connections exist among all living beings, and that dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change. In his influential works, Bakhtin provided a linguistic methodology to define the dialogue, its nature and meaning.‖ (Maranhão, 1990, p. 51.)

―Dialogic relations have a specific nature: They can be reduced neither to the purely logical (even if dialectical) nor to the purely linguistic (compositional-syntactic). They are possible only between complete utterances of various speaking subjects… Where there is no word and no language, there can be no dialogic relations; they cannot exist among objects or logical quantities (concepts, judgments, and so forth). Dialogic relations presuppose a language, but they do not reside within the system of language. They are impossible among elements of a language.‖ (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 117.)

―Carnivalesque discourse breaks through the laws of a language censored by grammar and semantics and, at the same time, is a social and political protest. There is no equivalence, but rather, identity between challenging official linguistic codes and challenging official law.‖ (Kristeva, 1980, p. 65.)

These quotes establish a meaning for carnivalesque as providing a perspective on the nature and absurdity of the loci of power and control. Carnivalesque assists in developing perspectives on social problems and social reform, but are cannot be relied on to establish programs of reform. They certainly can have great utility in energizing protest. When combined with the dialogical, programs of reform would be more likely to emerge.

We have seen these in the form of theatrical performance at meetings of globalization, such as those directed at Nike at the G-8 and WTOC street protests.

―Carnivalesque is the use of theatrics to face off with power via satire and parody, and invite spectators to a new reading of the spectacle of global capitalism. We see it all around us in the street theater, teach ins, and NikeTown blockades that poke fun and use critical satire and parody to say something

Abraham: Media Ecology Page 2

important about global capitalism, and its impact upon both workers and consumers. The carnivalesque can be grotesque, violent or quite peaceful. Sorting out the message, in the midst of media dominated by spectacle advertising, infotainment, and purchased by transnational power, is the most important thing we can be teaching.

―For Mikheal Bakhtin, then Julia Kristeva, the carnival is the theatrics of rant and madness seeing to repair the separation of worker from consumer. This is the separation that Karl Marx wrote about in Das Kapital, the alienation of consumer from producer. We do not know where our clothing, toys, and other consumables is made. The location of sweatshop factories is a carefully guarded corporate secret. We do not know who makes our clothing. The stories of working women (mostly teenagers) is kept secret, and instead the Spectacle of transnational corporate advertising and public relations regales and seduces us.

―Carnival is the sweatshop theater, the blockade of a NikeTown in Melbourne on a Friday evening (In Sydney it happens on Thursdays), or a protest against Wal-Mart on a Saturday. Around the world consumers (students and faculty too) are spectators (or in Augusto Boal's terms Spect-actors), actors in a form of carnival resistance that premodern peasants used to satirize the weird power of the Crown and Clergy over their community life.‖ (Boje, 2008.)

―According to Bakhtin, all speech utterances are heteroglot and polyphonic in that they partake of different-languages" and resonate with ‗many-voices.‘ Heteroglossia (other-languagedness) and polyphony (many-voicedness) are ‗the base conditions governing the operation of meaning in any utterance.‘ [Holquist & Emerson, 1981, p. 428.] By ‗other-languagedness,‘ Bakhtin does not mean only national languages (though a national language determines, in part, the meaning of any utterance). More generally, heteroglossia refers to the ideologies inherent in the various languages to which we all lay claim as social beings and by which we are constituted as individuals: the language and the inherent ideologies of our profession, the language and inherent ideologies of our age group, of the decade, of our social class, geographical region, family, circle of friends, etc.‖ (Park-Fuller, 1986.)

The unfinalizability of the self is a product of the constant navigation between the internal world and the external world, and the human thinker occupies this marginal space. ‖The pure unification of which is an unrealizable goal because of the brevity of human life and the conversation between internal consistency and external dynamism.‖ The utterance guarantees what Peirce calls infinite semiosis, the infinitely long chain of signs ―of which the human, in his or her brief lifetime, only has the privilege of sampling a very small part.‖ (Fox, 2005).

Note, Peirce, the famous semitotician and polymath, has a similar concept to Bakhtin‟s, that of „infinite semiosis‟.

―I believe that Bakhtin‘s theoretical suggestions concerning polyphony, carnival, and other cultural phenomena, should not be seen only as social, institutional, artistic, or language related devices, but as concrete suggestions about cultural space and the life taking place within it.

―Bakhtin insists throughout all of his philosophy that time and space are not physical but that time is historical and space is social. On this point he is indeed comparable with the later Nishida for whom the basho is a place in which things do not simply ―exist‖ but in which they are ―local,‖ i.e. in which they ―are‖ in a concrete way. Bakhtin‘s and Nishida‘s outspokenly ―organicist‖ definitions of ―place‖ or ―locality‖ put both of them into the group of those people who attempt to think place as more than as a Newtonian extension of space.‖ (Botz-Bornstein, 2004.)

Carnival is but one of several dialogic platforms that can have a liberating influence.

taken from: http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf

 

[gus koehler]

Beautiful, Fred. Diane Rosen made a most interesting presentation at our Society's conference, "Invoking the Muse: Dada's Chaos", that extends your comments nicely.  In my view it is necessary to invoke Carnivalesque discourse, DADA, and other poetic ways of know, including dance (Maritain) to fully explore complex systems, particularly those penetrating new spaces as virtual reality does that create new places that some call "bastard" places.  Such discourse, when combined with scientific insights and measures, can begin to provide a foundation for a critique of such new complex, unknown spaces.  Street theater is critical too (Egypt, gorilla theater of the SF Mime Troupe)  to actually provide a contextual dialogue and revelation.  Why a critique?  Because virtual space is a space sold in many ways to our appetites and thrust forward as "information wants to be free" even though it seems to be moving us away from our bodies qua bodies and nature.  See for example the new book "Black Code" which makes many interesting and thoughtful points such as 90% of the worlds personal computers run Microsoft operating systems.  Interesting.

[Mike McCullough]

Fred, I see that your Science and Social Responsibility post starts by referring to Sam Leven in the Heritability of Homosexuality. Here something I posted on my blog Sunday regarding the Times editorial that day called “Putin’s War on Gays”. My blog post is called: A Complexity Theory of Power Applied to “Putin’s War on Gays”. It is located at http://complexity-revolution.blogspot.com

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

[sam...@gmail.com]

Brief note [in the midst of lots of everyday complexity -- the kind I cope with worst]:

 

Mike's and Fred's notes comprehend the intense embeddings of cultural frames and drives.  Evoking Carnival raises two sets of issues I'll put on the table:

-- Underlying power relations are the families of dynamics Fred and Ralph have displayed -- path dependence, the roles of inherited physical, social, and cognitive environments [e.g., some writers explain thousands of years of Chinese peasant passivity on Confucian "worship" of logical order]; unique cultural "character" networks  [Mike's run into work by Geert Hofstede's group, I'll bet] which are, themselves embedded in international religious, trade, and traditional clusters; and risk-novelty orientation, readiness to consider the unknown, capacity for what Shackle called "potential surprise".

and

-- The coupling of power relations, dynamically yielding expectations -- and,, potentially, unexpected reverse dependence.   As the weak becomes "captive" to belief in his own powerlessness, so the powerful develops exaggerated confidence in his "superiority".  The longer and more dominant the control exercised, the greater the certainty the powerful deserve their position and have special [largely unobservable] capabilities.  On the one hand, the "essential" nature of American power drove us to the moon.  On the other, the ability of oil-producing less-developed countries to reshape the world economy -- by realizing and exploiting increasing Western dependence on mideastern oil [the systems guys behind the Arab reversal were UT PhD's in Petroleum Economics, who wrote the program optimizing Texan oil output and then explained unobserved Western dependence that pervaded modern economic activity].  We could draw analogies to the fate of the South as it became overwhelmingly dependent on cheap black agricultural labor -- leading to a century of Southern revulsion to industry and technology and the persistent sense that there's some ineffable superiority about Southern whites.  And to the collapse of Spain as a great power -- after it became dependent on Indian gold and cheap labor [was supporting Franco a way to assert that Spaniards' old way was

superior?].

 

Work -- based on the .same epigenetics behind the Gavrilets homosexuality paper -- suggests that all networks are over-determined.  I attach a Whitacre-inspired paper that posits that "redundancy" is necessary for national resilience and viability; but, without mentioning Grossberg's stability-plasticity dilemma, invokes the same principles.

 

Could we argue that the more skewed power relations are, the less able either group is able to share the different belief-spaces Peirce tells us different people and cultures maintain and, hence, the less we educate and nurture the poor and the "different", the less wealthy and wise we all become [as Bakhtin tells us... somewhere].

 

Apologies for the brevity and prolixity; this was my spare hour.

 

Anxious to learn from you.

 

Sam

[Mike McCullough]

Just had my first chance to read the very interesting remarks posted by Sam and Gus here. 

I must first share how literal for me is Sam’s comment that “Carnivalesque discourse breaks through the laws of a language censored by grammar and semantics and, at the same time, is a social and political protest.”  I partook in my first Brazilian Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro in February 1969, a Peace Corps Volunteer, a couple months into what would be an almost 3 year stay.  The country had been ruled by a military dictatorship since April Fool’s Day 1964 but military hardliners pushed the country into an even harsher repression with various draconian measures in December 1969 weeks after my arrival.  Torture and other arbitrary measures became the official way of dealing with dissent.  Things like street protests became unimaginable.  On the first night of Carnaval, not far from my hotel, I joined one group of several hundred people who were singing and dancing down a major thoroughfare, my Portuguese not yet good enough to understand anything going on.  The group turned down a small side street, dancing, singing.  A large police facility was located a bit down the street.  When a huge line of police carrying clubs came out, I realized that I was in the midst of a political protest.  The police advanced, twirling the clubs menacingly, and came after the crowd.  Everyone turned, running as fast as they could back toward the main street.  Feeling I was about to get trampled on, I jumped onto a parked Volkswagen, lucky I didn’t get my head busted as I fell behind the police line.  

So, Carnivalesque, yes indeed.  Play as protest against the unquestionable chain of command – by, as you note “spect-actors” to use Augusto Boal’s term (I met Boal once), people who manage to be both spectacle and actor at once.

I’m very glad to learn of Mikhail Bakhtin. That “dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change” really seems to capture the dynamics of complexity, of the reality of ceaseless change.  

This reminds me of Edgar Morin.  Morin (Volume 6 of La Methode, Ethique) defines “dialogique” as “A complex unity between two complementary, concurrent and antagonistic logics, entities or instances which nourish and complete one another but also oppose and combat one another.  To be distinguished from the Hegelian dialectic.  For Hegel, the contradictions find their solution in going beyond and losing themselves in a superior unity.”  [Here’s the original of the last sentence which I may have translated too loosely:  “Les contradictions trouvent leur solution, se dépassent et se suppriment dans une unité supérieure.”]

I just tried an experiment: Googling “Mikhail Bakhtin” and “Edgar Morin” at the same time. I found the attached PDF book chapter called “From Systems to Complexity Thinking”.  Its author says “In sum, my concept, systemicity, builds upon system thinking of Bakhtin, but takes it along the paradigm shift into complexity thinking (i.e. Morin)”.  The author apparently is David Boje (someone I see on Wikipedia who has a corporate background but takes a critical and playful approach: e.g. “He is known to teach barefoot as a protest against sweatshops of multinational corporations in developing countries.” And has a book called “Dancing to the Music of Story.”  Can't vouch for attached but looks interesting upon browse.

Mike

[Linda Dennard]

In recent years I have turned my work to looking at different historical authors, actors whose work creates or seeks to create a pattern of interaction among individuals that it at once ideally democratic and also evolutionary. There are limits to dialogue especially in space dominated by political habits and where dialogue is used to stablize power relationships. In my view, science should, by its experimental nature, destablize dialogue, including political dialogue. For example, Aaron Wildavsky, an iconic policy wonk, wrote a book early in his career that was largely overlooked, entitled "radical incrementalism." By this he meant that administrators would be more effective at achieving desired outcomes if they addressed extant conditions and opportunities for solution development through experimentation rather than only replicating historical models. For example, he proposed throwing out the annual budget process and instead using available funds to respond to emerging information and opportunity that would produce innovation. The annual budget process tends to reduce all "dialogue" to what gets the money spent within the timeframe and according to disembodied models of what works. In the last years of his life, Wildavsky (Berkeley) dabbled in complexity theory.

I am (thank goodness) finishing a book this month on Senator Frank Church of Idaho - you may recall him as leading the crusade against the Viet Nam Wa rand as Chair of the committee investigating CIA/FBI abuses in the 1970s. I picked him because of his flavor of Liberal populism. Most notably Church, who was also a leader in civil rights legislation, practiced an ethic that was akin to Obama's remarkable speech on race relations - the ability to express the full, contradictory elements of the landscape of race relations and move foreward from that reality rather than an abstract and usually divisve ideal. Idaho is notoriously intolerant and it was remarkable that Church survied four terms. He did it partly because he left space for social healing - that is he recognized that not everyone arrives at the same change of consciousness at the same time in social change. This, however, did not mean that Church ameliorated the change, rather he focused on educating it and in particular broadening the meaning of traditional conservative populist values - like fair play and respect for the "little guy" He created dissonance among voters in this way, because he was expressing a full value to citizens used to operating from the safe haven of "half values" - those in particular based on self-interest. The dissonance, however, came because he was challenging conservative voters to live up to their own values, at the same time he avoided being divisive. Everybody stayed at the table even people frothing with xenophobia. Also Church changed with the science. He was informed both in international affairs as the Chair of Senate Foreign Relations and in his many forrays into environmental protection by environmental sciences that broadened his classically mechanical view of the world to a more systems approach by his second term (his speeches on the evolutionary nature of democracy are very good) and he passed this knowledge on to citizens in countless letters, meetings etc. Also his approach which was considered to be too independent for some, provides a good study in the complex nature of social change, citizen action and wants.

His tenure illustrates the transitional nature of populism and helps explain a bit why sometimes the underlying claims of the vacuous Tea Party makes sense even to liberals and why the "Take Back" movement was populated by people from acrosss the full political spectrum. In short, scoail transitions, as perhaps evidenced in democracy movements generally, are both attempts at destablizing political power and simultaneously re-organization of the patterns of social interaction. Navigating transitions so that they remain open long enough and receive enough information/learning to produce a real change rather than an adaptive reaction requires artful leadership (among other things). Most notably for this discussion, it was a change in science that seemed to mobilize Church's leadership in a number of areas.

Church was also influened by philosopher Hannah Arendt, especially her work on revolution, violence and "the human condition." I hope to get something out this year looking at the prgamatists (Arendt, Dewey and Jane Addams) - all believers in the power of science but, unlike progressives they used science to destablize adaptive behavior (among other things) rather than to merely inform static models of utopia. Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize as a socialogist for linking the goals of social "improvement" with international democracy. Senator Church's use of Arendt is significant, not only because it proves that political leadership can read and be intelligent and still survive, but because Arendt understood the emergent nature of change and in particular the importance not just of dialogue but action. Much of the closed system that is politics depends on a rather passive ratification of the State by voters and of course a divisive and therefore implicitly violent dialogue about self-interest that it seems the State was mediate in order to avoid anarchy - which of course is proving to add to the possibility because there is no creative outlet for citizen action -only reaction. The emphasis on action (an anti-federalist value - see Christopher Duncan, Herbet Storing) means individuals are involved in co-creating the future -from which emerges a pattern of relationship one might refer to as "civis space" - broader and deeper than mere politics and infinitely more sustainable. Politicians can enliven social change and also create sustainable civic space by understanding the dyanmics of change....so much of politics, even among self-proclaimed Christian Conservatives, is based on a very mechanical and Social Darwinistic model.
I have probably jabbered on enough!

best



Linda F. Dennard, Ph.D.
Professor
Public Policy and International Relations
Auburn University at Montgomery
1-334-244-3646
lden...@aum.edu
________________________________________
From: chao...@googlegroups.com [chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of gus koehler [g...@timestructures.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 1:19 PM
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[Frederick D Abraham]

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

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https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

A penny saved is a Government oversight.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'

together it spells 'Theirs....'  [in the USA, IRS is the tax collection agency.]

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Frederick D Abraham <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bravo.  The contest between stabilization and destabilization is currently well highlighted regarding Egypt.

Kristeva was also a strong proponent of destabilization, and was responsible for bringing Bakhtin into the postmodern discourse.  I look forward to your book on Church.

fred

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

A penny saved is a Government oversight.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'

together it spells 'Theirs....'  [in the USA, IRS is the tax collection agency.]

[frank mosca]

Ah and Bakhtin of course was in favor of the use of humor to deconstruct the pretentions to knowing that are embedded in the belief
architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person. This is of course creative chaos that keeps things on
the edge of far from equilibrium states. The goal is not the destruction of “carnival” but the Socratic uncovering of our collective ignorance.
Following Socrates, the process is apophatic. Letting go of what we think we know but merely believe and thereby removing the barriers to bliss
as in my own Option Method system. Amen Amen I say unto you: unless you rejoice in the discovery of your ignorance and revel in the
opportunity to acknowledge the truth of your own Being Freedom Happiness, you shall be stuck in the darkness of weeping and gnashing of
teeth. And we all know how god damned expensive dentists can be :-) Frank

On 8/9/13 12:02 AM, "Frederick D Abraham" <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:

Frederick David Abraham
1396 Gregg Hill Road
Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA
802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 
Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)
Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org <http://www.blueberry-brain.org>
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych <https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/chaopsych>
impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php <http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php>  

A penny saved is a Government oversight.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'
together it spells 'Theirs....'  [in the USA, IRS is the tax collection agency.]


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Frederick D Abraham <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bravo.  The contest between stabilization and destabilization is currently well highlighted regarding Egypt.
Kristeva was also a strong proponent of destabilization, and was responsible for bringing Bakhtin into the postmodern discourse.  I look forward to your book on Church.

fred

Frederick David Abraham
1396 Gregg Hill Road
Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 <tel:802%20244-8104>  249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)
Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org <http://www.blueberry-brain.org>
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych <https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/chaopsych>
impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php <http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php>  

A penny saved is a Government oversight.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'
together it spells 'Theirs....'  [in the USA, IRS is the tax collection agency.]


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Linda Dennard <lden...@aum.edu> wrote:

 In recent years I have turned my work to looking at different historical authors, actors whose work creates or seeks to create a pattern of interaction among individuals that it at once ideally democratic and also evolutionary. There are limits to dialogue especially in space dominated by political habits and where dialogue is used to stablize power relationships.  In my view, science should, by its experimental nature, destablize dialogue, including political dialogue.  For example, Aaron Wildavsky, an iconic policy wonk, wrote a book early in his career that was largely overlooked, entitled "radical incrementalism." By this he meant that administrators would be more effective  at achieving desired outcomes if they addressed extant conditions and opportunities for solution development through experimentation  rather than only replicating historical models.  For example, he proposed throwing out the annual budget process and instead using available funds  to respond to emerging  information and opportunity that would produce innovation.  The annual budget process tends to reduce all "dialogue" to what gets the money spent within the timeframe and according to disembodied models of what works. In the last years of his life, Wildavsky (Berkeley) dabbled in complexity theory.

 I am (thank goodness) finishing a book this month on Senator Frank Church of Idaho - you may recall him as leading the crusade against the Viet Nam Wa rand as Chair of the committee investigating CIA/FBI abuses in the 1970s.  I picked him because of his flavor of Liberal populism. Most notably Church, who was also a leader in civil rights legislation, practiced an ethic that was akin to Obama's remarkable speech on race relations - the ability to express the full, contradictory elements of the landscape of race relations and move foreward from that reality rather than an abstract and usually divisve ideal. Idaho is notoriously intolerant and it was remarkable that Church survied four terms.  He did it partly because he left space for social healing - that is he recognized that not everyone arrives at the same change of consciousness at the same time in social change. This, however, did not mean that Church ameliorated the change, rather he focused on educating it and in particular broadening the meaning of traditional conservative populist values - like fair play and respect for the "little guy" He created dissonance among voters in this way, because he was expressing a full value to citizens used to operating from the safe haven of "half values" - those in particular based on self-interest. The dissonance, however, came because he was challenging conservative voters to live up to their own values, at the same time he  avoided being divisive.  Everybody stayed at the table even people frothing with xenophobia. Also Church changed with the science.  He was informed both in international affairs as the Chair of Senate Foreign Relations and in his many forrays into environmental protection by environmental sciences that broadened his classically mechanical view of the world to a more systems approach by his second term (his speeches on the evolutionary nature of democracy are very good) and he passed this knowledge on to citizens in countless letters, meetings etc.  Also his approach which was considered to be too independent for some, provides a good study in the complex nature of social change, citizen action and wants.

His tenure illustrates the transitional nature of populism and helps explain a bit why sometimes the underlying claims of the vacuous Tea Party makes sense even to liberals and why the "Take Back" movement was populated by people from acrosss the full political spectrum.  In short, scoail transitions, as perhaps evidenced in democracy movements generally, are both attempts at destablizing political power and simultaneously re-organization of the patterns of social interaction. Navigating transitions so that they remain open long enough and receive enough information/learning to produce a real change rather than an adaptive  reaction requires artful leadership (among other things). Most notably for this discussion, it was a change in science that seemed to mobilize Church's leadership in a number of areas.

Church was also influened by philosopher Hannah Arendt, especially her work on revolution, violence and "the human condition."  I hope to get something out this year looking at the prgamatists (Arendt, Dewey and Jane Addams) - all believers in the power of science but, unlike progressives they used science to destablize adaptive behavior (among other things) rather than to merely inform static models of utopia. Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize as a socialogist for linking the goals of social "improvement" with international democracy.  Senator Church's use of Arendt is significant, not only because it proves that political leadership can read and be intelligent and still survive, but because Arendt understood the emergent nature of change and in particular the importance not just of dialogue but action. Much of the closed system that is  politics depends on a rather passive ratification of the State by voters and of course a divisive and therefore implicitly violent dialogue about self-interest that it seems the State was mediate in order to avoid anarchy - which of course is proving to add to the possibility because there is no creative outlet for citizen action -only reaction.  The emphasis on action (an anti-federalist value - see Christopher Duncan, Herbet Storing) means individuals are involved in co-creating the future -from which emerges a pattern of relationship one might refer to as "civis space" - broader and deeper than mere politics and infinitely more sustainable.  Politicians can enliven social change and also create sustainable civic space by understanding the dyanmics of change....so much of politics, even among self-proclaimed Christian Conservatives, is based on a very mechanical and Social Darwinistic model.
   I have probably jabbered on enough!

best



Linda F. Dennard, Ph.D.
Professor
Public Policy and International Relations
Auburn University at Montgomery

1-334-244-3646 <tel:1-334-244-3646>

[Theodore Hoppe]

Re: "the preten(s)ions of knowing that are embedded in the belief architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person. 

This is interesting. Am I wrong to think that these "pretensions" knowing and beliefs, are formed in the developmental stages? 

When citing the need for early childhood education, proponents tell us the children from households on welfare know 525 words by the age of three, while the offspring of professionals have mastered 1,116 words.

While some call is situation "morally indefensible," since it means that youngsters from poor families enter kindergarden well behind their peers, a disadvantage that usually lasts a lifetime, we are told that "the entire pre-kindergarden industry is fragmented, with few standards and little oversight" with "many of its teachers...unaccredited.  Even the president has stated that "less than 30% of the four-year-olds are in good programs." 

"Landing on the moon is easy,  Teaching millions of four-year-olds and doing it well is much harder," even when you already have the science.

Ted

--
Theodore A. Hoppe
  'dustproduction'

[Linda Dennard]

(Sorry for my random post earlier, just exploring a framework)... I am not sure we "adopt" anything completely rationally. We rather adapt. The force of our Self is more than our brains. Destabilization whether through dance, music, humor poetry, art or love speaks to the full Self, produces doubt above all and doubt produces movement. But in adaptive fields, I wonder if the "truth" is not always an approximation and consciousness is the ability to be aware of what we are adapting to and why and perhaps more importantly what we are asking other people and living things to adapt to. The dynamic nature of living systems may be sustained more by the pursuit of truth, than truth itself.

The education system (I feel) especially for children is reductive by nature and controlled by assumptions about how change and learning occur that are at least a hundred years old. Yet until political leaders themselves can catch up with science - not justthe technology of science - but the philosophy of science, nothing much will change. Most education policy is trapped within the windowless room of fiscal responsibility and indeed a "pretension" about the dangers of self-development in education. More, it is trapped by the phenomenon of American politics - and perhaps living systems controlled by limited organizing principles - one issue becomes intertwined with another. (Foucoult of course on prisons and schools). The same adminsitrative structures that govern schools, govern prisons. The most recent phenomena in Alabama, for example, is that unresolved and unhealed race issues, a very high murder rate and a strong military presence has resulted in a State Law that allows (indeed encourages) individuals to carry weapons (unconcealed in public) including schools. If you do not want guns in your space you have to put a little sticker on your window. In war people adapt not to the rational intent of war (liberation, democracy whatever) but rather to the irrational conditions of war - the displacement, loss of family, the violence, disorientation and especially fear. Wolin said, once society is organzied by fear, democracy is lost.

I think this hard mass of intertwined madness is very vulnerable. My concern is that we do not necessarily know how, given the Nation State's propensity for thriving on conflict, to navigate the emerging transition in a way that does not simply splinter fear rather than free us from it's imprisoning effects. I am thinking transitions require a much different approach than the "management" ideal that predominates in government. Social healing perhaps is an approximation, certainly keeping enough disquieting "information" in the system that old patterns are simply given more substance.




L

Linda F. Dennard, Ph.D.
Professor
Public Policy and International Relations
Auburn University at Montgomery
1-334-244-3646

lden...@aum.edu
________________________________________
From: chao...@googlegroups.com [chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of frank mosca [mo...@optonline.net]
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 8:29 AM
To: Frederick D Abraham; chao...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

Ah and Bakhtin of course was in favor of the use of humor to deconstruct the pretentions to knowing that are embedded in the belief
architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person. This is of course creative chaos that keeps things on
the edge of far from equilibrium states. The goal is not the destruction of “carnival” but the Socratic uncovering of our collective ignorance.
Following Socrates, the process is apophatic. Letting go of what we think we know but merely believe and thereby removing the barriers to bliss
as in my own Option Method system. Amen Amen I say unto you: unless you rejoice in the discovery of your ignorance and revel in the
opportunity to acknowledge the truth of your own Being Freedom Happiness, you shall be stuck in the darkness of weeping and gnashing of
teeth. And we all know how god damned expensive dentists can be :-) Frank


On 8/9/13 12:02 AM, "Frederick D Abraham" <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:



Frederick David Abraham
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Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA
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Skype: frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)
Google+ Circles, Hangouts Groups

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impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php <http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php><http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php>

A penny saved is a Government oversight.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'
together it spells 'Theirs....' [in the USA, IRS is the tax collection agency.]


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Frederick D Abraham <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:
Bravo. The contest between stabilization and destabilization is currently well highlighted regarding Egypt.
Kristeva was also a strong proponent of destabilization, and was responsible for bringing Bakhtin into the postmodern discourse. I look forward to your book on Church.

fred

Frederick David Abraham
1396 Gregg Hill Road
Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA
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Skype: frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)
Google+ Circles, Hangouts Groups

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impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php <http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php><http://impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php>

[Theodore Hoppe]

George Lakoff's  best known thesis says that lives of individuals are significantly influenced by the central metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena.  How then do we simply let "go of what we think we know, but merely believe, and thereby removing the barriers to bliss?" In most cases the central metaphor is what promises "bliss," or something like it.  

It's not a stretch to say/think that internalizing this conflict is a source of mental disorder.

Ted   

 

[Mike McCullough]

            Just some quick comments on recent notes in this interesting thread:

            Linda, I look forward to your book.  Frank Church is one of my all-time favorite members of Congress.  I wrote him from Sao Paulo in 1969 to support his call for an end to U.S. support for Brazil’s military dictatorship.  In an essay I published in 1977, I wrote “Senator Frank Church recently warned that the surveillance capacity of the information technology now possessed by American intelligence agencies will leave ‘no place to hide’ if a dictatorship ever takes over in the United States.”  With the national security state now apparently out of control, we badly need people like him in Congress and beyond. (I found it interesting to see that his son is now a minister in a Manhattan church.)

            It is most interesting to learn of his interest in Hannah Arendt.  Arendt viewed power as people “acting in concert”, collaborating, cooperating, working together (something Church was clearly good at getting people to do).   She insisted that the word “force” not “power” be used to describe what traditional power theorists define as power – domination, exploitation, control over others.  In this I think she was fighting a futile war against the English language – and probably all other languages.  The notion of “people in power” dominating others is just too deeply ingrained in the ways people view and talk about power.  What I argue for in a complexity theory of power is a hybrid perspective: there is traditional linear A over B power but there is also the non-linear Arendt-style empowerment through which people collaboratively build structures unconstrained by a chain of command, capable of thriving in far from equilibrium conditions.

            And the “pretensions of knowing” highlighted by Frank and then Ted, “our collective ignorance” as Frank put it.  It is one of the realizations achieved by 20^th century physics –uncertainty and disorder can never be eliminated; they can only be reduced.  This loss of absolute certainty seems to lead an ethical vacuum (e.g. for some post-modernists) but I don’t think arguments for human rights depend on moral absolutism.  

            Lots of other interesting points came up in recent posts but I’ve got to leave it here.

 

        Mike 

[Linda Dennard]

Mike
As you mention it, I seem to remember reading a copy of your letter from Brazil in the Church files (such a small world)... Hannah Arendt actually contributed to his campaign at one point. I think it was then that he was introduced to her work - but I haven't found evidence of a conversation with her. Put in the context of Arendt, Church's approach (he was called Senator Cathedral by his detractors) was to frame what he did -by taking steps in a specific moral direction -action to enact - rather than relying on Mead's assumption of controlling the bad in human behavior in order to mold individuals into the ideal. Like Charles Taylor, my favorite Canadian philosopher, (Sources of the Self) he adhered to the the principles of the framework (I think there is a connection between 'initial conditions" here) in order to frame a sense of self and purpose. These were not "applied" instrumentally in the manner of Mead (who influenced much of the development of administrative government) but rather used as a basis for reasoning in different contexts. So in his case a commitment to human rights did not require absolutism - but perhaps the ability to recognize justice or injustice. More I think there was a recognition that absolutism was likely to simply produce more oppression. I have been interested lately in the work of Emmanuel Levinas as well, who names "generosity" as a key moral principle - because it repicates the initial conditions of creation (however we see the beginning of life) - from his view if it was an "act," it was an incredibly generous one given the sheer abundance of life that emerged from it. Repeating the "act" again and again, rather than the re-enforcing the rules of good behavior in one form of coercion or another -- sustains those initial life-giving dynamics.
There is this sense in Arendt, Taylor and Levinas (I think) that acting with purpose rather than merely reacting may create discomfort (Church often began his debates with the moral question rather than the political one) but it also keeps evolution open.

L




________________________________________
From: chao...@googlegroups.com [chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike McCullough [mike.mc...@rcn.com]
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 6:42 PM
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Cc: gus koehler; Linda Dennard

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[Mike McCullough]

Hi Linda,

            Yes, a small world indeed if you have read that letter.  I had forgotten about it entirely until, a couple of years ago, I came across a carbon copy I had made of it. It was against Peace Corps rules to comment on US policy toward your host country and some volunteers had been expelled elsewhere for doing so.  I was not completely averse to that risk but I had come to find getting immersed in Brazil so fascinating that I asked in the letter that he not publicize it. 

             As you probably know, in 1971, Church as the head of a foreign affairs subcommittee sent staff members to Brazil to investigate a USAID police training program. They effectively concluded that the program was bolstering a police state.  It took a few years but this eventually led to the end of the program worldwide.  When I find time, I’m working on a piece of historical fiction in which this plays a central role.

            It sounds like Taylor and Levinas are good complements to complexity theory, in seeking principles of action that don’t impose but enable.  Those who feel they do possess absolute certainty often develop a ferocious moral energy and have little or no qualms about violating human rights.  Levinas clearly stands against such intolerance with his notion of generosity.

Mike 

 

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

Leonard Mlodinow wrote an interesting review back in April of the book, "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People" by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. I mention it here because the book seems to address this sense of how social responsible we think all are, when it comes to issues like sexual orientation, body weight, height, nationality, disability, and age, and how a little science can step in and shows us that our unconscious mind may hold a different view than our conscious mind, herein allowing people to say one thing and yet behave in another.

Quoting from the review: "In their new book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, social psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald examine the nature of today’s social biases, and the difficulty we face in erasing them. The authors’ central point is that most of us are biased toward various groups. Moreover, though some of us are aware of being prejudiced, and some of us publicly express bigoted views, the authors assert that far more of us hold prejudices seated in a deep level of our minds that is inaccessible to our conscious awareness. The attitudes lurking in that blind spot, they say, have an important part in perpetuating discrimination."

Banaji’s and Greenwald’s view aligns the study of prejudice with a larger movement that has transformed academic psychology in recent years.  "A quarter of a century ago, most psychologists believed that human behavior was primarily guided by thoughts and feelings. Nowadays the majority will readily agree that much of human judgement and behavior is produced with little consciousness."

Some here may recognize Greenwald as the individual responsible for developing the Implicit Association Test, (IAT), in 1998, and it is this test that the book relies on to support its claims.

Citing Walter Lippmann, who co-opts the term "stereotype,"  Mlodinow explains that for human psychology, it was a way of dealing with complexity. "The real environment is altogether too big too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance, and although we have to act in that environment we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it." (Lippmann, Public Opinion 1922)  This simpler model is the stereotype.

"Today many polls report that Americans are in favor of a tolerant society in which people are judged on their merits, and think it is wrong to assess people according to the social and ethnic categories to which they belong.  The question Mlodinow asks is "Why then does discrimination based on class and ethnicity appear to be endemic in America?"  The authors' answer is that biases that are often hidden influence our judgements and actions in many of the situations we encounter.  Even people that abhor prejudices commonly hold them.

My question is how and when are these unconscious biases formed?  If they are "embedded in the belief architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person" it occurs at an illusive unconscious level in the mind

Mlodinow notes that the authors didn't mention Lippmann's concerns about the media being the source of much of our biases, but they do suggest that the mass media has the potential  to create "counterstereotypic" role models, perhaps not unlike the characters in the narratives I alluded to in my original comment on this thread.

http://spottheblindspot.com/the-book/

Best,

Ted

On Monday, July 29, 2013 5:54:46 PM UTC-4, Frederick D Abraham wrote:

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Reply to thread started by Fred 7/29 continued by Gus, Sam, Mike 8/3-8/9, Linda 8/8-8/11, Frank 8/9 and Ted 8/9-8/13:

 

In “Educating for Civic Responsibility” presented at the 4^th International Conference on Social Science Research, in Nashville TN, December 2009, I demonstrated a model of general, social causality to show how societies are able to reorganize at higher levels of shared responsibility. 

The model provides a basis for recognizing a need to establish equity in the distribution of rights, privileges and rewards for sustainable economic development. The model also provides, at higher levels of consciousness formation, a basis for establishing cultural and social prerequisites to ensure justice and promote harmony. The model referenced six "bases of social power" identified by J. R. P. French and B. H. Raven in Studies in Social Power, D. Cartwright, ed., Ann Arbor MI: Institute for Social Research (1959:155-164), applied as "Initiators of Social Change... Implications... for Social Transformation" in Beyond Equilibrium Theory (MRossDeWitt, 2000:177-179). The model was shared with a future USA President in 1960, and with political leaders on three continents during the 1980s, to show how it was possible to safely end the Cold War without disrupting power relations. Subtitle of the book cited its focus on: “Power Sharing in Transition,” which scared the hell out of my publisher.  Editor was fired and marketing scrapped, as a rogue USA regime was entertaining the idea of starting two major wars on the Asian continent and planning a ‘false flag’ event, which got a potential CIA whistleblower imprisoned for five years, using the Patriot Act.

 

Science is helpful, activism is to be commended, but uncovering deliberate corruption is essential. Transformation of political institutions is easily sabotaged, by those who control those in power, regardless of the intended merit of the political institutions.

 

In a few weeks, whistleblowers from the legal team of the World Bank will be reinstated and a new worldwide financial system will begin to take shape, replacing the fossil fuel controlled system that brought down the global economy in 2008. Clean energy has been available since the 1940s, but the patents were stolen when Tesla died, by those who own the central banks, the media, the defense industries, control public education, and now the health industry, taking over medical complexes after extending credit for ill-advised major construction of new facilities. All of this will change, beginning now.  

 

“Civic space” is about to be redefined, as no longer “marginal space,” cf. Fred, below. Selfhood is about to be celebrated as more than “looking out for self.” Everything you talk about, below, especially by Professor Linda Dennard, is about to become relevant and helpful, for societies waking up to their true power to take back what has been stolen over the years by a greedy few, with no other motive than to take by force what they couldn’t steal. The human race is not alone in this endeavor. Space beings are prompting us. 

Nancy, aka Martha (Dr. M. Ross DeWitt) while being hunted down for political activism to reign in bankers (1993) for ripping off The FED.

 

Fred Abraham 7/29:

The un-finalize-ability of the self is a product of the constant navigation between the internal world and the external world, and the human thinker occupies this "marginal space." ‖The pure unification of which is an unrealizable goal because of the brevity of human life and the conversation between internal consistency and external dynamism.‖ The utterance guarantees what Peirce calls infinite semiosis, the infinitely long chain of signs ―of which the human, in his or her brief lifetime, only has the privilege of sampling a very small part.‖ (Fox, 2005).

Note, Peirce, the famous semitotician and polymath, has a similar concept to Bakhtin‟s, that of „infinite semiosis‟.

―I believe that Bakhtin‘s theoretical suggestions concerning polyphony, carnival, and other cultural phenomena, should not be seen only as social, institutional, artistic, or language related devices, but as concrete suggestions about cultural space and the life taking place within it.

―Bakhtin insists throughout all of his philosophy that time and space are not physical but that time is historical and space is social. On this point he is indeed comparable with the later Nishida for whom the basho is a place in which things do not simply ―exist‖ but in which they are ―local,‖ i.e. in which they ―are‖ in a concrete way. Bakhtin‘s and Nishida‘s outspokenly ―organicist‖ definitions of ―place‖ or ―locality‖ put both of them into the group of those people who attempt to think place as more than as a Newtonian extension of space.‖ (Botz-Bornstein, 2004.)

Carnival is but one of several dialogic platforms that can have a liberating influence.

from: http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf

Fred 7/29  Frederick David Abraham, 1396 Gregg Hill Road, Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

 

Mike McCullough  8/3: 

I’m very glad to learn of Mikhail Bakhtin. That “dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change” really seems to capture the dynamics of complexity, of the reality of ceaseless change.  

This reminds me of Edgar Morin.  Morin (Volume 6 of La Methode, Ethique) defines “dialogique” as “A complex unity between two complementary, concurrent and antagonistic logics, entities or instances which nourish and complete one another but also oppose and combat one another.  To be distinguished from the Hegelian dialectic.  For Hegel, the contradictions find their solution in going beyond and losing themselves in a superior unity.”  [Here’s the original of the last sentence which I may have translated too loosely:  “Les contradictions trouvent leur solution, se dépassent et se suppriment dans une unité supérieure.”]

I just tried an experiment: Googling “Mikhail Bakhtin” and “Edgar Morin” at the same time. I found the attached PDF book chapter called “From Systems to Complexity Thinking”.  Its author says “In sum, my concept, systemicity, builds upon system thinking of Bakhtin, but takes it along the paradigm shift into complexity thinking (i.e. Morin)”.  The author apparently is David Boje (someone I see on Wikipedia who has a corporate background but takes a critical and playful approach: e.g. “He is known to teach barefoot as a protest against sweatshops of multinational corporations in developing countries.” And has a book called “Dancing to the Music of Story.”  Can't vouch for attached but looks interesting upon browse.

Mike  8/3                                               

 

Linda  Dennard  8/8:

In recent years I have turned to looking at authors and actors whose work creates or seeks to create a pattern of interaction among individuals that is at once ideally democratic and also evolutionary. There are limits to dialogue especially in space dominated by political habits and where dialogue is used to stabilize power relationships.  In my view, science should, by its experimental nature, destabilize dialogue, including political dialogue.  For example, Aaron Wildavsky, an iconic policy wonk, wrote a book early in his career that was largely overlooked, entitled "radical incremental-ism." By this he meant that administrators would be more effective at achieving desired outcomes if they addressed extant conditions and opportunities for solution development through experimentation rather than only replicating historical models.  For example, he proposed throwing out the annual budget process and instead using available funds to respond to emerging information and opportunity that would produce innovation.  The annual budget process tends to reduce all "dialogue" to what gets the money spent within the timeframe and according to disembodied models of what works. In the last years of his life, Wildavsky (Berkeley) dabbled in complexity theory.

I am finishing a book on Senator Frank Church of Idaho - you may recall his leading the crusade against the Viet Nam War and as Chair of the committee investigating CIA/FBI abuses in the 1970s.  I picked him because of his Liberal populism. Most notably Church, a leader in civil rights legislation, practiced an ethic that was akin to Obama's speech on race relations - the ability to express the full, contradictory elements of the landscape of race relations and move forward from that reality rather than an abstract and usually divisive ideal. Idaho is notoriously intolerant and it was remarkable that Church survived four terms.  He did it partly because he left space for social healing - that is he recognized that not everyone arrives at the same change of consciousness at the same time in social change. This did not mean that he approved the change, rather he focused on educating and in particular broadening the meaning of traditional conservative populist values - like fair play and respect for the "little guy" He created dissonance among voters in this way, because he was expressing a full value to citizens used to operating from the safe haven of "half values" - those in particular based on self-interest.

 

The dissonance, however, came because he was challenging conservative voters to live up to their own values, at the same time he avoided being divisive.  Everybody stayed at the table even people frothing with xenophobia. Also Church changed with the science.  He was informed both in international affairs as the Chair of Senate Foreign Relations and in his many forays into environmental protection by environmental sciences that broadened his classically mechanical view of the world to a more systems approach by his second term (his speeches on the evolutionary nature of democracy are very good) and he passed this knowledge on to citizens in countless letters, meetings etc.  Also his approach, which was considered to be too independent for some, provides a good study in the complex nature of social change, citizen action and wants.

His tenure illustrates the transitional nature of populism and helps explain a bit why sometimes the underlying claims of the vacuous Tea Party makes sense even to liberals and why the "Take Back" movement was populated by people from across the full political spectrum.  In short, social transitions, as perhaps evidenced in democracy movements generally, are both attempts at destabilizing political power and simultaneously re-organization of the patterns of social interaction. Navigating transitions, so that they remain open long enough and receive enough information and learning to produce a real change rather than an adaptive reaction, requires artful leadership (among other things). Most notably for this discussion, it was a change in science that seemed to mobilize Church's leadership in a number of areas.

Church was also influenced by philosopher Hannah Arendt, especially by her work on revolution, violence and "the human condition," [who believed in using] science to destabilize adaptive behavior … rather than to merely inform static models of utopia. Senator Church's use of Arendt is significant, not only because it proves that political leadership can read and be intelligent and still survive, but because Arendt understood the emergent nature of change and in particular the importance not just of dialogue but action. Much of the closed system that is politics depends on a rather passive ratification of the State by voters and of course a divisive and therefore implicitly violent dialogue about self-interest that it seems the State [has to] mediate in order to avoid anarchy - which of course is proving to add to the possibility because there is no creative outlet for citizen action -only reaction.  The emphasis on action (an anti-federalist value - see Christopher Duncan, Herbert Storing) means individuals are involved in co-creating the future -from which emerges a pattern of relationship one might refer to as "civic space" - broader and deeper than mere politics and infinitely more sustainable.  Politicians can enliven social change and also create sustainable civic space by understanding the dynamics of change, so much of politics, even among self-proclaimed Christian Conservatives, is based on a mechanical, Social Darwinism model.

Linda 8/8  Linda F. Dennard, Ph.D.  Professor  Public Policy and International Relations,
Auburn University at Montgomery  1-334-244-3646  lden...@aum.edu

 

Frank Mosca  8/9:

Ah and Bakhtin of course was in favor of the use of humor to deconstruct the pretentions to knowing that are embedded in the belief architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person. This is of course creative chaos that keeps things on the edge of far from equilibrium states. The goal is not the destruction of “carnival” but the Socratic uncovering of our collective ignorance.

Following Socrates, the process is apophatic [?]. Letting go of what we think we know but merely believe and thereby removing the barriers to bliss as in my own Option Method system. Amen, Amen I say unto you: unless you rejoice in the discovery of your ignorance and revel in the opportunity to acknowledge the truth of your own Being Freedom Happiness, you shall be stuck in the darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth. And we all know how…. expensive dentists can be :-)

Frank 8/9                                            

 

Linda Dennard  8/9

I am not sure we "adopt" anything completely rationally. We rather adapt. The force of our Self is more than our brains. Destabilization whether through dance, music, humor poetry, art or love speaks to the full Self, produces doubt above all and doubt produces movement.  But in adaptive fields, I wonder if the "truth" is not always an approximation and consciousness is the ability to be aware of what we are adapting to and why and perhaps more importantly what we are asking other people and living things to adapt to. The dynamic nature of living systems may be sustained more by the pursuit of truth, than truth itself.

The education system (I feel) especially for children is reductive by nature and controlled by assumptions about how change and learning occur that are at least a hundred years old. Yet until political leaders themselves can catch up with science - not just the technology of science - but the philosophy of science, nothing much will change. Most education policy is trapped within the windowless room of fiscal responsibility and indeed a "pretension" about the dangers of self-development in education. More, it is trapped by the phenomenon of American politics - and perhaps living systems controlled by limited organizing principles - one issue becomes intertwined with another. (Foucoult, On prisons and schools). The same administrative structures that govern schools, govern prisons. The most recent phenomena in Alabama, for example, is that unresolved and unhealed race issues, a very high murder rate and a strong military presence has resulted in a State Law that allows (indeed encourages) individuals to carry weapons (unconcealed in public) including schools. If you do not want guns in your space you have to put a little sticker on your window. In war people adapt not to the rational intent of war (liberation, democracy whatever) but rather to the irrational conditions of war - the displacement, loss of family, the violence, disorientation and especially fear. Wolin said, once society is organized by fear, democracy is lost.

I think this hard mass of intertwined madness is very vulnerable.  My concern is that we do not necessarily know how, given the Nation State's propensity for thriving on conflict, to navigate the emerging transition in a way that does not simply splinter fear rather than free us from it's imprisoning effects. I am thinking transitions require a much different approach than the  "management" ideal that predominates in government. Social healing perhaps is an approximation, certainly keeping enough disquieting "information" in the system that old patterns are simply given more substance.

Linda 8/9

 

Ted Hoppe  8/9:

George Lakoff's best known thesis says that lives of individuals are significantly influenced by the central metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena.  How then do we simply let "go of what we think we know, but merely believe, and thereby removing the barriers to bliss?" In most cases the central metaphor is what promises “bliss,” or something like it.  It's not a stretch to say/think that internalizing this conflict is a source of mental disorder.

Ted 8/9 

 

Mike McCullough  8/9:

Linda, I look forward to your book.  Frank Church is one of my all-time favorite members of Congress.  I wrote him from Sao Paulo in 1969 to support his call for an end to U.S. support for Brazil’s military dictatorship.  In an essay I published in 1977, I wrote “Senator Frank Church recently warned that the surveillance capacity of the information technology now possessed by American intelligence agencies will leave ‘no place to hide’ if a dictatorship ever takes over in the United States.”  With the national security state now apparently out of control, we badly need people like him in Congress and beyond.

 

It is most interesting to learn of his interest in Hannah Arendt.  Arendt viewed power as people “acting in concert”, collaborating, cooperating, working together (something Church was clearly good at getting people to do).   She insisted that the word “force” not “power” be used to describe what traditional power theorists define as power – domination, exploitation, control of others.  In this I think she was fighting a futile war against the English language – and probably all other languages.  The notion of “people in power” dominating others is just too deeply ingrained in the ways people view and talk about power.  What I argue for in a complexity theory of power is a hybrid perspective: there is traditional linear A over B power but there is also the non-linear Arendt-style empowerment through which people collaboratively build structures unconstrained by a chain of command, capable of thriving in far from equilibrium conditions.

 

And the “pretensions of knowing” highlighted by Frank and then Ted, “our collective ignorance” as Frank put it.  It is one of the realizations achieved by 20^th century physics –uncertainty and disorder can never be eliminated; they can only be reduced.  This loss of absolute certainty seems to lead an ethical vacuum (e.g. for some post-modernists) but I don’t think arguments for human rights depend on moral absolutism.  

Mike 8/9

 

Linda Dennard 8/11:

Mike, as you mention it, I seem to remember reading a copy of your letter from Brazil in the Church files (such a small world)... Hannah Arendt actually contributed to his campaign at one point. I think it was then that he was introduced to her work - but I haven't found evidence of a conversation with her.  Put in the context of Arendt, Church's approach (he was called Senator Cathedral by his detractors) was to frame what he did -by taking steps in a specific moral direction -action to enact - rather than relying on Mead's assumption of controlling the bad in human behavior in order to mold individuals into the ideal. Like Charles Taylor, my favorite Canadian philosopher, (Sources of the Self) he adhered to the principles of the framework (I think there is a connection between 'initial conditions" here) in order to frame a sense of self and purpose. These were not "applied" instrumentally in the manner of Mead (who influenced much of the development of administrative government) but rather used as a basis for reasoning in different contexts. So in his case a commitment to human rights did not require absolutism - but perhaps the ability to recognize justice or injustice.

 

More I think there was recognition that absolutism was likely to simply produce more oppression. I have been interested lately in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, as well, who names "generosity" as a key moral principle - because it replicates the initial conditions of creation (however we see the beginning of life) - from his view if it was an "act," it was an incredibly generous one given the sheer abundance of life that emerged from it. Repeating the "act" again and again, rather than the re-enforcing the rules of good behavior in one form of coercion or another -- sustains those initial life-giving dynamics.
 

There is this sense in Arendt, Taylor and Levinas (I think) that acting with purpose rather than merely reacting may create discomfort (Church often began his debates with the moral question rather than the political one) but it also keeps evolution open.

Linda 8/11

 

Mike McCullough  8/11:

Hi Linda, Yes, it’s a small world indeed if you have read that letter.  I had forgotten about it entirely until, a couple of years ago, I came across a carbon copy I had made of it. It was against Peace Corps rules to comment on US policy toward your host country and some volunteers had been expelled elsewhere for doing so.  I was not completely averse to that risk but I had come to find getting immersed in Brazil so fascinating that I asked in the letter that he not publicize it. 

 

As you probably know, in 1971, Church as the head of a foreign affairs subcommittee sent staff members to Brazil to investigate a USAID police training program. They effectively concluded that the program was bolstering a police state.  It took a few years but this eventually led to the end of the program worldwide.  When I find time, I’m working on a piece of historical fiction in which this plays a central role.

 

It sounds like Taylor and Levinas are good complements to complexity theory, in seeking principles of action that don’t impose but enable. Those who feel they do possess absolute certainty often develop a ferocious moral energy and have little or no qualms about violating human rights. Levinas clearly stands against such intolerance with his notion of generosity.

Mike 8/11

 

Ted Hoppe  8/13:

Leonard Mlodinow wrote an interesting review back in April of the book, "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People" by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. I mention it here because the book seems to address this sense of how social responsible we think all are, when it comes to issues like sexual orientation, body weight, height, nationality, disability, and age, and how a little science can step in and shows us that our unconscious mind may hold a different view than our conscious mind, herein allowing people to say one thing and yet behave in another.

 

Quoting from the review: "In their new book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, social psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald examine the nature of today’s social biases, and the difficulty we face in erasing them. The authors’ central point is that most of us are biased toward various groups. Moreover, though some of us are aware of being prejudiced, and some of us publicly express bigoted views, the authors assert that far more of us hold prejudices seated in a deep level of our minds that is inaccessible to our conscious awareness. The attitudes lurking in that blind spot, they say, have an important part in perpetuating discrimination."

 

Banaji’s and Greenwald’s view aligns the study of prejudice with a larger movement that has transformed academic psychology in recent years.  "A quarter of a century ago, most psychologists believed that human behavior was primarily guided by thoughts and feelings. Nowadays the majority will readily agree that much of human judgment and behavior is produced with little consciousness."

 

Some here may recognize Greenwald as the individual responsible for developing the Implicit Association Test, (IAT), in 1998, and it is this test that the book relies on to support its claims.

 

Citing Walter Lippmann, who co-opts the term "stereotype," Mlodinow explains that for human psychology, it was a way of dealing with complexity. "The real environment is altogether too big too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance, and although we have to act in that environment we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it." (Lippmann, Public Opinion 1922)  This simpler model is the stereotype.

 

"Today many polls report that Americans are in favor of a tolerant society in which people are judged on their merits, and think it is wrong to assess people according to the social and ethnic categories to which they belong.  The question Mlodinow asks is "Why then does discrimination based on class and ethnicity appear to be endemic in America?"  The authors' answer is that biases that are often hidden influence our judgments and actions in many of the situations we encounter.  Even people that abhor prejudices commonly hold them.

 

My question is how and when are these unconscious biases formed?  If they are "embedded in the belief architecture of cultures and adopted into the belief architecture of each person" it occurs at an illusive unconscious level in the mind

 

Mlodinow notes that the authors didn't mention Lippmann's concerns about the media being the source of much of our biases, but they do suggest that the mass media has the potential to create "counter-stereotypic" role models, perhaps not unlike the characters in the narratives I alluded to in my original comment on this thread.

http://spottheblindspot.com/the-book/

Ted 8/13

Selections, bolding and minor editing by Nancy aka Martha (both at risk since 2009). 

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

"Intelligent whites give more enlightened responses than less intelligent whites to questions about their attitudes, but their responses to questions about actual policies aimed at redressing racial discrimination are far less enlightened. For example, although nearly all whites with advanced cognitive abilities say that 'whites have no right to segregate their neighborhoods,' nearly half of this group remains content to allow prejudicial real estate practices to continue unencumbered by open housing laws."

According to Wodtke, the broader implication of this study is that racism and prejudice don't simply come about as a result of low mental capacities or deficiencies in socialization. Rather, they result from the need of dominant groups to legitimize and protect their privileged social position within an intergroup conflict over resources.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130811005342.htm

"More intelligent members of the dominant group are just better at legitimizing and protecting their privileged position than less intelligent members," he said. "In modern America, where blacks are mobilized to challenge racial inequality, this means that intelligent whites say -- and may in fact truly believe -- all the right things about racial equality in principle, but they just don't actually do anything that would eliminate the privileges to which they have become accustomed.
"In many cases, they have become so accustomed to these privileges that they become 'invisible,' and any effort to point these privileges out or to eliminate them strikes intelligent whites as a grave injustice."

On Monday, July 29, 2013 5:54:46 PM UTC-4, Frederick D Abraham wrote:

[Mike McCullough]

Let me try to sew together a few of the notable comments made in recent posts here.  Given that uncertainty can only be reduced and never eliminated, “The dynamic nature of living systems may be sustained more by the pursuit of truth, than truth itself.” (Linda Aug 9).  There is subsequently a certain imperfection in whatever we think or do – and this is manifest in prejudices.  “Even people that abhor prejudices commonly hold them…our unconscious mind may hold a different view than our conscious mind, herein allowing people to say one thing and yet behave in another.” (Ted Aug 13).  More specifically, Ted (Aug 17) quotes authors of a study saying “intelligent whites say -- and may in fact truly believe -- all the right things about racial equality in principle, but they just don't actually do anything that would eliminate the privileges to which they have become accustomed”.  This would seem to play into Linda’s concern (Aug 9)  “that we do not necessarily know how, given the Nation State's propensity for thriving on conflict, to navigate the emerging transition in a way that does not simply splinter fear rather than free us from its imprisoning effects.”  In other words, we have an enormous challenge if we are to confront the “need to establish equity in the distribution of rights, privileges and rewards for sustainable economic development” (Martha Aug  14).

 Mike

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Cleverness is not a substitute for Intelligence. The fact that "haves" are better at protecting their unequal advantages than "have nots" is not an intelligent response. Survival of the human race depends on an intelligent response to promotion of Conflict over Compassion as the primary motivator of Progress. It's brought us to the brink of extinction of our our racial advantage over so-called lesser beings. Ruth Benedict, "Patterns of Culture" showed, in research, suppressed by Journals, lost to us after her untimely death, that "peaceful" primitive societies prospered, while neighboring "warlike" societies did not. Her thesis did not "fit" the preference, in the Social Sciences at that time (and still), that conflict is our natural state.

We have been engaged in a Propaganda War of the Worlds to maintain an Agenda that pretends to protect a set of Ideals, which when examined are archaic and destructive of the human condition. Conflict is not our Natural State. Theories to promote this Fight to Maintain Equilibrium are still in vogue. Technologies to free us from perpetual conflict were stolen after Tesla's death, his patents disallowed, later inventions destroyed, their inventors and their laboratories trashed. For chaos theorists to ignore these historical developments is indicative of ways your thought processes have been hijacked. 

My case has been made, my reputation was maligned for decades until I took an aka, known to my supporters, so I was able to publish my work. It is providing the basis for Super Power refusal to be drawn into a WWIII plan to destroy what might be left of intelligent refusals to be made into a slave race. For you who smugly sit on the sidelines of this tragedy, hiding behind pretenses of scientific objectivity, frankly, makes me physically ill. I give you this visual, to think about:

"the fractal nature of experience also weaves an illusion...or makes it difficult to perceive the reality clearly"

http://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/forum/topics/diss-is-da-gummint-speakin?xg_source=activity#ixzz2cKRLnWrh 

   

---

From: Mike McCullough <mike.mc...@rcn.com>
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2013 3:13 PM

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[M. Ross DeWitt]

You are living in the illusions of Ardrey's Territorial Imperative and Darwin's Survival of the Fittest which have nothing to do with physical prowess, as it does in the animal world of beings who cannot think creatively to improve their condition, which is your right. Civilizations have failed, repeatedly, due to reliance on Animal Natures devoid of creative insight. The institutions of higher learning were seduced by international corporations following WWII to promote the agenda of those who justified profit motive to shake down the free enterprise system for their own well-being, at the expense of the public, who paid and continue to pay the tab. Original thinking was systematically removed as a criteria for career advancement in the social sciences, including politics and economics, as well as systems theory and games theory, in group dynamics and institutional analysis, which explains in part why the U.S. has fallen behind in practical applications of these fields.

The rest of the story is the systematic removal of jobs from the U.S. by those banker elites who were ripping of The FED at an accelerating rate from 1913-1993, 2001-2013, with only one audit, which proved disastrous in accounting for $assets, due to deficiencies in the trillions, which have yet to be explained. In addition, corruption of the World Bank, resulting in firing their legal team of  whistle blowers, threatens recovery of less well developed nations whose assets are being sold to pay exorbitant interest on fiat money loaned for technological developments unsuited to their circumstances. This is also what happened to American agriculture during the early 1980s when family farms were taken over by large corporations.

Ignorance of these developments is no excuse. "Charitable foundations" promoted research that advanced the interests of those who funded them, investing in the careers of those whose ideas conformed to their own vested interest. Congress is not the only institution bought and paid for by the banker elite. Institutions of Higher Learning are also in their debt, as well as Medical Schools, and large Medical Complexes in metropolitan areas, after borrowing money for expansions they couldn't afford. The Military Industrial Complex, that Eisenhower warned about, quickly expanded after WWII to include defense industries throughout the southern U.S., entertainment industries and our exploding information technologies.

To sum up this history as proof that conflict is our natural state is reductive of our human condition to Skinner's dog's conditioned response. You seem to agree. Limiting technological advance to means of increasing levels of conflict would prove your point. A counter culture exists, however, which may prove capable, without your assistance or knowledge, of redefining the ability of humans, at the highest level of leadership, to thwart what you believe to be our natural state. 

Thank you for your reply. It's good to have a dialogue on this point. Are we animals, or made in the image of a Creator with a plan to reclaim us when we lose our way? Or has God developed amnesia regarding the human race, as a friend posits in the blog cited below. He and I believe that humans still have a choice, and a God-given ability to find our way. 

---

From: Theodore Hoppe <dustpro...@gmail.com>
To: M. Ross DeWitt <mross...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 18, 2013 3:00 PM

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

Re: Conflict is not our Natural State. 

I respectfully disagree.  If we look to the other animals we see conflict over food and territory.  Humans are no different.  What is at question is the levels of conflict and not conflict itself.

Ted

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Agreed. Some humans do feel that they have a moral imperative to make a difference. And sometimes they do. When it's called a "save the world" complex it is usually ridiculed. For me the task of achieving the impossible is something I resist for as long as possible, until I can't find an excuse any longer, and then I do what seems irrational, since I can't imagine how it will work, but then it does. For that reason, I keep getting sent on "Missions Impossible" and marveling over Head Lines days, weeks, months or years later that are traceable to whatever mission I was sent on, because I couldn't seem to avoid it, so I did it anyway, because the means became available and I couldn't think of an excuse. Timing is critical but perhaps the dopamine spike, the Professor refers to, has been a factor. Ideas come and the urgency of putting them into action overcomes my reluctance. I was a registered Democrat, when I felt compelled to send "Ten Steps to a New Foreign Policy for the United States" to a Republican Presidential candidate. Four years later he presented it in my presence at a fundraiser to which I was invited, with an escort. Eight years later he announced he was going to China. Two years later he resigned from office. Like JFK, he offended the agenda of a well-oiled machine that I have described below. Sapolsky's clever talk baits his audience into thinking it is foolish to exercise their moral imperative, yet predicts they will, anyway. 

As an Atheist, he is telling them that what they will do is not rational. If you have read my recent post, on the ability of humans to deal with contradiction, you will appreciate my point of view, that this is not only our uniqueness but a way humans have developed to "overcome" competing realities, to find common ground, for the sake of organizing at higher levels of governance, to allow greater freedom and productivity rather than less. Toynbee (1889-1975) did not live to see the end of the Cold War, so he missed the significance of "power sharing" by leaders of nations, as our way to end wars.

The World Bank is due to be reconstructed, to fill its stated mission, to assist rather than defeat those who are trying to compete in the world market, for the well-being of their citizens. I authored a seminar paper, years ago, on such a plan, making it easy for me to see how it will work, using positive credits rather than negative debits, disallowing investors to lend fiat money and cover their risk in illegal ways. Clean energy has been available for decades, at low cost, to make it possible for all nations to improve their standards of living. Food production will no longer be inefficient, and resource consuming. New technologies in medicine will no longer be expensive and out of reach for most of the population. You scoff perhaps, at my optimism, yet I know these advances are available now, as humans realize we are superior beings.

Since presenting at international conferences in 2009, and traveling to London in 2011, I have learned that I'm being tutored by off-planet beings, here to supervise our peaceful transition to an international network of nations, who are committed to working together as independent yet collaborative states. Each nation will decide by referendum how to participate in this new entity. The global economy will be strong and viable as a result, without being undermined by illegal activities of traders and investors. This is a natural societal evolution, under unnatural circumstances, resisted opportunistically by socially retarded families who, in primitive societies, would have been driven out by tribal chiefs.

Thank you for this opportunity to weigh in on an important topic for the survival of the human race. Martha, PhD.      

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Theodore Hoppe <dustpro...@gmail.com>
To: M. Ross DeWitt <mross...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

This is a talk by a professor who's name  came up recently in another conversation. I agree with the point he raises at the conclusion of his talk.

Robert Sapolsky: The uniqueness of humans  http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_humans.html  

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 2:04 AM, Theodore Hoppe <dustpro...@gmail.com> wrote:

Re: "beings who cannot think creatively to improve their condition."  Yes, this sounds very much like humans to me.  Ted

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.  ~Samuel Johnson

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

   In this video, Robert Sapolsky discusses a change in a group of baboons that was unexpected, but significant, and it ties in nicely with the discussion here.  For all the thought and planning we do around how to change the world I'm continually amazed by how seemingly small and insignificant changes in initial conditions can cause huge ripples in the fabric of a social group.

  (and I would note that the comments Sapolsky regarding stress apply to the epigenetic factors that are intergenerational, and which seems to almost require an unpredicted intervention) 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY

    

[M. Ross DeWitt]

One could argue that military adventurism results in human alpha males dying off first, leaving pacifist males in charge. Unfortunately, the cabal elites have found ways to siphon off the wealth of western human societies and subject the populations of Europe and USA to near servant status, castrating them in effect. In Russia moreover, an entire generation of young men were lost in WWII, many having died due to faulty gas masks, and subsequent Cold War politics made it difficult for USSR to recover (not being eligible for Marshall Plan), resulting in unstable young families: (50% divorce rate after one year). One could argue that economics and growing debt crisis, along with political saber rattling, ended Cold War, although credit also due to Peace Talks. Would that continue, with expected Peace Dividend? Cabal had other plans: more wars, more major banker rip-offs.

Animal societies can't give us answers we are looking for. What rises to top in human societies are alpha males who dominate on backs of others: feeding ordinary citizens diseases and environmental conditions that can wipe us out (water that causes circulatory problems, just one example), educating our children to be robots, financing research that produces march-in-step intellectuals incapable of innovative thinking, "stacking the deck" in their favor re: legislation, creating domestic military to prevent rebellion, funding off-planet E-Ts to develop offensive weapons against us. 

An unpredicted intervention would be a US Congress that decides, without coercion, to work for the American people, a US Supreme Court that recognizes that corporations are not citizens, a President that has courage to say: The U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE has broken faith, not done its job, operated illegally, stolen public funds, as a non-governmental agency under contract to the US Congress has become a national disgrace!  

An unpredicted intervention would be an educated elite, who had the moral fortitude to say, we will not tolerate international corporations taking over our civilization, and bending it to selfish purpose, instead of: "It's just the way things are, what do you expect us to do? It's politics as usual!" 

If not you, who? If not now, when? Whistle blowers risked their lives to keep us informed. There is no way you can pretend: "We didn't know." 

Thanks Ted, for giving me a platform, Martha   

---

From: Theodore A. Hoppe
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 3:28 PM

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

   In this video, Robert Sapolsky discusses a change in a group of baboons that was unexpected, but significant, and it ties in nicely with the discussion here.  For all the thought and planning we do around how to change the world I'm continually amazed by how seemingly small and insignificant changes in initial conditions can cause huge ripples in the fabric of a social group.

  (and I would note that the comments of Sapolsky regarding stress apply to the epigenetic factors that are intergenerational, and which seems to almost require an unpredicted intervention) 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY

    

[Rachel Heath]

And what has this got to do with the purpose of this group, viz applications of nonlinear dynamics in psychology and the life sciences.

 

Unless of course some people equate the chaos in the group’s name with its vernacular equivalent.

 

Please get back to topic.

 

Rachel

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Dear Ted, 

Your thesis that animal behavior can be generalized to humans, supported earlier by Robert Sapolsky, applies. Chaos Theory applies. Complexity Theory applies Cognitive Dissonance Theory applies. Whether you call it science or not, political and economic history applies, and what affects global populations, as a result of such study, is relevant, or you would not be introducing the concept of "unpredicted intervention" to explain major societal intergenerational transformation in this group of baboons within the context of "thought and planning we do around how to change the world." The scientific conclusion one might draw is evident:  

But, unlike animal societies, humans are able to analyze their circumstances and create interventions that alter their circumstances. The logical implication of Dr. Sapolsky's research would be to suggest that eliminating alpha males from a population would result in a more peaceful society, characterized by nurturing males. 

This didn't occur to you? Or do you suggest that such a conclusion would be unscientific? What I'm demonstrating is that human wars do not rid the population of alpha males. Perhaps my narrative style of presenting facts is what you call a "personal matter," of no significance in addressing potential for ridding population of those who might challenge authority of select leaders, as happens in the wilds in feline families, and in bee hives to assure conformance. I sense your idealism. I don't share it. The personal becomes political, when social engineering is hinted at, as a potential tool for transforming human society, based on animal research.

There is growing evidence in published testimony that political interventions are occurring to transform societal institutions. When will this be of scientific interest? 

Again, thanks for contributing to this important topic, 

Dr. Martha Ross DeWitt, Rural Sociologist, Social Psychologist,

Multi-Variate Research Analyst, Transformational Systems Theorist and Published Author    

---

From: Theodore Hoppe <dustpro...@gmail.com>  To: M. Ross DeWitt <mross...@sbcglobal.net>

Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 5:06 PM   Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

Dear Martha,

This is off topic in my opinion since it does not relate to chaopsych matters; complexity or chaos in psychology, and seems more driven by personal matters. Where is the science in this?

Sincerely, Ted

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Sorry, you totally missed the implications for human societies, of Ted's attraction to the study of baboons. He has clearly spelled it out, in each of his posts on this subject, then labeled my counter argument "a personal matter." This is how propaganda is introduced into scientific thinking. It's not brain science, to figure this out.

"Animal research can be generalized to humans" is central to Ted's argument, which I can forward to you, if you haven't been following his posts. Let me know. The matter is not just personal with me. Everything that I have written is documented, and known to international audiences on these subjects. 

Membership in this group is not as limited as you suggest, or haven't you been to meetings? I suggest you check with someone who has before speaking for group.

Martha   

---

From: Rachel Heath <rache...@bigpond.com>
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 4:59 PM
Subject: RE: Science and Social Responsibility

[Theodore Hoppe]

To be clear, I was bringing epigenetics into this mix as well, and merely suggesting to Mike M. that these are all areas for consideration. I was providing no hypothesis.

Regarding the baboons,  it was a random event that acted as the change agent in that instance.

Ted 

[Mike McCullough]

            Ted, I just got around to watching the Sapolsky video on baboons yesterday.  Fascinating stuff.  Intriguing for me is the role of power, both the domineering type of power exercised by the alpha males over the rest and the flowering of a more collaborative society in their absence.  In human terms of power, I think we can see both the authoritarian use of coercion by the alpha males and a democratic opening and empowerment following the sudden deaths of these toughs.  In the open space created by their disappearance, the group as a whole became empowered enough to choose the less over the more coercive life-style.  They were able to rein in the new alpha males who showed up and to prevent them from re-imposing an authoritarian society on the group, something that in terms of sheer physical strength the newcomers were entirely capable of doing. 

            That there is something primordial about power makes sense.  Domineering power whether exercised by humans or pre-humans is rooted in violence and coercion.  And the potential for power conflicts to have effects that are oppressive, liberating or many shades in between seems also to be shared at the primate level.  I think this episode is a good piece of evidence against the notion that we are innately oppressive or innately cooperative.  We like the baboons and our primate ancestors have potential for better or worse.  It does suggest, however, that development, what we might call humane growth, is more likely to occur in non-coercive situations.

            In these terms, I think Sapolsky’s work seems to parallel or complement that of several primatologists associated with the Santa Fe Institute -- Christopher Boehm, Jessica Flack and David Krakauer.  They have used power theory concepts straight out of sociology and political science in analyzing primate behavior.  Frans de Waal also appears to have done a lot of interesting work in this area.

[Mike McCullough]

Artistic creativity long before humans appeared:

 Here's how they do it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj-K_pFoaDo

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

These findings release today provide "new insights into the classical game theory match-up known as the "Prisoner's Dilemma," University of Pennsylvania biologists offer a mathematically based explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature."

"Our paper shows that no selfish strategies will succeed in evolution," Plotkin said. "The only strategies that are evolutionarily robust are generous ones."

The discovery, while abstract, helps explain the presence of generosity in nature, an inclination that can sometimes seem counter to the Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest.

"When people act generously they feel it is almost instinctual, and indeed a large literature in evolutionary psychology shows that people derive happiness from being generous," Plotkin said. "It's not just in humans. Of course social insects behave this way, but even bacteria and viruses share gene products and behave in ways that can't be described as anything but generous."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/uop-pbs083013.php

[gus koehler]

I think the biological evidence from field studies shows that both selfish strategies and generous ones as both common.  While I have seen justifications for both, I don’t think an agreed upon position has been arrived at that one is better than the other.  To do so would require the refutation of a large body of field investigations. As I recall, it has only been in very recently that cooperation has moved forward from a relatively unpopular position to one that is being serious considered.

 

Second, a few years back David Loye presented a computer search based content analysis of Darwin’s Decent of Man, in which he deals with human evolution, Darwin writes only twice about the “survival of the fittest, but 95 times of love”. “He writes of selfishness 12 times, but 92 times of moral sensitivity. Of competition 9 times, but 24 times of mutuality and mutual aid. And of what so often everywhere today seems to be missing in global political, economic, and religious leadership -- that is, of mind and brain -- he writes 200 times.”

http://www.thedarwinproject.com/revolution/revolution.html .

 

I believe it was Spencer who popularized “survival of the fittest” which fit well into the industrial capitalist and colonization ideologies of the time and up to recently in our own time.  Intellectual history and the social-cultural biases that shape scientific thought tend to be dismissed by the very ideology of science as being somehow pure based on experimental evidence.  Kuhn put this to rest a long time ago.

 

To me the issue is what is the play between the various interpretative schemes that drive field work and experimental concept development, to say nothing of evolutionary theory, that is driving science today?  How is our thinking biased by much deeper currents such as funding priorities, promotional biases, journal biases, and all of the rest.

 

Gus

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

"So we're living in the age of the global plutocracy, but we've been slow to notice it."

This is a recent TEDTalk that addresses one important aspect of this discussion, the fact that power is an inseparable part of wealth, and that wealth is contracting.  " The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today account for more than eight percent of the national income. They are where the One Percent was 30 years ago." 

  "Technology is advancing in leaps and bounds -- and so is economic inequality, says writer Chrystia Freeland. In an impassioned talk, she charts the rise of a new class of plutocrats (those who are extremely powerful because they are extremely wealthy), and suggests that globalization and new technology are actually fueling, rather than closing, the global income gap. Freeland lays out three problems with plutocracy … and one glimmer of hope."

http://www.ted.com/talks/chrystia_freeland_the_rise_of_the_new_global_super_rich.html

" But while getting rid of crony capitalism in practice is really, really hard, at least intellectually, it's an easy problem.After all, no one is actually in favor of crony capitalism. Indeed, this is one of those rare issues that unites the left and the right. A critique of crony capitalism is as central to the Tea Party as it is to Occupy Wall Street."

[Mike McCullough]

More evidence along the lines Gus points out about Darwin’s humanitarian concerns is contained in a book I highly recommend: Darwin’s Sacred Cause.   Darwin grew up in an abolitionist family and was ardently, fervently committed to the end of slavery all his life.   

About the Iterated Prisoner Dilemma (IPD):  the fact that an IPD industry has evolved since Axelrod’s pioneering tournament in the 1980s certainly indicates that some people have acquired useful insights out of it.  But, as a computer programmer, I’ve never been much impressed by the large claims made for the results of IPD games.  What I find most suspect is the human significance attached to certain computer programming processes, imputing humanity to a computer object which has a few lines of code to output ones or zeroes which are further imputed to signify cooperation or defection, generosity or selfishness or some other dichotomous concepts -- and a few other lines of code increment values of variables imputed to be rewards or punishments.  Yes, the score attained by Object A in any single game round depends on the outcome emitted by Object B and vice versa – and the programming rules aimed at maximizing (or minimizing) points take into account the history of at least the prior round – so we are dealing with a sort of interdependence.  But can we really anthropomorphize these computer methods?  Are they realistic proxies for “cooperation” or “defection”, “generosity” or “selfishness”? 

That said I’m not entirely averse to the possibility that computer simulations can get deep and complex enough to partially and usefully reflect what goes on in the real world.  I am not up to date on how well IPD computer programs might have progressed in this direction.  But one reality liability of game theory is its assumption that actors/objects are purely rational beings able to maximize their self-interest.  And the iteration process is more like playing a broken record than mimicking a human social interaction.  Unless they can incorporate irrationality, inequality and other messy human complexities, I think they have a long way to go. 

One monkey wrench I would throw into the classic PD and IPD models is to suspend the requirement that, in a single round, the actors/objects make their moves simultaneously and therefore without “knowledge” of what the other actors have done.  If one actor can sometimes “learn” what the other actor did – that is to use to “inside knowledge” when making its move – the whole dynamic gets disrupted.  It would no longer be “the prisoner’s dilemma” but isn’t it humanly unrealistic to exclude such a possibility?

Stewart and Plotkin conclude that "…that no selfish strategies will succeed in evolution.  The only strategies that are evolutionarily robust are generous ones."  Bravo!  While Ayn Rand would turn in her grave over this, it strikes me as a commonsensical way to view evolution over the very long term. And it’s also a subversive notion because it implies that, unless we succeed in ending the dominance of selfish, power concentrations, we have little chance to survive as a species.  As much as I like these conclusions and hope they are correct, I wonder if they got there by identifying methods that mirror nature or by devising a new computer game which just happens to end up that way?

[Theodore Hoppe]

Mike,  

Are you aware of the research of Jane McGonigal.  I recall mentioning her in my presentation at the Winter Chaos Conference at Southern CT State University on virtual worlds.

(another TEDTalk, which has over 3 million views)  http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html 

If there is one main point that McGonigal tries to make in this talk it is this, " We have to start making the real world more like a game."

    " Gamers are super-empowered, hopeful individuals. These are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. And the only problem is that they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world. That's the problem that I'm trying to solve.

There's an economist named Edward Castronova. His work is brilliant. He looks at whypeople are investing so much time and energy and money in online worlds. And he says, "We're witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments." And he's an economist. So, he's rational. And he says ... (Laughter)Not like me -- I'm a game designer; I'm exuberant. But he says that this makes perfect sense, because gamers can achieve more in online worlds than they can in real life. They can have stronger social relationships in games than they can have in real life; they get better feedback and feel more rewarded in games than they do in real life. So, he says for now it makes perfect sense for gamers to spend more time in virtual worlds than the real world. Now, I also agree that that is rational, for now. But it is not, by any means, an optimal situation. We have to start making the real world more like a game."

An interesting point to consider in light on this research, combined with the fact that there is this resource of trained 'agents of change'.

Best,

  Ted

     

[Linda Dennard]

Hi : re collaboration
There is a constitutional scholar John Rohr who, in studying the Federalist Papers at the U.S. constitutional founding, concludes that the "separation of powers" doctrine is not meant to be "power countervailing power" in a defensive sense, but rather represents the structure of facilitated collaboration (To Run a Constitution). Each branch having a bit of the others' power is not simply a check on the centralization of power (especially in the executive) but rather a kind of redundancy that produces a dynamic, interdependent, interaction among the branches. Indeed the growth of public administration is evidence of these dynamics as the way in which the tripartite relationship is actualized. Jefferson used the term "the excitable geometry of democracy" in describing these dynamics. In fact the Federalists papers use the word "energy" more than they use the word "power." However, by describing this interaction as the struggle among competing powers, science/social science (especially public choice theories) have created an illusion of perpetual self-interested conflict that has in practice become reality -which was not the intent, I believe, especially looking at Rohr's work. The Founders purposefully changed the standard social contract language of the Enlightenment about the purposes of government to ensure "life liberty and the pursuit of property" to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to accommodate the individual while also promoting the regulating abstraction of the "common good" mentioned so often in founding documents. Hamilton, the architect of the early financial system, for example, warned against "strategic competition" which he felt would destroy the "cooperative energy" of the nation.

best,

L



________________________________________
From: chao...@googlegroups.com [chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike McCullough [mike.mc...@rcn.com]

Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2013 8:42 PM
To: chao...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[Mike McCullough]

Ted, Yes, I'll check out this TED talk.

Yesterday rereading some Kindle clippings I made Lee Smolin's Life of the Cosmos, I came across this argument which would mean I should not be so skeptical about IPD games.

 

"...it is not an accident that simple computer games can model the processes in biological populations. The key to both biology and computer games is that the right set of simple rules, repeated over and over again, can lead to the formation of enormously complex patterns and structures that reproduce themselves continually over time. These are phenomena that are difficult, if not impossible, to capture with the kind of mathematics that is usually used to model the flow of waves through fluids. But they are well described by the newer mathematical games that are described in terms of algorithmic systems such as the cellular automata that define the game of life and the Gerola-Seiden-Schulman model of galactic spiral structure."

 

Even so, I still think simulations of human complexity have a very high hurdle to jump and rational choice models are intrinsically weak.

Mike

[Theodore Hoppe]

“My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.”  McGonigal

I think we need to put this phenomenon of gaming into perceptive since it appears to be seriously overlooked by so many.  McGonigal, "the current public face of gamification, holds a PhD in performance studies and has taught game theory at UC Berkley,  She take a evolutionary view of gaming, in her goal to create games that address real world problems.  

"So, so far, collectively all the World of Warcraft gamers have spent 5.93 million years solving the virtual problems of Azeroth.Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It might sound like it's a bad thing. But to put that in context: 5.93 million years ago was when our earliest primate human ancestors stood up." 

"Okay, so when we talk about how much time we're currently investing in playing games, the only way it makes sense to even think about it is to talk about time at the magnitude of human evolution, which is an extraordinary thing. But it's also apt. Because it turns out that by spending all this time playing games, we're actually changing what we are capable of as human beings. We are evolving to be a more collaborative and hearty species".

Sherry Turkle tells us that computer are changing the way we think.  She writes, "As an ethnographer and a psychologist, I began to study not only what the computers doing for us, but what it was doing to us, including how it was changing the way we see ourselves, our sense of human identity.  Gamification needs to be considered for the resource that it has become.  Turkle adds,

 "Information technology is identity technology. Embedding it in a culture that supports democracy, freedom of expression, tolerance, diversity, and complexity of opinion is one of the next decade's greatest challenges. We cannot afford to fail.  

[gus koehler]

We developed a theoretical model of a computer simulation using autonomous agents that would allow the user to game various policy options.  Our thinking was that due to the incrediable number of variables involved and the complexity of the stream of options generated and visualized, that the best way for the user to use it was to play it like a game that generates and tests options.  This solved a number of problems: that one canot easily predict how a complex system will involve; it brings the biases of the decision maker to bare in how outputs are generated and interpretated; and it allows for a rebalancing of the various variables used to program the automata so it fits life better.  A second application was made by a friend of mine in a very creative approach to improving the management of supply chains by having managers participate in a game.

 

Having said this, a much more difficult problem remains and that is that the algorythmic, mathematical modeling process all place that which is being modeled into a timeless and spaceless world that does not evolve.  Niether the programing, nor the algorythm nor the mathematical figures evolve as "real life" or the observed herself.  Even the calculated trajectories are in this time-less, space-less realm.  The data collected is past data and does not evolve.  Finally, games like all simulations are social constructions with very significant sexual, racial, and other biases drawn from the surrounding culture and embedded to appeal to the players.  A whole sociological and psychological literature is emerging to study this issue: see for example Hilde Corneliussen and Jill Rettber, Digital Culture, Place and Identify: A World of Warcraft Reader. Turkle's research is along similar lines.  These limitations cause me to pause when statements refer to saving the world as easily as on-line games defeat the enemy.  I agree with Turkle's comment that a gamificdation of identify is already underway and I put it to the readers of this list, that we don't yet have the vaguest idea of how this will shape our self or our interaction with the world around us. Quoting Michael Murphy: "It is certainly not a biological development conjunction as a lover for other living things. The sensitivity, empathy, and love of life fostered by practices of the kind detailed here [gaming] does not predispose us to care for creatures of this world. There is a volition beyond [the body that] drives for dominance, an ego-transcending imposed and shaped android identity no longer based upon solidarity with others, a superabundant vitality that [does not] overflows to those in need but rather is shaped by the need of the capitalist market conditioning."  Keep in mind that games are designed to be addictive and sold.  In fact our thinking in designing our own "game" was that it be fun, attractive, and reasonably addictive or it wouldn't sell.

[Mike McCullough]

Some quick thoughts on various recent comments:

By allowing users to interact with the simulation, Gus’ program seems more connected to reality than Prisoner Dilemma games. 

Gus, regarding “a timeless and spaceless world that does not evolve”, you might be interested in Lee Smolin’s latest book Time Reborn.  It doesn’t confront the particular practical issue you cited (coming up with a math that complements development or evolution) but it gives the issue of timelessness that grew out of Newtonian physics an interesting scientific and philosophical framework.  Here are a few samples from Smolin (that I don’t have to retype thanks to Kindle clippings):

• “Embracing time means believing that reality consists only of what’s real in each moment of time. This is a radical idea, for it denies any kind of timeless existence or truth—whether in the realm of science, morality, mathematics, or government. All those must be reconceptualized, to frame their truths within time.”
• “We think outside time when we imagine that the answer to whatever question we’re pondering is out there in some eternal domain of timeless truth. Whether the issue is how to be a better parent or spouse or citizen, or what the optimal organization of society might be, we believe there’s something unalterably true out there for us to discover.”

Ted, I just checked out the Jane McGonigal talk.  As long as she’s for creating “games that address real world problems”, sounds great. 

Regarding Linda’s comments on the Constitution and references to “energy” (as in Hamilton’s “cooperative energy”) in the Federalist Papers.  It’s interesting that “energy” has not become a standard political science concept (like e.g. “power” and “interest” have).   Yet it’s clearly a core phenomenon when we look how movements, campaigns, causes etc get energized or de-energized.  It seems like one of the concepts that could help bridge the physical and social sciences.

[gus koehler]

Smolin’s book is remarkably well written and accessible.  My main take away from it is that the space of mathematics’ is a timeless space.  A creation of mind that is does not evolve or change.  So, if one predicts an outcome it is an extrapolation of a timeless set of points created by tracking and recording events “out there” in timeless mathematical space that timeless manipulations have been applied to or what to me are an effort to extract a timeless story out of a constantly changing and evolving world.  The two are not the same; an inadadquate explantion results because change blows it up every time.

Even here there are problems beyond those raised by Smolin: setting aside the above for the moment, why one geometry over another? There are many non-Euclidean geometries and probably many waiting to be discovered.  No computeable foundation remains or at least a god given “right” geometry.  But, this suggests an imposition from outside of this universe which Smolin strongly rejects.

Second, since all objects are dynamical then there is no set relationship that can serve as a measure of “space.” Also, there is no time.

 Fourth, there is the problem of the observer observing with instruments created for her perceptual capacity or whatever. Here I am referring to the obvious fact that we are animals in evolved bodies that have selected for a particular suite of perceptual capabilities and process capacities to deal with the generated information.  We are like our dogs or the praying mantis on the flower in the backyard; evolved senses not gods with perfect perception that even eventually can see “reality”.  This creates real problems for a theory of nature that depends on an operational definition of truth; if is works it must be “true” leaving only the problem of defining operational relationships.  Yes, true for this monkey or dog but…. 

This last point about knowing is critical. Science and philosophy are only on one branch of our two branch knowing capabilities, the other branch includes poetic knowing and all that this involves in the arts, humanities, etc., “wisdom”, etc.  Step back for a moment; what is the role of creativity, ah ha, insight, beauty and elegance in your own research and scientific explorations?  Beauty and elegance—two poetic ways of knowing and feeling--even seem to be test for the truth of a mathematical formulation or scientific theory (setting aside the issues above).  Complex relationships, knowing, etc., are much more difficult to analyze and explain from the rich perspective of how we experience ourselves—even our evolved animal selves.

Finally, Smolin’s theory is limited by his notion of a universe with an inside  and outside.  Other ontologies and epistemologies are possible that have a different starting point, rejecting this distinction as a mistaken reification of the process and products of awareness, but still ending up with a bounded universe.  Second, his position appears to assume the necessity for clocks, a self, etc., acting into the universe from a privileged position—you know god and all.  Again, other views reject this and arrive at the same timeless place that Smolin considers problematic because his assumptions are rejected.  

All of these points are important for what kind of science we develop and what we think we know using it.

[Mike McCullough]

Your phrase “an effort to extract a timeless story out of a constantly changing and evolving world” is evocative and could apply to a great many phenomena.  It’s no coincidence that timeless Newtonianism is grounded in absolute certainty, the premise of eternal unchanging, unquestionable mathematically precise truths.   The 1000 Year Reich and Pol Pot’s Year Zero might be seen as particular types of timeless delusions.

 

In this book, Smolin also affirms complexity theory themes like far from equilibrium self-organizing (a la Prigogine et al.), applying it even to the formation of galaxies.  In the process he also offers support for those who have begun to see thermodynamics as a framework for biology, from death-oriented equilibrium to life-oriented non-equilibrium.  He briefly entertains here (as he has done in some other writings) the ramifications this has for human complexity.  Very interesting directions to move in.

 

[Theodore Hoppe]

Re:  “an effort to extract a timeless story out of a constantly changing and evolving world” 

I had just finished reading a very current blog piece, "The Study of Fundamental Consciousness Entering the Mainstream", when this reply appeared in my email.  The blog focuses on Christof Koch's latest book on consciousness, and includes a paragraph that, for me, ties together many of the ideas we are discussing here, complexity, evolution, computing and the mind, and how all this increasing interconnectedness is evolving into a "very complicated entity" that is self-conscious.

    

"In his most recent book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (2012), Koch admits his openness to non-materialist explanations of consciousness, including the possibility that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe. In this interview from The Atlantic, he goes a little further:

I was surprised to see your book invoke Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who believed the universe is becoming more conscious as it gets more complex. Most scientists write off Teilhard as a religious apologist. 

Koch: Most scientists don't even know about him. He had this idea about evolution where he argued that from very simple micro molecules to single cell organisms to multi-cell organisms to simple animals to complex animals to us is the emergence of complexity. He observed that the universe was getting more and more complex, and he postulated this would continue. Essentially, he postulated something like the Internet. He called it the "noosphere" -- the sphere of knowledge that covers the entire planet and is heavily interconnected. He died in 1955, long before any of this emerged, and he postulated that human society would evolve into a very complicated entity that would become self-conscious. He thought this would happen on other planets and throughout the entire universe, and the universe in some weird state would become self-conscious. It's all totally speculative, but I do like some of these ideas. I see a universe that's conducive to the formation of stable molecules and to life. And I do believe complexity is associated with consciousness. Therefore, we seem to live in a universe that's particularly conducive to the emergence of consciousness. That's why I call myself a "romantic reductionist."

http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2013/09/adrian-d-nelson-study-of-fundamental.html

Ted

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Mike McCullough <mike.mc...@rcn.com> wrote:

Your phrase “an effort to extract a timeless story out of a constantly changing and evolving world” is evocative and could apply to a great many phenomena.  It’s no coincidence that timeless Newtonianism is grounded in absolute certainty, the premise of eternal unchanging, unquestionable mathematically precise truths.   The 1000 Year Reich and Pol Pot’s Year Zero might be seen as particular types of timeless delusions.

 

In this book, Smolin also affirms complexity theory themes like far from equilibrium self-organizing (a la Prigogine et al.), applying it even to the formation of galaxies.  In the process he also offers support for those who have begun to see thermodynamics as a framework for biology, from death-oriented equilibrium to life-oriented non-equilibrium.  He briefly entertains here (as he has done in some other writings) the ramifications this has for human complexity.  Very interesting directions to move in.

 

[Mike McCullough]

With the mention of Teilhard, I have to chime in here again.  I was among a certain number of Catholics in the sixties (as a college student at Notre Dame) who became eager to learn about this priest who had been forbidden by the Vatican during his lifetime from communicating publicly about his theories of evolution. It seemed to have echoes of a certain other scientist getting squashed by ecclesiastical authorities a few hundred years earlier.  (At least the church apologized recently about that episode.  They still owe an apology to Teilhard.)  As not only an anthropologist but a Christian mystic, much of the scientific community wrote him off and continues to do so.  In works such as The Phenomenon of Man it is possible to consider his theory independently of his religious views, as I prefer to do.  I’m not a “Teilhardian” but can still find jewels in many of his ideas.  Some who dismiss him don’t realize they are espousing ideas he was talking about as far back as the 1930s.  One of the most important things to know about him, one of the misconceptions about him that needs to be corrected, is that he was not predicting a utopian future.  He recognized that humanity as an experiment could succeed or fail.  And, like Smolin, he was focused on the thermodynamic life-death range from non-equilibrium to equilibrium, from the improbable to the probable, the anti-entropic to the entropic.

 

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Within the context of current events, two things have happened within the past ten days: (1) Pope Francis signed an edict on 9-1-13 that invalidated a Roman Statute dating back to 1066, which protected officials of all nations that subscribed (including all past and present colonies and territories of UK) from prosecution for "crimes against humanity." (2) Heads of state agreed to put condemnation for use of chemical weapons to a popular vote, to place the matter within common law, rather than maritime law, which removes government officials from protection against legal prosecution on the pretext that they represented corporate entities, under the old law.  

Common man has been shielded for centuries from knowing that the ideal of representative government was a facade, that the promise of people power a cruel hoax.

Scientists who dared to support the ideal of people power were persecuted, not only by the Catholic Church, but by vested interests of every kind, political as well as economic. Cultural traditions and social norms were tailored to approve scientific inquiry only so far as it supported vested interests of those in power, whether it was inherited or seized by other means according to maritime law, which has favored might over right. Accordingly, governments did not have to justify "unpopular" wars.  

That justification has now been challenged, not by happenstance, but by heads of state who agreed, out of the public eye, to work together to make this happen. There are no accidents. This has been in the planning stages for 65 years. Science is being required, at last, to conform to Social Responsibility.  

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

While I continue to see evidence of the benefits of virtual reality gaming, the thought occurs to me that many here have never played video games.  This is the problem in education as well; teachers are slow to recognize that laptop computers or tablet will soon replace textbooks because many lack computing skills beyond basic searching and email.  This might be in part due to the cognitive bias Daniel Kahneman refers to as the "illusion of validity.   

In a groundbreaking new study at the University of California, San Francisco, scientists found that older adults improved cognitive controls such as multitasking and the ability to sustain attention by playing a specially designed videogame — and that the effects can be long lasting.

The study, to be published in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday, is part of a broader effort to understand whether specially designed videogames can help treat neurological disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and even depression. There is growing evidence, researchers say, that videogames could eventually become therapies on par, or used in tandem, with ingestible medications."

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/04/scientists-use-videogames-to-improve-older-brains/

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

Games with a purpose=GWAP

Citizen science is a fairly recent phenomenon, made possible in large part by the internet. The scenario typically goes like this: a group of research scientists produce such a large amount of high-throughput data that they cannot analyze or annotate it on their own; they therefore crowdsource assistance from a large number of so-called citizen scientists. Each individual does a little bit of work, but the accumulated amount of work is huge. Such an approach is currently being used to classify galaxies (Galaxy Zoo) and decipher whale song (Whale FM). Citizen scientists can be anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection. But how do you recruit such workers and then keep them actively contributing? One solution is to “disguise” the work as a game. “Games with a purpose” (GWAPs) are emerging as a way to achieve these ends.

A paper published this month in PLoS ONE describes one such GWAP calledDizeez. This online game asks players to associate a human gene with a disease, selected from a list of five candidate diseases. The purpose is to bridge the gap between the enormous pool of published gene-disease associations and the considerably smaller pool of associations annotated in human-curated databases. Currently only 57% of protein-coding genes in the human genome have at least two GO (Gene Ontology) terms annotated by humans. A GO term can be the disease a gene is associated with (e.g.: cancer, developmental disorder), a characteristic of the encoded protein (e.g.: transcription factor, GTPase), or a process the protein is involved in (e.g.: cell migration, apoptosis), amongst other things. When such associations are published in a paper they are not automatically imported into a database. That requires a human to read the paper and manually enter the information into the database. The rate at which gene-disease associations are generated (on top of already published associations) is far greater than the rate at which human curators can log this information. This need for more manpower led Salvatore Loguercio and colleagues to exploit crowdsourcing.

An obvious problem with their game is that the player may get answers wrong, leading to false annotations. However, initial data suggests that their approach is working. A key factor is that players have been largely recruited from the scientific community and they choose a topic they are most familiar with. Another strength of their approach is that by looking at which associations accumulate the most “votes” they can discard incorrect answers. By comparing simulated random game playing with actual results the researchers have established that a highly voted for (and, by inference, more likely to be genuine) gene-disease association occurs more frequently in real game play than in the randomized situation.

The researchers intend to make a number of improvements to Dizeez to refine the results, including giving more weight to associations selected by high scoring players, and not punishing “novel” (not previously documented) associations that occur frequently (implying they may be genuine). If you would like to play Dizeez you can find it here: http://sulab.scripps.edu/dizeez/ . Players may even end up learning something as an option is provided to review the correct answers and supporting data afterwards. Who knew playing games could be so useful?

http://www.myscizzle.com/blog/advancing-science-by-playing-games/

[gus koehler]

Glancing through postings caused a couple of things to bubble up:

1.  Dinasours were around for about 250 million years.  Very successful. Some evidence of flocking in the sense of nesting together like birds has shown up.  Did meat eaters compete or cooperate?  Seems like we know very little about the most successful of all critters and their successful strategies.

2. Are virtual games different than "real world" games?  For example, is there any relationship between virtual football and "real" football"?  What about virtual reality itself, in that it seems to have some interesting biases relative to game playing on-line such as faking who you are, flaming others, lieing, etc., which are also used in real world games but does the virtual world bias players given various on-line addictioons against certain game strategies?  is it open to biases due to game programming which are associated with making money or research publication for example? cultural issues and biases such as studies of World of Warcraft have shown may vary (or not) by game, does it matter?  My personal bias is that we don't know enough yet about machine "consciousness" (see various science fiction stories that get into this) or about what some have caused bastard reality which is the mixed world to know much yet. 

3. And, what about dinosaur consciousness and games?  Again, a long term test.  Maybe we should program a machine with dinasource consciousness and play it against chicken consciousness or poodle consciousness or bat consciousness to  see who wins the virtual evolution game?

Play,

Gus  

[Theodore Hoppe]

My apologizes to Gus who will receive this message twice.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Theodore Hoppe <dustpro...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

To: gus koehler <g...@timestructures.com>

I was tempted to post this under the conversation for Google glasses but it seems to fit here as well.  Give the video a look.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system

Now the question becomes how can devices such as this be a benefit to us?  

--
Theodore A. Hoppe
  'dustproduction'

[gus koehler]

I must say that I am blown away by castAR (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system ) My paper on issues associated with defining what space is conceptually for complex systems proposes a methodology or investigating this incredible new virtual space (an effort is made to apply it in the last chapter "The Funeral Space".  It would be wonderful to try to apply this methodology to such a space created by a group of us in various settings.  Perhaps even compare it to Google glass and VR laboratory experiments at Stanford and other campuses or with military or medical applications. Thanks for sharing this link!

[Frederick D Abraham]

Happy Birthday Gus

On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 3:36 AM, Frederick D Abraham <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have not checked this out.  Have been sick so going slow last few week.  Antibiotics have us back on track.  Wouldn't post this here, but wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday and give others a chance to do the same.

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

What did the acorn say when he grew up.
"Geometry". 

This is an important reminder to use, or not to use, a redundant statement if it is redundant.

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

What did the acorn say when he grew up.
"Geometry". 

This is an important reminder to use, or not to use, a redundant statement if it is redundant.

[frank mosca]

Hi Fred, I join in a happy birthday to Gus and of courses wishes for your swift recovery. After all a man who can make the ground quake at will [re your joke] should be able to master some bug or other. Also just a tweak on the material about Bakhtin. Years ago you might recall I did a fair amount of study of Bakhtin primarily in his relationship with Dostoevsky, whose characters he saw as as archetypes of the perspective he was putting forth. As I read what is below the author seems to be saying that Carnival was the instrument of deconstruction of authoritarian perspectives. That is not what Bakhtin is saying, any more that Socrates/Plato were lauding the rise of democracy in a context where the “mob” was enchanted and seduced by the ideologue. Rather, Bakhtin saw humor as the most powerful and creative tool for the deconstruction of authoritarian systems. In such systems, there is an over reliance upon myths embedded in very rigid and therefore fragile modes of thought. Humor was the element that unglued the system by demonstrating its limitations and its ultimate postures of ridiculousness. Such systems cannot withstand humor and so happiness is not abundant and flourishing in such an environment. The greater the degrees of freedom, the more unlikely a system will be authoritarian. That said, Bakhtin emphasized that there was a basic coherence in humor. It was telic and its goal was to render a system more and more flexible. Carnival was a state where the force of that telic intentionality is fragmented into mere destruction, random and therefore malignant to the goal of opening up to freedom. Freedom is not carnival. As we know from folks from Democritus through Leibniz, everything has some chirality or other. Randomness is merely a snapshot too small to catch that reality. Carnival therefore would be the matrix of new authoritarianism which would base its authority precisely on the fundamental dread of perceived disorder. Much more there, but there’s all the time I have right now for that tweak, best to all ,Frank

taken from: http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf <http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf>
 

[gus koehler]

Thank you Fred.  I'm glad to hear that you are doing better. It must of been serious to have antibiotics.  Please remind me of the city and island you are on.

Take care.  Oh, and I posted on the google glass too.

[Mike McCullough]

Regarding Frank's comment that "Bakhtin saw humor as the most powerful and creative tool for the deconstruction of authoritarian systems."

Excerpts from "Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke" NYTimes Magazine 10-30-2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/the-dangerous-politics-of-internet-humor-in-china.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So pervasive is this irreverent subculture that the Chinese have a name for it: egao, meaning “evil works” or, more roughly, “mischievous mockery.” In its simplest form, egao (pronounced “EUH-gow”) lampoons the powerful without being overtly rebellious. President Hu Jintao’s favorite buzz word, “harmony,” which he deploys constantly when urging social stability, is hijacked to signify censorship itself, as in, “My blog’s been harmonized.” June 4, the censored date of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, is rendered as May 35 — or “535.” There are also more complex forms of egao, like Hu Ge’s 2010 film spoof, “Animal World,” in which a rare species of Internet users is “saved” from “compulsive thinking disorder,” i.e., the urge to think freely.

Satire is sometimes a safety valve that government might grudgingly permit. Better a virtual laugh, after all, than a real protest. But being laughed at, as Orwell found during his stint as a colonial police officer in Burma, can also be a ruler’s greatest fear. And the Chinese government, which last year sentenced a woman to a year of hard labor for a sarcastic three-word tweet, appears to suffer from an acute case of humor deficiency. “Jokes that mock the abuse of power do more than let off steam; they mobilize people’s emotions,” says Wen Yunchao, an outspoken blogger who often mounts sardonic Internet campaigns in defense of free speech. “Every time a joke takes off,” Wen says, “it chips away at the so-called authority of an authoritarian regime.”

And a happy birthday to Gus.

[gus koehler]

First, thanks Frank Mosca.  We have a great history of satire in the US too. Check out the Yippies and various forms of street theater.  Harvey Cox wrote some great stuff about the role of festival for reviving living community.  And, don't forget Burning Man a truly amazing living experiment.

[Frederick D Abraham]

Frank, it is always a pleasure to get your thoughts. A great tribute to a Gus birthday to elicit more insights on Bakhtin.  I had forgotten he was a favorite of yours, but of course knew that you would be well up on him.  I followed everything with great syntony up to the last two sentences.  This is like the discourse goal of postmodernism, the destabilization (a la dynamics) for social change.  It has the same 'what do you do now?' quandary of the goal.  Is it a new established or ideology itself, how does an optimal level of instability or bounds on instability continue the self-organization of social change?  Yes, the fears of too much or too little order, the balance between risk/flexibility and rigid adherence to cultural prescriptions do tap into deep archetypes.  

Mike: great offering but did not go the NYT yet, but I take it that was all quotes from the article or was some of it your own musings?

Fred

[Mike McCullough]

Yes, Fred. The indented italicized material in my response is directly from the Times piece.  (I love the film spoof connecting freedom of thought with "compulsive thinking disorder".)

Mike

 

On Sunday, October 27, 2013 1:08:53 AM UTC-4, Frederick D Abraham wrote:

...Mike: great offering but did not go the NYT yet, but I take it that was all quotes from the article or was some of it your own musings?

Fred

 

[Theodore Hoppe]

I have been wanting to respond to a few of the contributions that others have made to the discussion recently, but I am on the West Coast again which always throws me off.

So first and foremost, "Happy Birthday Gus!"

Secondly, there is an interesting story in todays LA Times that I will add to the discussion for consideration, "Science has lost it's way, costing all of us."  

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20131027,0,1228881.column#axzz2ixMdKSXq

"In today's world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science.

You'd be wrong. Many billions of dollars' worth of wrong.

A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology.The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test — that the original results couldn't be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches.

But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid."

Another statement in the article refers to a recent piece in "The Economist" that "estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research."  This aims directly at the heart of social responsibility on the part of science in a way that we have not focused on yet.

Ted  

[Frederick D Abraham]

I am urging a visit to Mike's NYT link, in case the 'compulsive thinking disorder' was not sufficient to entice you.  It is long, and incredibly fascinating, not only as an illustrtion of what Frank was saying, but also its considerable view of Chinese culture today, not only for the avant garde challenging the incredibly sophisticated censorship of the Chinese government, but for those afraid of it. Carnivalesque blogs are fired around the internet while being actively chased from one set of websites to another.  It would make a wonderful playground for social network analysis, kind of like a game of life or other cellular automata run amok (read wonderfully chaotic, not too high dimensional for people to get a chance to find the gems.  It also tells the story of two of the foremost protest bloggers, Pi San (visual) and Wen (verbal) and how they stay ahead of the game, while playing hide and seek with the government.  It illustrates with real life and real cultural information, the complex fears and instabilities that exist at the fractal separatrices of the bifurcation point (if I may mix it up a bit), that Frank (last two sentences I addressed in my last memo) refers to where the fears of change and stability, of security and risk, meet to battle it out.  

There is a mention of satire on education in China, which would be of interest especially to Linda Dennard and Martin Gardiner of our list, who are great fans and practitioners extending the Dewey tradition.

fred

[Frederick D Abraham]

I forgot to mention that one of the most interesting aspects to me of this censorship culture is that its repression is the source of the creativity of the avant garde culture.

What did one flea say to another flea while they were standing on a corner?
"I'm taking a greyhound across town."

There's so little money in my bank account, my scenic checks show
a ghetto. [Phyllis Diller]

[Mike McCullough]

I witnessed and in a very small way partook in humor used as a weapon against authoritarianism.  During my first year in Brazil, O Pasquim, a satirical magazine began to publish subtle and sometimes not so subtle jokes, cartoons etc that were digs against the military dictatorship.  The masthead once read, for example, "Published in Opposition to the Greek Dictatorship" (Greece also had a military regime at the time).  O Pasquim soon became the best selling nationwide publication as I would witness from afar. In late 1970 the whole staff was thrown in prison for a few months.  After leaving the Peace Corps, I settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1971 where O Pasquim was produced and fell in with some top notch creative people including one of the regular columnists for O Pasquim.  He had only been released from prison a few months earlier.  In response to one edition which used the Jesus Freak craze as a theme, I wrote a short satirical Jesus Freak manifesto which he published in his column.  The general mood among these artist was one of complete desperation.  The dictatorship had been in power since 1964 and would cede power back until 1985.  It seemed like Orwell's "If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."  In that despair, humor was a  way to keep sane.

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

   Having returned to Vermont, I wanted to response to some of the comments regarding virtual reality.

  There is clear evidence that videogaming can bring about skill development

where surgeons made fewer mistakes because of their dexterity when using an 'on-screen' image during laparoscopic operations. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070220012341.htm  Other such jobs which require long periods of time spent watching screens are Air Traffic Control, Security and Armed Forces reconnaissance, where attention to detail is necessary to avoid accidents or death. 

There is evidence that deep-learning, which is where learning is not superficial but enables the learner to use the knowledge learned, can be brought about through (but not only through) considerable time spent playing videogames. JP Gee's excellent analysis of his own experience playing Deus Ex, and the effects on learning and literacy - specifically from engaging with the digital world - reveals that there is still so much we don't know about the human condition when presented with gaming environments.

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-161920724.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/gamers-solve-molecular-puzzle-baffled-scientists-6C10402813?franchiseSlug=sciencemain

  Here is some research into the brain science of game playing:

 

 "Millions of people worldwide engage in online role-playing with their avatar, a virtual agent that represents the self. Previous behavioral studies have indicated that many gamers identify more strongly with their avatar than with their biological self. Through their avatar, gamers develop social networks and learn new social-cognitive skills. The cognitive neurosciences have yet to identify the neural processes that underlie self-identification with these virtual agents. We applied functional neuroimaging to 22 long-term online gamers and 21 nongaming controls, while they rated personality traits of self, avatar, and familiar others. Strikingly, neuroimaging data revealed greater avatar-referential cortical activity in the left inferior parietal lobe, a region associated with self-identification from a third-person perspective. The magnitude of this brain activity correlated positively with the propensity to incorporate external body enhancements into one’s bodily identity. Avatar-referencing furthermore recruited greater activity in the rostral anterior cingulate gyrus, suggesting relatively greater emotional self-involvement with one’s avatar. Post-scanning behavioral data revealed superior recognition memory for avatar relative to others. Interestingly, memory for avatar positively covaried with play duration. These findings significantly advance our knowledge about the brain’s plasticity to self-identify with virtual agents and the human cognitive-affective potential to live and learn in virtual worlds."

http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/7/1577.abstract

 

 

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Of course it can develop skills, humanity has the ability to transfer knowledge and can store information in order to exchange the knowledge acquired.
A virus is a condition both in computer systems, and in natural systems.
Air traffic, with the crowd of airplanes landing or taking of, and flying in different trajectories needs computer handling according to the amount of traffic in the air.
Virtual reality such as second life and dungeons & dragons, is fine, as is the cinema, and is the theater, to understand the roles of others in our life, and out roles possible in it.
Movies such as the matrix, ex-terminator, dark city, star trek, and blade runner, present tech and possible futures.
companies such as those producing movies, make money, and also cover art, and new tech, miramax, twenty century fox, etc.
Cinema is a big industry.
Games are trying to replace that industry, but the difference is that in games there is self involvement.
Compare for example the Lincoln movie, of Spielberg, and the world of warcraft,
The difference between the two, is that in the movie, there are no bad guys, while in the second there is evil, and the players try to build the characters to fight against it.
The next difference is that the movie, projects a human chaotic world of opposing states, personalities, tragedies, there is no evil just the human condition, and a different set of moral and ethics, strangling.
Is there any ethics, in virtual reality?
The role of a company is to produce profit, without it it can not survive. This is the darwinian situation of the role of the fittest.
Does Google exist, because of the money it makes, or because of its service to mankind.
These are strange times we are living.

T.A

[Thanasis Argiriou]

If I was conscious enough I would understand, now that I am not conscious, I do not understand, and if I am not conscious enough,
I do not understand even my not understanding.

T.A 

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

Re:  How do we know that a change we observe is more than a passing phase?

Certainly epigenetics offers us a way to measure change in humans. 

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/twins/ 

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Ok we can put also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_studies
and Galton and Thorndike
The whole history of Darwinian evolution is a closed case, so is eugenics and epigenetics.
As for the gene story and DNA this is the outcome of the Darwin, Galton, Huxley approach.
Everything is information, so we can store them change them, exchange them. We can recreate our further desires.
The introduction of information is not that the information is true, rather it is a feedback of a truth that is not understood.
This feedback recreates false ideas, and this false ideas pass around like science, and give people other desire which they also feeback
to the system, that acts unified.

So the history is not a passage, but is a multiple path, which this present time has followed and sees as real.

Logic is there, but because the personal system is not able to understand, it moves making the wrong conclusions.
Why it is like setting?

a bird-a bee-an ant-a protozoa-a reptile- in an order that is your own logic, while the system is free of any order.

Why there are  twins? is it because the embryo splits? and why it splits in only certain cases, is it random?

NO, there is no randomness in the system, and no materialistic, description single. Mind is not an outcome of matter, nor words are the products of sound and the vocal cords.

To reach to outcomes that denote science it will take more than ages of research, the genetics is not science, its logistical expirements of no philosophy, and therefor, not science.

T.A

[Theodore Hoppe]

Re:  "the genetics is not science"

I'm certain that I do not understand this statement.  

While I included a link to a twin study, epigenetics can be measured in individuals as well.  Eric Nestler's research included in 
"The Hidden Switches" Scientific American, demonstrated biological change by to environment.

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/benharm/Articles/epigenitics%20-%20hidden%20switches%20in%20the%20mind%20-%20nestler.pdf

"Experience may contribute to mental illness in a surprising way:by causing “epigenetic” changes—ones that turn genes on or off without altering the genes themselves" 

  

[Thanasis Argiriou]

I will give a small account of scientific pursuit.

Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature.

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

The difference between quality and quantity?

On Tuesday, November 5, 2013 12:45:16 AM UTC+2, Theodore A. Hoppe wrote:

Re:  "the genetics is not science"

I'm certain that I do not understand this statement.  

Pauli became interested in how new scientific ideas and theories are generated. Ernst Mach and the logical positivists had suggested that scientific theories are essentially suggested by empirical facts and that extraneous metaphysical notions should be rigorously excluded. Pauli realized, however, that theories cannot be deduced from facts alone; science is a creative, artistic pursuit in which theories emerge from a deeper ground.

http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/divine.htm

While I included a link to a twin study, epigenetics can be measured in individuals as well.  Eric Nestler's research included in 
"The Hidden Switches" Scientific American, demonstrated biological change by to environment.

Genetics, is the rabit not chasing its tail but dissecting it, thus provoking illness to the rest of the body.
 

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/benharm/Articles/epigenitics%20-%20hidden%20switches%20in%20the%20mind%20-%20nestler.pdf

"Experience may contribute to mental illness in a surprising way:by causing “epigenetic” changes—ones that turn genes on or off without altering the genes themselves" 

Science is about find out the einai that what is true.

  

From the physics point of view the DNA is true and not true, it corresponds to no law of physics, rather is a base of a biological law of itself. 

From the scientific pursuit a theory can never be complete, even for physics more over for biology, unless it is unified and accounting of all phenomena.

T.A

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

  I came across this piece of machinama (machine cinema filmed in a virtual world) and felt that it captures a great deal of what has been discussed on this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2tDWH7r-KU#t=218

The Inevitability of Fate

Nothing can replace the experience of wandering in this installation by Rose Borchovski: every sense is at its higher level, discovering some other new ways to tell a story, still with so much poetry and symbolism. A must see in Second Life®.

Despite that, I dared to make a machinima...

"A story about Angry Beth and Lot

Lot turned eight, the sun did shine and all were happy.
But then the war came and all did change.
A harsh hand ruled the world of Beth and Lot.

They were forced to leave.
They were separated from each other.
They were made the enemy.

The war was bitter and long.

After the war, Beth returned.
The child Lot had disappeared;
no one knows where she went.

Beth keeps searching for Lot.
On good days, Beth is able to imagine Lot is flying like a bird
with her face towards the sky,
searching for the stars.

On bad days, Beth can only be angry about her loss.
Beth's wounds will never heal."

Concept, Story and Installation by Rose Borchovski.
Susa Bubble character by Rose Borchovski.

Music: Dionys Breukers
Voices: Pip Greenaway
Scripting: Caer Balogh
Sounds: Rose Borchovski, freesound.org

Filmed in Second Life®, Oct 2012  

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

TNT or "The Network Thinker"  is an interesting blog that I recently came across.  There are several articles here that might be of interest to group members, but for this thread I will call attention to "Tracking Two Known Terrorists... Rather Than Everybody."

http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Ted,

Yes computers and computer language is a great discovery, but if you leave computers out, that is something happens to our now computer growing society, what will happen to human society? Do you consider this interdependence of computer and human, that goes to dependence of humans over computers is an improvement, or is it just a crouch for a humanity that is not able to to cure itself, so creates artificial remedies, that in the end worsen its situation.
As for science, I guess it ended in the time of Greece some thousands years ago. I mean science as an effort to discover the truth, and a start in the unity, or discovery of the over under side by side unity of the things that we now call laws, though I guess they are not.
So as an account to that, science and humanity, has not gone far ahead, if we put away, art and social rights. Tech means not many things, and tech comes from our science, yes we have roads, buildings, cranes, ships, automobiles, airplanes, spaceships, a million appliances and a thousands of substances, more leisure time, no slaves.
Still there is war, bigger guns, and new things such as bombs, biological, chemical, atomic.
Democracy as a state was no better than the Athenian, 2500 years ago, much smarter, if we do no account the slaves and the foreign to Athens with less rights.
But the nature depletion the way we treat animals, the way we treat matter, is far worse than then.

So if we take Aristotle, and his works as account to create a holistic endeavor, into truth, of course we lose the Gods, and religion, far better,
to today, where has the  discovery for truth lead us.?

To positive science, and the search for AI. The research for the Higgs Boson was a great discovery....
The problem was set for individual and humanity, since all of nature is communicating, humans are not trying to communicate either to themselves, to their society, to their nature, and to each other.
I do not need a computer to communicate, communication is from human to human with the discovery of language. So are we going to built another language on top of another, whereas even language distorts the protocommunication all of nature has.

so my guess is not that science is dying, it was dead from the beginning, Newton, Leibniz, Laplace, and the rest were just digging up corpses.
But its not just science I am too harsh on this, its people how they view the world, and that is an individual pondery and bet.
Newton the great scientist, never pondered, his own excavations, too difficult to do that. If celestial mechanics were perfect, what was music? why were people attracted? why were there plants? animals? rocks? seas lakes and rivers? . If there was a celestial mechanics, everything should fall into place, even the bad or good, or the thought of bad and good.

I can never compare the cogito ergo sum, to Socrates ratio the only thing I know of is I do not know.
Search leads as somewhere but it is a position, not a plane, to understand the difference of a plane to a position we should cope with that the plane is the sum of positions, and that we have named it as such, and plane and position is just names.

There is choice I guess, independence is always difficult, even though, depending with actual participants is no dependency.

T.A

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

 I recently forwarded this article and research paper along to a member of this list with an interest in time, Gus Koehler.

 

   http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21587195-thinking-about-it-makes-you-better-person-not-worse-one-time-not-money

The research paper the article is referring to is here:

http://francescagino.com/pdfs/gino_mogilner_psychs_2013.pdf

Gus replied, 

 “It seems, then, that thinking about time has the opposite effect on people from thinking about money. It makes them more honest than normal, rather than less so.”  There is a movement in the scholarly time community led by Barbara Adam to exchange time rather than money.  They published several articles on this in her journal Time and Society.  They postulated that such a system would create a more caring society.  Well, you have found evidence on the individual level that it might.

 

 

[Theodore A. Hoppe]

Thanasis,

 If we were to view the development of language as a way humans were able to connect together, and share information, to gain an evolutionary advantage, we might also view computers as an extension of language and information sharing.  Communicating "human to human" has served as well up to this point, but the problems we are now faced with seem to require the type of energy, brain power, that might be compared to horses and horse power.  Computing provides this ability to connect teams of human brains in the way we harness teams of horses for increased horse power.

Perhaps an oversimplification, but it illustrates our increasing, not decreasing, interdependences. 

Best,

Ted   

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Ted I am trying to understand what language is and also numbers. For example my understanding of  the prime numbers has lead to a conclusion of repeating sequences that are not random-see the power of numbers such as 3,6,9 and its sum stable number results, the multiplication of prime numbers, and its periodic results. This is a result I can not ignore, that defines that numbers were set as to be able to result in large logistic series into a specific table of results. I do not know what this means but am investigating it.
As for the words such as evolution- that is in Greek translated (of the helix), we duel in chaos, and dynamic series so that does not mean that evolution has only one bifurcation it has multiple branches.
We chose this one which is the computer tech.
I would not go to bibliography, Bateson, Kuhn, Popper, Bohm, to the reclamation of the computer tech, being the best result, cause this is the one we were brought this world.
But if you want to solve the problem of communication in the linear analysis, as was given, if language was the beginning set, then the set would be set in a former set. And if we think that the set of the language is improving -evolving as the sets proceed, that is proto set- (language-scripture)-computers, ok.
My thinking is that computers, is a deadline to the human set, in the form they are coming, but would not bet my horses in this. If the system is true that is bifurcating and has multiple branches, as was the original thought of choice-and the ending of the arrow of time as always set.
As for the results of human thought with the aid of computers, my empirical analysis has shown me, that what is improved by computers is degrading in other areas of the brain, computers seem to speed up processes, of human intellect.
As for the collective, you are describing, I understand that, is part of nature, there is no need of computation to gather this.
The problem of humanity is of its own description individual and society, the computers or AI can not solve individual or social issues, humans should do that.
Anyway the money is in tech, so things will happen, the human bifurcation evolution is much slower to outgrow the computers, or even basic social issues.

Best,

Thanasis 

[Theodore Hoppe]

Thanasis,

     In my simple view of things the brain works with certain ideas because it is familiar with certain frameworks and not others.

     With numbers this means that we are familiar with a base 10 system.  This sets us up for certain unconscious thinking patterns that we learned to associate with base 10.  Switching to an alternative number system allows for new thoughts to occur about numbers.

     This is true of language as well since language can determine how we think as well as what we think.  

     The language of computing is "code," but numbers and words.

     (This next sentence might be true in both forms) The connectivity is expanding to a more collaborative stage. Or, Collaboration is expanding to a more connective stage.

The future of collaborative computing; connecting minds in real time.

http://www.oblong.com/mezzanine/

The challenge is to use these new "tools"  (we are tool making animals) for the benefit of all.   

Best,

Ted 

[Frederick D Abraham]

Time and money are both multidimensional concepts, obviously, as Gus, Ted, and Thanasis especially can testify.  Furthermore, the dimensionality involved will depend on the particular instantiation or proxy that any research or trolling for data utilizes.  The context of the research will affect the observed and the observer.  Also, there are a host of other commodities, such as altruism, that would be good candidates for research on personality traits such as morality (also multidimensional).  Interesting idea to pursue, but what we have here is a can of worms, so let’s go fishing.

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one.

Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Ted,

The system is not alternate, for example octal system  its an exponentiation of the first natural numbers 1-9, the after 10 natural numbers are repeating sequences of the first natural.
As in the alternate systems the results of the exponents, are grouped into sums of the numbers themselves, so as to result to the first naturals from 1 to 9, no exponent can lead to zero.
From this you get that for example the exponent of 8 - 64 is 10 or 1, and that the exponent of 8 is either 8 or 1.
Other natural numbers, lead to other periodic results, or stable results
This gives an idea, if exponents numbers are periodic sequences, who managed to invent such sophisticated algorithms, how can numbers be able to periodic reproduce series, if they are only sequences of 1,  Are the numbers not sequences of 1 that is 1+1= 2 but 2 is a different as are all the others symbols, and the + is not addition but another symbol, a geometrical function. A symbol series, as is the differential or the vector.
In gestalt theory there are no sums only patterns-the distinguishing of patterns brings the pattern into feeling. I can not view an amount of  apples not remember them, so I name them as number 12 when I count them. But the numbers are also optical signals, and brain functions, of specific pattern, based in optics and geometry of wave light transference, and of memory functions. So it is a confluent mixture of what I see and what I name to how and why it was named.
The language of computers was 1 and 0, not even input output, it was a more evolved mors code, dot pause, using electrical currents, then magnets, then magnetic material etc...
Language is old do not know what it is really, sound is an imitation, a feeling, and a force, symbols are pictures of gestalt origin.  

As for the minds, they are already connected, I am not investigating if they are connected, so are feelings emotions, and matter, Gus can give you a very detailed description of papers on this subject.
So the computer applications are not bringing anything new in the map of nature, other than AI, as for collective, both our minds are collective, the hive is not only of the bee, or the ant.
As for the profic, money or printed paper, or coins of exchange, or time exchange, is the problem of ill fitted society. Schools and universities, good, what can I learn to a child which I know has an order inside, and a school of children, other than peace and love of joy and excitement and laughter, and the way the animals playfight when young or art? Unless I am not a professor of that myself. They are already empathic.     

  In my simple view of things the brain works with certain ideas because it is familiar with certain frameworks and not others.

     With numbers this means that we are familiar with a base 10 system.  This sets us up for certain unconscious thinking patterns that we learned to associate with base 10.  Switching to an alternative number system allows for new thoughts to occur about numbers.

     This is true of language as well since language can determine how we think as well as what we think.  

     The language of computing is "code," but numbers and words.

     (This next sentence might be true in both forms) The connectivity is expanding to a more collaborative stage. Or, Collaboration is expanding to a more connective stage.

The future of collaborative computing; connecting minds in real time.

http://www.oblong.com/mezzanine/

The challenge is to use these new "tools"  (we are tool making animals) for the benefit of all.   

Best,

Ted 

- show quoted text -

--
Theodore A. Hoppe
  'dustproduction'

Sorrow is an unreplekable  fact, the giants we show when young, diminish to fragile personalities, such is the world, and we are left alone, with few good few, and our face in grinning mirror to ask where did the people we so loved and were loved by them gone, and has not old age not brought to us the  wisdom of solemn, and grief to a respect of value. Loneliness is a terrible situation all the old dogs know that.

Implexi mundi

[Frederick D Abraham]

Thanasis my friend, 

You got me to review the octal system which uses the 8 digits, 0-7.  Thus 201 in octal would be 129 in decimal (2*64+0*8+1*1).  See, I'm learning.

As for Gestalt, yes they emphasize pattern, but that need not deny sums or other 'parts' types of operations, only that those abstractions sometimes have to step aside to let the patterns shine through as a better representation of experience.  Your next remark seems like the Peircian semiotic of sign, signified, interpretant.  Your remarks are deep philosophy and beautiful poetry, very apt, thank you for them.  For me, while it may be difficult (constructivism), I prefer to try to think outside the borg; mostly I fail, but it is fun to try.

fred

What has 4 wheels and flies? . . . . A garbage truck.

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one.

What has 4 wheels and flies? . . . . A garbage truck.

[frank mosca]

Hi Thanasis, and Fred, Ted et. al. J; I am a bit behind on all things so I am still chewing over some of what you, Thanasis, wrote some weeks ago I think. Of course all is no doubt related, but I wanted to agree, I think, with some of your comments. You noted as best I remember that the fundamental question of Socrates in a sense trumped a lot/all of other speculations about humans and our relationship with the universe, with possible AI etc. Fairly sloppy recall here, but I do remember being solidly with you on Socrates at least.
 
It had to do with the apophatic nature of human experience or with all of reality perhaps. By which I mean that the great superstructure of what we know, claim to know, believe strongly, hypothesize, speculate, may be to some degree a grand, cosmic house of cards. I mean depending on what our point of departure, we may be off and running with vectors of belief from which we spin out grand schemes and constructions of every sort. Like what? Well most obviously all socio cultural constructs[ though we do this with ‘physical facts/theories’ as well]. There is hardly a surfeit of economy in their birthing and development. Yes, to some degree in an evolving sense we are liberating ourselves from some of the major unwieldy, divisive and destructive dimensions. At the same time the basic question[s] of Socrates remain: Why [do you believe that, what about that motivates you to believe you have to be the way you are, etc., and etc.,]?
 
Relational links: well, if reality is the way you believe it is then you may well believe you have to be a certain way to survive, thrive, find salvation and in the end achieve the most powerful attractor state of all: happiness, eudaimonia, equanimity! From my perspective all turns around this question. Perhaps it is the core of what the universe itself, most particularly in its utterly unique informational state as a singularity, communicates. All tends to the most economical state available. One could call it the second law and entropy, but from another point of view it is paradoxically just the opposite: the truth of what is, is not nothing but absolutely everything shorn of the dross of time/space requirements. The ultimate “it[not necessarily impersonal by the way],” from the ultimate “bit[ditto].”
 
A joke I heard sometime in my “prehistoric” past J is that the first humanoid when the “combustion of self reflection” broke out in that newly minted mind state had an immediate response/question/observation, as he/she looked around: “What’s Wrong!!”
Yes, perhaps that is our point of departure, perhaps that is what Socrates was attempting to help his interlocutors deconstruct, liberate their comprehension to.
 
I was standing in front of a window in a school I  consult for. No one was around. It was a large window looking out upon a vast vista of farmland and woods. I was looking for a crow couple that show up the same time every day in that field. Birds fascinate me, but I digress. On the sill below the window is a fly, a dead fly[by the by I have a special affection for these creatures. My name, Mosca,  in Italian means “fly.” So I tend to be sympathetic for my namesakes in most instances at least]. I knew that that dead fly had been drawn to the light, to the open vistas that seemed to be available to it. No matter how many times it bounced off the “invisible” glass separating it from its goal, “the vasty air,” it renewed its attempt until it literally expired. What went through that tiny brain beside the over riding impulses of instinct, must have been a version of “What’s wrong?!!”
 
The answer of course was/is: there is absolutely nothing wrong. What there is, is an incomplete understanding of the existential/physical facts governing that situation. But “wrong” no, not at all. I sometimes if I can, help the little creatures get out into that space that so attracts them. Silly I suppose, but there you go, the mushy, mentations of the aging mind. But to my point. The assumption that there is something wrong is what is wrong and that alone. A fuller understanding of what is would clarify that in an instant. Beyond the ability of the fly to be sure. But as to us, humans. What is wrong? A tsunami of responses would wash over me if I asked that question. Suppose my response to it is that indeed there is nothing wrong? In the spirit of Socrates[though I do not claim exactly that he shared that understanding completely, but I like to think that on some level he did] I would assert it is merely what you believe that is the problem. Further when you pare it all down through Socratic questioning you arrive at a fundamental truth[as I see it of course]: all is so completely fundamentally right. A conjugation of being/freedom/happiness represents the participation in the singularity of what is. That is the primal awe inspiring status of who, how, what we are.
 
Well, I’m sure Thanasis you were probably not going there exactly, but your observations inspired me to make this set of observations. I Take my leave. The snow is falling hard now outside the window in my place of “exile” here in the north country of New York hard up against the Canadian border. Not a good time for us “flies” I suppose, so I will tend to stay on this side of the window glass for now, best Frank Mosca  

On 11/23/13 9:25 AM, "Frederick D Abraham" <frederick...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanasis my friend, 

You got me to review the octal system which uses the 8 digits, 0-7.  Thus 201 in octal would be 129 in decimal (2*64+0*8+1*1).  See, I'm learning.
As for Gestalt, yes they emphasize pattern, but that need not deny sums or other 'parts' types of operations, only that those abstractions sometimes have to step aside to let the patterns shine through as a better representation of experience.  Your next remark seems like the Peircian semiotic of sign, signified, interpretant.  Your remarks are deep philosophy and beautiful poetry, very apt, thank you for them.  For me, while it may be difficult (constructivism), I prefer to try to think outside the borg; mostly I fail, but it is fun to try.

fred

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 4:51 AM, Thanasis Argiriou <argy...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ted,

The system is not alternate, for example octal system  its an exponentiation of the first natural numbers 1-9, the after 10 natural numbers are repeating sequences of the first natural.
As in the alternate systems the results of the exponents, are grouped into sums of the numbers themselves, so as to result to the first naturals from 1 to 9, no exponent can lead to zero.
From this you get that for example the exponent of 8 - 64 is 10 or 1, and that the exponent of 8 is either 8 or 1.
Other natural numbers, lead to other periodic results, or stable results
This gives an idea, if exponents numbers are periodic sequences, who managed to invent such sophisticated algorithms, how can numbers be able to periodic reproduce series, if they are only sequences of 1,  Are the numbers not sequences of 1 that is 1+1= 2 but 2 is a different as are all the others symbols, and the + is not addition but another symbol, a geometrical function. A symbol series, as is the differential or the vector.
In gestalt theory there are no sums only patterns-the distinguishing of patterns brings the pattern into feeling. I can not view an amount of  apples not remember them, so I name them as number 12 when I count them. But the numbers are also optical signals, and brain functions, of specific pattern, based in optics and geometry of wave light transference, and of memory functions. So it is a confluent mixture of what I see and what I name to how and why it was named.
The language of computers was 1 and 0, not even input output, it was a more evolved mors code, dot pause, using electrical currents, then magnets, then magnetic material etc...
Language is old do not know what it is really, sound is an imitation, a feeling, and a force, symbols are pictures of gestalt origin.  

As for the minds, they are already connected, I am not investigating if they are connected, so are feelings emotions, and matter, Gus can give you a very detailed description of papers on this subject.
So the computer applications are not bringing anything new in the map of nature, other than AI, as for collective, both our minds are collective, the hive is not only of the bee, or the ant.
As for the profic, money or printed paper, or coins of exchange, or time exchange, is the problem of ill fitted society. Schools and universities, good, what can I learn to a child which I know has an order inside, and a school of children, other than peace and love of joy and excitement and laughter, and the way the animals playfight when young or art? Unless I am not a professor of that myself. They are already empathic.     

  In my simple view of things the brain works with certain ideas because it is familiar with certain frameworks and not others.
     With numbers this means that we are familiar with a base 10 system.  This sets us up for certain unconscious thinking patterns that we learned to associate with base 10.  Switching to an alternative number system allows for new thoughts to occur about numbers.
     This is true of language as well since language can determine how we think as well as what we think.  
     The language of computing is "code," but numbers and words.
     (This next sentence might be true in both forms) The connectivity is expanding to a more collaborative stage. Or, Collaboration is expanding to a more connective stage.

The future of collaborative computing; connecting minds in real time.

http://www.oblong.com/mezzanine/ <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oblong.com%2Fmezzanine%2F&amp;sa=D&amp;sntz=1&amp;usg=AFQjCNGVAp8OIkiPUbOPFK-K1GHhNOqxug>

[Theodore Hoppe]

Frank,

 One quick point:

 Regarding, "Why [do you believe that, what about that motivates you to believe you have to be the way you are, etc., and etc.,]? 

 Fred addresses this, in part, in his last Barabasi commentary.  "An example of a network that 

demonstrates this architecture/topology is illustrated in a recent article on brain architecture (Markov 

et al., 2013)3"

3

 Thanks to Ted Hoppe, fellow member of Google Group Chaopsych, for bringing this exciting article to my 

attention, it is a good follow-up to Sporns (2011) as well as Link 12.

The research paper he is addressing by Markov is ""Cortical High-Density Counterstream Architectures."

This paper is not available to the public but here is another example of the same architecture/topology that also seems to answer Socrates's question. 

"The envirome and the connectome: exploring the structural noise in the human brain associated with socioeconomic deprivation"

http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00722/abstract?utm_source=FRON&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=FBK_FRON_SM_13

 "Complex cognitive functions are widely recognized to be the result of a number of brain regions working together as large-scale networks. Recently, complex network analysis has been used to characterize various structural properties of the large-scale network organization of the brain. For example, the human brain has been found to have a modular architecture i.e., regions within the network form communities (modules) with more connections between regions within the community compared to regions outside it. The aim of this study was to examine the modular and overlapping modular architecture of the brain networks using complex network analysis."

They conclude:

 "These results suggest that apparent structural difference in brain networks may be driven by differences in cortical thicknesses between groups. This demonstrates a structural organization that is consistent with a system that is less robust and less efficient in information processing." 

Back to digesting the rest of your excellent comments

Best,

Ted

[Frederick D Abraham]

Dear Musca domestica,

Wait. Let me open the window for you.  We will be out soon enough, and without any real definition, cataphatic or apophatic.  Wind back the clock 40 kya to first philosophers and artists, a cognitive bound, explosion.  ‘What’s lunch’ changes to ‘where does lunch come from’.  ‘Wow a baby?’ to ‘where does a baby come from?  The sky, the meadow becomes ‘Wow, where does beauty come from?’  Woman becomes goddess, menstruation and the moon beget math, we take a bird’s bones and make music like a bird. Now we have your awe and existentialism. Equanimity becomes fulfillment.  ‘What’s wrong’ becomes ‘what is?’  

Yours, Musica peripatetica

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

Who said the following?

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions fro insufficient premises.

[gus koehler]

Cultural anthropology has provided a wonderful exploration of exchange systems of various kinds.  Growing and exchanging a chicken is an engagement with life very directly since it has to be grown up, its neck rung or not, etc..  One of the interesting things about Burning Man is that there is no money; you can only exchange things you made or make right there with maybe a little bartering.  The feelings surrounding these exchanged living or self made things are very different from those associated with exchanging a "dollar" as paper or stone (gold).  Two very different spaces are occupied and are controlled in very different manners (government and money vs. me and you and a chicken or trinket or?)  

Time scholars are interested in this too.  Exchanging personal time (laboring on a garden or cleaning street) for something (food, shelter, satisfaction with community), and even storing that time in a time-bank is very different from receiving a piece of paper with a number on it.  The paper is a complex abstract symbol with an agreed upon abstract value enforced by government which controls the instruments of force (police, courts, army).  Everyone has time but not everyone has money.  Money represents sweat for some but it is not damp.  The owner of the vast means of production be it Facebook or General Motors does not even think about sweat but I do.

In terms of politics, the poor participate by expending time in the streets, organizing, etc.  The rich just buy influence.  Here we could review Marx a bit to get the point more clearly.

I believe it was Fred who noted how the foundation of numbers goes back to the goddess, to menstruation, to phases of the money, and to other deep mythological roots that most of us these days can not touch with our minds or consciousness.  These have been shaved even in our minds, away by capitalism and its instrumental reduction of myth to lifeless paper.  I don't even look at the faces or the symbols or strive to know what they mean; only reductionist, alienated value is important for obvious reasons. And yet, when I see this paper or receive it or don't have it (unemployed or no business or making stuff like art that no one buys or music that can be reduced to digits in plastic... which includes Lanier's points about "we are not gagets; and the reduction of privacy and its relation to my identify to robbed and sold digits again adopting Lanier's analysis) I experience in place of this abstract money what the surrealist call "desire". Much more to be explored here like money and identity, money and displaced anger of the white male and the female of whatever color or the value of children as sexual objects to bought and sold. Is there something different about a parent holding a child's hand and then giving the child by the hand into that of man to raped vs. receiving money for "value". Hmmm. 

Gus

On Monday, July 29, 2013 2:54:46 PM UTC-7, Frederick D Abraham wrote:

This the quote from Sam Leven in the Heritability of Homosexuality topic:

 

“. . . most of what we've learned can be explained in a common-sensical way -- even with pictures and jokes.

But if we fail to share the science Peirce foresaw and helped frame -- if those of us lucky enough to have learned through semiotics and science don't speak up -- then the beauties of complexity that enable discoveries and better questions may turn into the ugliness of stasis and fear of the new that dogged Peirce to his end.”

In response, I mentioned two other authors with a similar message, Korzybski, Science and Sanity, and Christine Hardy (left her last name out there) Networks of Meaning.

I overlooked Bakhtin, so here is a quote on him from an article which also mentions his similarity to one of Pierce’s comment. 

1.Excursus on MИХАИЛ MИХАЍЛOBИЧ ƂAXTИH

―Russian philosopher and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin‘s theory of "dialogue" emphasized the power of discourse to increase understanding of multiple perspectives and create myriad possibilities. Bakhtin held that relationships and connections exist among all living beings, and that dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change. In his influential works, Bakhtin provided a linguistic methodology to define the dialogue, its nature and meaning.‖ (Maranhão, 1990, p. 51.)

―Dialogic relations have a specific nature: They can be reduced neither to the purely logical (even if dialectical) nor to the purely linguistic (compositional-syntactic). They are possible only between complete utterances of various speaking subjects… Where there is no word and no language, there can be no dialogic relations; they cannot exist among objects or logical quantities (concepts, judgments, and so forth). Dialogic relations presuppose a language, but they do not reside within the system of language. They are impossible among elements of a language.‖ (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 117.)

―Carnivalesque discourse breaks through the laws of a language censored by grammar and semantics and, at the same time, is a social and political protest. There is no equivalence, but rather, identity between challenging official linguistic codes and challenging official law.‖ (Kristeva, 1980, p. 65.)

These quotes establish a meaning for carnivalesque as providing a perspective on the nature and absurdity of the loci of power and control. Carnivalesque assists in developing perspectives on social problems and social reform, but are cannot be relied on to establish programs of reform. They certainly can have great utility in energizing protest. When combined with the dialogical, programs of reform would be more likely to emerge.

We have seen these in the form of theatrical performance at meetings of globalization, such as those directed at Nike at the G-8 and WTOC street protests.

―Carnivalesque is the use of theatrics to face off with power via satire and parody, and invite spectators to a new reading of the spectacle of global capitalism. We see it all around us in the street theater, teach ins, and NikeTown blockades that poke fun and use critical satire and parody to say something

Abraham: Media Ecology Page 2

important about global capitalism, and its impact upon both workers and consumers. The carnivalesque can be grotesque, violent or quite peaceful. Sorting out the message, in the midst of media dominated by spectacle advertising, infotainment, and purchased by transnational power, is the most important thing we can be teaching.

―For Mikheal Bakhtin, then Julia Kristeva, the carnival is the theatrics of rant and madness seeing to repair the separation of worker from consumer. This is the separation that Karl Marx wrote about in Das Kapital, the alienation of consumer from producer. We do not know where our clothing, toys, and other consumables is made. The location of sweatshop factories is a carefully guarded corporate secret. We do not know who makes our clothing. The stories of working women (mostly teenagers) is kept secret, and instead the Spectacle of transnational corporate advertising and public relations regales and seduces us.

―Carnival is the sweatshop theater, the blockade of a NikeTown in Melbourne on a Friday evening (In Sydney it happens on Thursdays), or a protest against Wal-Mart on a Saturday. Around the world consumers (students and faculty too) are spectators (or in Augusto Boal's terms Spect-actors), actors in a form of carnival resistance that premodern peasants used to satirize the weird power of the Crown and Clergy over their community life.‖ (Boje, 2008.)

―According to Bakhtin, all speech utterances are heteroglot and polyphonic in that they partake of different-languages" and resonate with ‗many-voices.‘ Heteroglossia (other-languagedness) and polyphony (many-voicedness) are ‗the base conditions governing the operation of meaning in any utterance.‘ [Holquist & Emerson, 1981, p. 428.] By ‗other-languagedness,‘ Bakhtin does not mean only national languages (though a national language determines, in part, the meaning of any utterance). More generally, heteroglossia refers to the ideologies inherent in the various languages to which we all lay claim as social beings and by which we are constituted as individuals: the language and the inherent ideologies of our profession, the language and inherent ideologies of our age group, of the decade, of our social class, geographical region, family, circle of friends, etc.‖ (Park-Fuller, 1986.)

The unfinalizability of the self is a product of the constant navigation between the internal world and the external world, and the human thinker occupies this marginal space. ‖The pure unification of which is an unrealizable goal because of the brevity of human life and the conversation between internal consistency and external dynamism.‖ The utterance guarantees what Peirce calls infinite semiosis, the infinitely long chain of signs ―of which the human, in his or her brief lifetime, only has the privilege of sampling a very small part.‖ (Fox, 2005).

Note, Peirce, the famous semitotician and polymath, has a similar concept to Bakhtin‟s, that of „infinite semiosis‟.

―I believe that Bakhtin‘s theoretical suggestions concerning polyphony, carnival, and other cultural phenomena, should not be seen only as social, institutional, artistic, or language related devices, but as concrete suggestions about cultural space and the life taking place within it.

―Bakhtin insists throughout all of his philosophy that time and space are not physical but that time is historical and space is social. On this point he is indeed comparable with the later Nishida for whom the basho is a place in which things do not simply ―exist‖ but in which they are ―local,‖ i.e. in which they ―are‖ in a concrete way. Bakhtin‘s and Nishida‘s outspokenly ―organicist‖ definitions of ―place‖ or ―locality‖ put both of them into the group of those people who attempt to think place as more than as a Newtonian extension of space.‖ (Botz-Bornstein, 2004.)

Carnival is but one of several dialogic platforms that can have a liberating influence.

taken from: http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf

 

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Ted on quick comment.

The emancipation of personality. Jung page 185
Jung discusses one of his dreams. ...
"The US the ideal place of logical ideas of practical intellects, who would want to create the world with a company of brains. ..

funny it seems all modern after a century.

T.A

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Hi Frank, Fred

The origin of what I know is that I do not know-This one thing I know that I know nothing "was attributed to Socrates by Arkesilaos skeptic philosopher, 3rd century. BC (David Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, p 86).
In Plato's writings, there are discussions, on the soul, art, ethics, metaphysics and state.
But the first verse though is not the central point of Plato philosophy, is the heart of quantum physics. Two states in a single statement, one opposing the other, and the latter delved into emptiness that is total vagueness.
What is a fly? can take the egyptian myths and the greek myths, to a picturesque mythic geneology, can take evolution to find out its ancestors and heredity.
The key part of this notions, and their difference is context. The fly, tries to escape hitting itself on the glass, this is how we see it. I do not know what the fly thinks, its just a survival machine, trying to evolve.
Of course we neeed  to sustain ourselves in order to live, but is procreation and sustenance of the species what is all about?
I find a lack of belief in that, can not measure the universe with my own measure, thus measuring myself. We just follow the track,  sometimes this leads us back to thinking the start.
From the point of philosophy, the universe to my conclusion is infinite. There should be cause and meaning, not only empty space and survival. As human, and feeling, can not ignore what touches myself even deeper. The cow and its pair die for nothing, maybe its just theatre, maybe its truth maybe its allegory, but we will not be able to get of this mesh, we seriously deal with the search of its meaning.
I am not trying to convince, its personal, as of the myth of choice, the first and the last of the universal conditions.

Truthfully,
Thanasis

[Frederick D Abraham]

I love your exploration of the interaction of human experience and the quantification of it in our cultural practices.  Just beautiful.

I also liked your slip of the "money", as a very apt represention of these two-way interactions, translating 

[Linda Dennard]

All you men discussing the Goddess! 😊  Comforting.  I am here on my little farm in the soft hills of Southern Alabama watching winter pale the meadow and, as always, bewitched by the many forms of beauty in the world.  Perhaps I am interacting, today it feels like submission. As with everyone, I appreciate the depth of thought given these substantial things. I will write some later in the week about the emerging small farm culture here - many of Gus’s observations are embodied in it. But today I will burden you with the poem that flowed into my relaxed thoughts as I brushed the horse and then harvested the last of the summer cabbage.

Thanksgiving

We of the Carrots

We of the Peas

We of the course Cabbage

the  golden Corn

the Sun absorbed

until bloodless

in Winter

We of the Warm

embodied in Venison

We the humbled

cast away stars

incubated in soil

made sweet

by Worms

We of the Other

We the confluence

of the gifts of Seasons

We to Life

Sustaining our senses

Happy Holidays  L

Sent from Windows Mail

[frank mosca]

Thank you Linda for that wonderful poem; a moment or two of wonderful serenity. And Thanasis, back to you on your response. Indeed the Socratic “The only thing that I know is that I know nothing,” is a challenge. But it is not the end of a dialogue, but the beginning. To know what you don’t know is a great advantage. Let me tie it in with Fred’s quotation about Bakhtin. As I have noted earlier, commentators seem at times to misunderstand Bakhtin around the idea of Carnival.
 
He was not touting Carnival as the method of deconstruction, but rather he was referring to the ability to offer a challenge to authoritarianism and ideologically driven judgments. The fewer degrees of freedom in a system, the more brittle it is. This is the Achilles heel of such constructs and the personages who inhabit that role. Thus the power of laughter and ridicule.
 
For an example of this in Dostoevsky, the partial but probably main inspiration for Bakhtin along with Rabelais, can be found in the novel The Possessed when the main character, Stavrogin, confronts his own “demons” in a conversation with the monk Tikhon.  Stavrogin confesses he abused and caused the death of a little girl. However he is not afraid of being hated for his deeds. The monk advises him not to reveal what he has done. He understands that Stavrogin could withstand the hatred, but what he fears he could not withstand would be the ridicule, the laughter and the notion that he did the things he did. Being subject to that scorn and ridicule would be more than he could handle.
 
So that power is not chaotic, but rather it takes a rather ordered appraisal to be effective in the ridicule and satire of nude emperors and dictators of every sort. This is the boundary that Socrates carefully trod with the puffed up intellectual youth of Athens. The basic dread was to find oneself “unclothed” by these questions, of being revealed as not only “wrong” factually, but by extension to understand oneself as somehow being “wrong” for oneself, i.e. “that there must be something wrong with me!” This is what I call “primal dread.” This is what the monk was attempting to save Stavrogin from.
 
The goal for Socrates was not to be judgmental, or to feed the dread of there being something fundamentally “wrong” with the person with whom he was in dialogue. No, such a state would be going beyond the enormous value of surrendering beliefs that only burden you with myths that entrain you and constrain you in cultural, self made prisons. That would be to fall into the non discriminate state of Carnival where there is no compassion or freedom, but rather simply the roiling cauldron of deconstruction and destruction for its own sake. Out of such a matrix arises only more ideologically charged figures to build even more self delusional myths and cultural poses. It is the blind rage of the Furies which is itself a slavery to the belief in power.
 
Thus the power of questions to demythologize brings one out of Carnival and into the experience of being/freedom/happiness. Here motivations disappear into freedom and reappear shorn of all must, shoulds, oughts and power demands of any kind. That is my epistle for the moment, regards to all, Frank

 



On 11/25/13 10:58 AM, "Linda Dennard" <lden...@aum.edu> wrote:

All you men discussing the Goddess! 😊  Comforting.  I am here on my little farm in the soft hills of Southern Alabama watching winter pale the meadow and, as always, bewitched by the many forms of beauty in the world.  Perhaps I am interacting, today it feels like submission. As with everyone, I appreciate the depth of thought given these substantial things. I will write some later in the week about the emerging small farm culture here - many of Gus’s observations are embodied in it. But today I will burden you with the poem that flowed into my relaxed thoughts as I brushed the horse and then harvested the last of the summer cabbage.

Thanksgiving

We of the Carrots
We of the Peas
We of the course Cabbage
the  golden Corn
the Sun absorbed
until bloodless
in Winter
We of the Warm
embodied in Venison
We the humbled
cast away stars
incubated in soil
made sweet
by Worms
We of the Other
We the confluence
of the gifts of Seasons
We to Life
Sustaining our senses

Happy Holidays  L

Sent from Windows Mail

taken from: http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%20Ecology%20Globalization%20Emancipation%20v3.pdf <http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.blueberry-brain.org/chaosophy/Media%2520Ecology%2520Globalization%2520Emancipation%2520v3.pdf&amp;sa=D&amp;sntz=1&amp;usg=AFQjCNFVp1q75KjtV5nWxfiTBBZJddnJ3Q>

[Thanasis Argiriou]

An interpretation of the carnival. Carnival as etymology might have different ancestors. Supposing it comes from meat carne- carne vale, which means "farewell to meat". Another etymology not seen in wiki
might be the rites of Sparta the Lacedaemon. Kárneia were held at Spárti̱, Árgos,  Thí̱ra, Ko̱, Kyrí̱ni̱,  Syrakoúses and elsewhere

The Karneia a Prodorian celebration was dedicated to the local god or Karneio Carney familiar. He was called Oiketas because the center of worship was the house of the seer Aries and is worshiped in a temple. When the Dorians conquered Sparta with the help of Carneios and Aries, the Karneio they identified with Apollo.

 Daimōn most likely came from the Greek verb daiesthai (to divide, distribute).^[3] The Greek conception of a daimōns notably appears in the works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. To distinguish the classical Greek concept from its later Christian interpretation, the former is anglicized as either daemon or daimon rather than demon.The Greek term does not have any connotations of evil or malevolence. In fact, εὐδαιμονία eudaimonia, (lit. good-spiritedness) means happiness.

The origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle (384–322BC), the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus.The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of a dancing floor (orchestra), dressing room and scene-building area (skene). Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics and clear delivery were paramount. The actors (always men) wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts.

Such can be seen in the work of Euripides The Bacchae The tragedy is based on the mythological story of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agauë, and their punishment by the god Dionysus (who is Pentheus' cousin) because he refuses to worship him.

He uses Pentheus' clear desire to see the ecstatic women to convince the king to dress as a female Maenad to avoid detection and go to the rites:

Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?

Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.

Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?

Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-

Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.^[2]

ἐπεὶ θεράπνας τῆσδε Θηβαίας χθονὸς
λιπόντες ἐξέβημεν Ἀσωποῦ ῥοάς,
λέπας Κιθαιρώνειον εἰσεβάλλομεν

As we have seen this whole story represents a non-logical account, an ethical prehistory, were history is a clouded medium, and nature man and Gods, are not so far apart, even at the time Socrates and Plato are alive.

Plato in his treatise the Republic. In it, Plato argues that the soul is composed of three parts: The logical (λόγος), the spirited (θυμός) and the appetitive (ἐπιθυμητής). These three parts of the soul also correspond to the three classes of a just society.

Plato of course was the founder of archetypes and of the Freudian three, and many more, such is the paradise of modern Christian religion. But with logic, we have the beginning of science and the end of the Carnea-or Carnival, as the distinctions are made. The Goddess and Gods, are then left behind, so is myth, the first history of man. 

David Horton's Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia contains an article on Aboriginal mythology observing:^[3]

"A mythic map of Australia would show thousands of characters, varying in their importance, but all in some way connected with the land. Some emerged at their specific sites and stayed spiritually in that vicinity. Others came from somewhere else and went somewhere else."

"Many were shape changing, transformed from or into human beings or natural species, or into natural features such as rocks but all left something of their spiritual essence at the places noted in their stories."

So it was in Greek myth.

So Frank and Linda I do not know what the exact picture is, it takes research to do so, and wonder to see it slowly arise as the limitation to time is knowledge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGm83KaRYIg

T.A

 

 

[Theodore Hoppe]

Personally, this all gets a little too esoteric.

Does anyone recall the 2006 film, "V for Vendetta?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)

  "The film has been seen by many political groups as an allegory of oppression by government; libertarians andanarchists have used it to promote their beliefs. Activists belonging to the group Anonymous use the same Guy Fawkes mask popularized by the film when they appear in public at numerous high-profile events, emulating one of its key scenes. Lloyd is quoted saying: "The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way."

 So, did "Occupy Wall St." take up this sense of carnival to some extent in a political manner?

There is also this to share:  Check out Bill Moyers & Company interview with Henry Giroux. The militarization of local police is among the many topics. Best political commentary I've seen in recent years. 

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-zombie-politics-and-casino-capitalism/

Ted

. 

--
Theodore A. Hoppe
  'dustproduction'

[Theodore Hoppe]

Here's the Monbiot article mentioned by Moyers.

"It's the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It's the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It's the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/11/business-rules-lobbying-corporate-interests

But this one about the police the UK rings true for the U$A as well.

"Becoming a police officer does not protect you from the urge to appease, to take the side of the powerful against the powerless, to defer to those who possess great fortunes even if they acquired them through great crimes. Becoming a senior police officer places you among the elite, and it must be difficult not to absorb the demands and perspectives of other people of that class."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/sep/19/police-uk-powerful

[Mike McCullough]

There are too many interesting points raised in recent posts to be able address them.  So I’ll just pick out one thing.  I like the Socratic notion “The only thing that I know is that I know nothing”.  It is an appropriately humble acknowledgement of the vast realms about which we indeed know nothing.   But we all know something so it is a poetic statement.   20^th century physics makes it possible to say something scientific about what we know or don’t.  Uncertainty was finite in Newtonian physics –we could supposedly eliminate it and arrive at absolute certainty.  We now know that this was impossible.  We can reduce uncertainty but never eliminate it.  We may know some relatively few things well.  For practical purposes, we consciously choose to remain virtually ignorant about most of what is knowable (what we did as university students picking a major).  So we partake in the great social fragmentation of knowledge.  Paradoxically, a complexity perspective relates everything (as in Smolin’s relational universe) and calls on us to discover how everything is connected, even that about which we know nothing.

[Frederick D Abraham]

Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, dialogism, chronotope (a lot like some of Gus’s ideas), carnivalesque, unfinalizability, polyphony, humor, are all dedicated to the multiplicity of individual and cultural development, including a fluid discourse, which are not only characteristic of societal bifurcations, but also contribute to the destabilization of culture, which, of course, meant critiquing power structures. In his chapter on the history of laughter, Bakhtin advances the notion of its therapeutic and liberating force, arguing that in resisting hypocrisy "laughing truth... degraded power".  One, of course, could argue whether therapeutic liberation actually contributes to social emancipation.

So having so nimbly defended myself against these scurrilous attacks, I shall proceed to give a different perspective on a bridge between Linda and Frank’s ideas.. These deal with the parallels between what is common among science, dynamics, philosophy, the arts, and literature with just a couple of quick examples.  Consider the literary school of NATURALISM, (flourished in the Nineties, 1885-1905 roughly) of which Zola is the foundational figure.  He gave to Balzac’s ‘social zoology’ a more formal development.  NATURALISM embraced turning literary and social morals upside down, using more natural depictions of society and life in down to earth language.  It embraced EMANCIPATION, and PRIMITIVISM (a reaction to the second wave of industrialization).  Also, Zola embraced POSITIVISM in his zest for doing scientific-like data collection for his novels (a lot like data mining tweets today by the complexity industry).  Zola spent much effort in defending Dreyfus, went to prison for it, and was later murdered over it.  A classic example of emancipative goals is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle which led to Roosevelt’s Food and Drug Administration. [A movie, In Secret,  is coming next year based on Zola’s Thérèse Raqin].  Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov) founder of Socialist Realism, was very involved trying to change life in Russia.  He described the hardships, humiliations, brutality toward marginalized citizens, and revealed their humanity and dignity (see his novel, Goremyka Pavel.) 

Poets also recreated language (Mellarmé, William Carlos Williams, many others, which led to free verse).  For me, the naturalism of Linda’s poem lies in its embodiment of the ideas of emancipation.  Hers, (and our) involvement in social emancipation, tilting with public administration windmills, can create our own prisons; the release from our these self-organized panopticons may require the introduction of balance in our own lives, of thanksgiving.

Dynamics, as a  socio-scientific religion was born of its ability to better represent the interactive, emergent, self-organizational aspects of reality, giving new turf upon which science and ideas could play. This was born of advances in mathematics and information technology, which have now exploded to the point where the gap between our abstractions and reality are shrinking, But the map and the territory, as Poincaré noted, always pose a frustrating and inevitable gap (chaos), and as Mike has noted.  It is nice to have this gap inhabited by so many great folk as Linda, Frank, Gus, Mike, Sam, Thanasis, Ted, Rachel, Robert, et al.

[Gus Koehler]

Fred’s comments seem to me to contribute to the notion that complex systems theory must be multidimensional if we are to understand “complex systems.”  Our efforts to understand carnival which is an expression of how dynamics—as art, as meaning, as an attack on the apparent totalitarianism of rigid structural interpretations--reveals itself as one avenue of change in a complex system. Fred’s essay shows this hybrid approach and analysis suggesting its richness particularly insofar as the mathematics of chaos theory reinforces aesthetic analysis techniques such as Sinclair and the others use.  This is an important synthesis.

 

Gus Koehler, Ph.D., President

WWW.TimeStructures.Com

1545 University Ave., Sacramento, CA 95825

916-564-8683 (Cell: 716-1740)

 

From: chao...@googlegroups.com [mailto:chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Frederick D Abraham
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 7:45 AM
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Linda Dennard; Frederick D Abraham
Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

 

Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, dialogism, chronotope (a lot like some of Gus’s ideas), carnivalesque, unfinalizability, polyphony, humor, are all dedicated to the multiplicity of individual and cultural development, including a fluid discourse, which are not only characteristic of societal bifurcations, but also contribute to the destabilization of culture, which, of course, meant critiquing power structures. In his chapter on the history of laughter, Bakhtin advances the notion of its therapeutic and liberating force, arguing that in resisting hypocrisy "laughing truth... degraded power".  One, of course, could argue whether therapeutic liberation actually contributes to social emancipation.

So having so nimbly defended myself against these scurrilous attacks, I shall proceed to give a different perspective on a bridge between Linda and Frank’s ideas.. These deal with the parallels between what is common among science, dynamics, philosophy, the arts, and literature with just a couple of quick examples.  Consider the literary school of NATURALISM, (flourished in the Nineties, 1885-1905 roughly) of which Zola is the foundational figure.  He gave to Balzac’s ‘social zoology’ a more formal development.  NATURALISM embraced turning literary and social morals upside down, using more natural depictions of society and life in down to earth language.  It embraced EMANCIPATION, and PRIMITIVISM (a reaction to the second wave of industrialization).  Also, Zola embraced POSITIVISM in his zest for doing scientific-like data collection for his novels (a lot like data mining tweets today by the complexity industry).  Zola spent much effort in defending Dreyfus, went to prison for it, and was later murdered over it.  A classic example of emancipative goals is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle which led to Roosevelt’s Food and Drug Administration. [A movie, In Secret,  is coming next year based on Zola’s Thérèse Raqin].  Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov) founder of Socialist Realism, was very involved trying to change life in Russia.  He described the hardships, humiliations, brutality toward marginalized citizens, and revealed their humanity and dignity (see his novel, Goremyka Pavel.) 

Poets also recreated language (Mellarmé, William Carlos Williams, many others, which led to free verse).  For me, the naturalism of Linda’s poem lies in its embodiment of the ideas of emancipation.  Hers, (and our) involvement in social emancipation, tilting with public administration windmills, can create our own prisons; the release from our these self-organized panopticons may require the introduction of balance in our own lives, of thanksgiving.

Dynamics, as a  socio-scientific religion was born of its ability to better represent the interactive, emergent, self-organizational aspects of reality, giving new turf upon which science and ideas could play. This was born of advances in mathematics and information technology, which have now exploded to the point where the gap between our abstractions and reality are shrinking, But the map and the territory, as Poincaré noted, always pose a frustrating and inevitable gap (chaos), and as Mike has noted.  It is nice to have this gap inhabited by so many great folk as Linda, Frank, Gus, Mike, Sam, Thanasis, Ted, Rachel, Robert, et al.

[Frederick D Abraham]

I was pleased with Gus’s response, as I was unaware that my passion for multivariate approaches shone through this rather obfuscating rambling (hardly deserving of ‘essay’ piece.  I have, of course, been involved in promoting the multivariate approach, from my early work on EEG of the feeding system in cats and single unit work on sensitization and habituation in the nervous system of marine mollusks (60’s-70’s), to my proposal on the advantage of multivariate work over the tendency to treat dimensional analysis and attractor reconstruction from the richness of information in a single variable exploited by the time-delay embedding techniques (1997).  But the real fun is extrapolating these to the network methods now popular due to social networks and the web, especially to the social arena of emancipation, in which poetics and dynamics become intertwined, a dance within a fractal imbrication.

Here (first image attached) is a work of art of a network comprised of two children developing a link to network of social expression, I presume of emancipatory motivation.  Street art by The Hotstepper, Manila, March 30, 2012.

The second image is of a group of children from a fishing village at Bantayan Barangay, Dumaguete, Philippines. Photo by Fred Abraham, 17 October 2013.  Note the similarity of the finger symbolism in both pictures.  I suspect there may be a touch of emancipatory symbolism here.  The kids are having fun and love to have their picture taken, but I suspect they are expressing their individuality contra to the objective panopticon of the camera and the observer  The camera is a panopticon, but also an opportunity to transcend life's contstraints.  It is all very complicated.  I am asking a friend, a graduate student in psychology and an instructor of art at Silliman university to help with this symbolism as well as the dynamics of personality and culture of these two images.

CARNIVALESQUE?

 

All you men discussing the Goddess! &#128522;  Comforting.  I am here on my little farm in the soft hills of Southern Alabama watching winter pale the meadow and, as always, bewitched by the many forms of beauty in the world.  Perhaps I am interacting, today it feels like submission. As with everyone, I appreciate the depth of thought given these substantial things. I will write some later in the week about the emerging small farm culture here - many of Gus’s observations are embodied in it. But today I will burden you with the poem that flowed into my relaxed thoughts as I brushed the horse and then harvested the last of the summer cabbage.

--

Frederick David Abraham

1396 Gregg Hill Road

Waterbury Center, VT 05677 USA

802 244-8104 249-0806 (mobile) 

Skype:  frederick.d.abraham (video compliant)

Google+  Circles, Hangouts Groups

www.blueberry-brain.org

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chaopsych

impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php 

Why did a letter arrive wet?

Because of postage dew.

Can you spell something that has more than 100 letters in it?
Post Office.

[Mike McCullough]

I think Fred’s focus on “destabilization of culture”, “critiquing power structures” and “societal bifurcations” and Gus’ focus on “dynamics—as art, as meaning, as an attack on the apparent totalitarianism of rigid structural interpretations” are the sort of themes whose further development by complexity theorists can help move complexity theory from its current position on the margins of the social sciences into their mainstreams.  Those prominent complexity theorists who focus on self-organization to the exclusion of the disorganization which results from rigid top down political and economic power structures end up with rather Pollyannaish, unrealistic views of the problems that need resolution.

[Thanasis Argiriou]

Hi Mike and all,

To conclude on the subject, I have found it impossible to act in synchrony with other people, towards exploration of the unconscious and of nature. thus telepathy and precognition is impossible in a team process, so one has to temper to this alone.

As for the collective or unity, can not act upon this, unless there is understanding better of the unity principles, and of the historical back ground of the collective.

As I see things the experience and actions of man, is of its animal body, whereas his knowledge comes from a source unknown as is the mind, with its symbols and technical efficiency. So I guess one has to find its animal side, along with what is the mind, is it a distinction, or is it a property of nature, as is life itself.

If I were to put myself in the place of an animal, it would be ethically worse than the condition of slavery and more dangerous than that of our own human wars, still they try to live. So as men, with our able ape hands and minds and living in the world we tried to safely create, outside of the animal world of survival.

Still we are animals, our body is in need of natural resources, though few of us try to encapsulate a reasoning of immortality through the tech that would provide us a source away from any of natures resources.

I guess the later cause will not stand and we should search a means through our animalistic body and through this unknown thing called the mind, to find a way out through this labyrinth.

So we can learn from the rest of nature, as we come from nature, though the how is not known.

The rest religious or money wars is just to laugh at, as we are priviliged to have inherited the previous society and its artificial and structural advantages its rules and regulations of ages, which no otehr animal was priviliged to have, due to its body structure and its mental capacity.

But from their life we can learn not by disecting them, but become more living, as we think that our mind and our society is not built mainly on our body needs and bifurcated to an extent of specializing and cooperating, in our different aesthetic, and structural needs, so as to forget that the body has life of its own, and we are both animals and semiotic minds. So I guess it  is returning to the animal which is partially us, and recreate from instinctual state, into a societal, and mind state accepting both the animal that speaks through us, in all of its languages, as it might know better than the neocortex or the heart might know.

as for human ethics, its in an primal state, more to the polar bear protecting its cubs. We think is human terms society is not the world, the world is a constant exploration.

Respectfully,
T.A

[M. Ross DeWitt]

Centuries of corruption - of formal religious, educational, governmental and financial institutions have reduced the population to mind-controlled automatons, glued to our technological toys for entertainment, unconscious 24/7 of what goes on in the halls we've been persuaded are hallowed. 

To speak of "scientific method" is a sop to pacify those awarded advanced degrees, after proving they will not uncover: truth of our enslavement. 

We go through behaviorally conditioned motions, year after year, of accepting only that which is accepted by those who rule: "survival of fittest" meaning clever at grabbing what belongs to others, when they can do nothing on their own behalf. "Shared consciousness" debunked as phony, ignoring that population is waking up to fact that we've been tricked, that civil rights we thought were ours were nothing but illusion. Read what apologists for this travesty write, and you will find them arrogant, claiming their view is the only "scientific" one, all others' views irrelevant. My observation, after decades of thought, is that social science is ripe to turn so-called scientific method on its head with what we're learning.

Man's animal nature is not the final word.  

Dr. M. Ross DeWitt, social scientist, political analyst and author Beyond Equilibrium Theory about power sharing in transition. "Shared consciousness" of humanity, thanks to Internet, becoming a reality. When information is globally shared, thought process not restricted to conditioned brains. 

---

From: Thanasis Argiriou <argy...@gmail.com>
To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Moses Atega <karl...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 5:48 AM

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[Linda Dennard]

Hi all,
I thought this article in today's Guardian provided some food for thought about collective action and responsible leadership - and what political leadership should understand about self-organization.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/13/collective-motion-starlings-sardines-physics


Linda F. Dennard, Ph.D.
Professor
Public Policy and International Relations
Auburn University at Montgomery
1-334-244-3646
lden...@aum.edu
________________________________________
From: chao...@googlegroups.com [chao...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Thanasis Argiriou [argy...@gmail.com]

Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 5:48 AM

To: chao...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Moses Atega

Subject: Re: Science and Social Responsibility

[Theodore Hoppe]

I receive the same feed and was glad to see that Linda forwarded this along.  

Allow me to also pass along this article about a new Coursera online effort.

Is Massive Open Online Research the Next Frontier for Education?

http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1421

“To our knowledge, this is the first major online course that prominently features massive open online research, or MOOR, rather than just regular coursework” said Pevzner. “All students who sign up for the course will be given an opportunity to work on specific research projects under the leadership of prominent bioinformatics scientists from different countries, who have agreed to interact and mentor their respective teams.” 

[Thanasis Argiriou]

The societal problem is easy to solve. People should start doing their work, no stealing, no gambling, no waring, and a decrease in destruction.
The gab of the political deficiency, is in the judicial, police, public office, and press. If the later did indeed work.
People are so far far away from society, that politics has been left to a few, who of course earn the gain of rule.
Banks are not the subject, prisons are.
Money is not to create deficiency societal it is to regulate people relationships.
In Greece there is 30% unemployment, create a societal plan, to manage the way the system will work, it is not difficult
to create outcomes outside of economic figures, in the reasoning of true economy, but it is difficult, have to work many years to achieve this.
the foundations of society are there, and human tech, has helped making life much easier.
To work in a wholistic way is a systemic complexity way is the difficulty
But people have to learn and work at the same time and sweat a lot, and that is why society instead of going fowards it will go towards small and big catastrophy.
 
As for the internet, the human brain is not only connected to another human brain, but is also connected, to the brains of animals, so the internet is already inside every brain, it depends on the voltage to what it downloads and what it thinks and what it feels.

So please no sardines, nor antzoyeas, I like the fish very much to eat them, I would rather have the ability to understand what they think, and how I could help this surviving nature evolve.

As Carl Sagan once put it, we are made of Star Dust, but understanding that is a personal pursuit.

T.A

ps: Why do not this tech, computer geniuses, create a program to solve societal deficiencies?
CAUSE THEY are a partial deficiency themselves, they are the next point of wealth after the oil, and  the arms, the aim is profit, as is Google, the point from which we are writing,
myself would prefer writing Letters.

[Detweiler, Karen R.]

Thanasis, first let me say how much I appreciate, enjoy, and value your posts here. You bring poetry in your scholarship.

 

On reading today’s post I thought of a visual image now going viral in the US. It has been picked up by both the venerable Christian Science Monitor newspaper and by National Public Radio. Here is the CSM article http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0113/Tigerfish-leaps-out-of-water-devours-entire-bird-video and the YouTube link: http://youtu.be/vqL1aXabUY8. The video is under one minute.

 

The image resonated for me because the idea of a fish eating a bird is surprising; it upends the usual order of nature. And yet, it also conveys that the effective predator today works socially and at unconventional targets to achieve its dominance. This can be seen in business and in government. At present, the governor of New Jersey is being derided in the media for being particularly effective (brutal) in building his power base by punishing thousands of people when their mayor would not endorse the governor’s re-election bid (despite being of different parties and despite the then-popular governor’s almost certain re-election). This kind of escapade does leave politics to the few by deterring those who would work more collaboratively.

 

Also coming across my desk in recent days was McKinsey’s new report on youth unemployment in Europe. It essentially conveys that the educational system and the employment system live in parallel universes. You can read it at http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/Social_Sector/Converting_education_to_employment_in_Europe?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1401.

 

Comments?

++Karen