Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:05 pm Circling back on this because it was a thoughtful and substantive response! I agree Hoffman's speculation is intriguing. I am wondering whether his mathematical models can distinguish between conscious activity and activity networks which engage in seeking of spiritual and material abundance voluntarily, from the bottom-up so to speak, rather than through top-down compulsion mechanisms. Maybe our resident matheticians can shed some light on that

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:05 pm

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:06 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 12:52 am

If not that particular post, then plenty of others which are obviously critical. Again, I have no problem with people being critical of JP, BK or anyone else, only when the critics seem aghast that others are criticizing their criticisms, and therefore write their critics off as engaged in this or that psychological defense mechanism, or better yet pretend they were never being critical in the first instance.

I would also like to hear a dialogue between JP and GM. Specifically I would want to hear what GM makes of JP's argument that compassion by itself is never a good long-term strategy for dealing with anyone other than infants. At a minimum it must be balanced by conscientiousness, i.e. sharp value-priority distinctions and related negotiations between consenting adults.

Yes, Ashvin. This would certainly make it a most interesting dialogue.

Furthermore, if the New Physics is correct about no space-time, if there is only an Eternal Now and if Don Hofman's speculation pans out that there is a New Mathematics that will shift from Scarcity to Abundance Consciousness, this may be the Second Coming under which we can all enter Heaven as playful children and be freed from the development model requiring egos that go bump in the dark in order to bring fallen bodies to the Light. To think of it merely as substance-less poetry is a very rational way to block the possibility.

Circling back on this because it was a thoughtful and substantive response! I agree Hoffman's speculation is intriguing. I am wondering whether his mathematical models can distinguish between conscious activity and activity networks which engage in seeking of spiritual and material abundance voluntarily, from the bottom-up so to speak, rather than through top-down compulsion mechanisms. Maybe our resident matheticians can shed some light on that

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:01 pm @ Cleric ... I take it that you're not referring to these beings ...

Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:32 pm

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:01 pm @ Cleric ... I take it that you're not referring to these beings ...

Yes, I was not referring concretely to these beings But beings as these do exist. Where do you think the inspiration for this comes from?

Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:22 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:05 pm Circling back on this because it was a thoughtful and substantive response! I agree Hoffman's speculation is intriguing. I am wondering whether his mathematical models can distinguish between conscious activity and activity networks which engage in seeking of spiritual and material abundance voluntarily, from the bottom-up so to speak, rather than through top-down compulsion mechanisms. Maybe our resident matheticians can shed some light on that

Ashvin, the mathematical models are our own thoughts - we give specific math forms to our ideas, just as we can give them artistic forms. We can create math models of anything, just as we can express anything in words, or we can paint anything we want with a brush. We can create any model we like and say "this symbolizes this, this symbolizes that". No model has any meaning in itself outside the human consciousness that gives it meaning.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:51 pm So I am wondering what are the specific mathematic symbols or expressions which relate to the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions? I am not sure if you are familiar with Piaget, but basically he showed through experiments that voluntary games among children always out-compete forced games, all else being equal. I am sure Hoffman is aware of that since he is a cognitive psychologist. But I don't think Piaget formalized it mathematically.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:51 pm Here is an example I found - "When a child has monopolized a toy that other children want badly, the teacher may have to insist on sharing: In such a situation' she can still try to protect the child's autonomy by figuring out how to get him to relinquish the toy voluntarily. One way of doing this is to say, "You've played with it for a long time; and Johnny has been waiting, for his turn. Would you give him a turn in a few minutes and take it to him?" We have seen this approach result in autonomous sharing. This approach leaves some room for the child to act out of his own choice. While the young child may not fully be able to think about how the other child feels, he is still in some measure recognizing the existence of another person's desire and thus is constructing his own moral rule"

Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:10 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:51 pm So I am wondering what are the specific mathematic symbols or expressions which relate to the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions? I am not sure if you are familiar with Piaget, but basically he showed through experiments that voluntary games among children always out-compete forced games, all else being equal. I am sure Hoffman is aware of that since he is a cognitive psychologist. But I don't think Piaget formalized it mathematically.

I don't know. The trouble is that there's nothing voluntary in math. Everything represents concrete relations between math objects. Even the random numbers the computers make are only pseudo-random (simply an output of highly non-linear function that seems random to us but is fully determined by its initial conditions). The only way to show the distinction between voluntarily and involuntarily would be to tell someone who has explored the model for some time: "Now, bring your thoughts out of the model and feel how you've been so far compulsed to flow only within the channels and rules of the model. Compare it with the feeling of zooming out and exploring other forms of activity."

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:51 pm Here is an example I found - "When a child has monopolized a toy that other children want badly, the teacher may have to insist on sharing: In such a situation' she can still try to protect the child's autonomy by figuring out how to get him to relinquish the toy voluntarily. One way of doing this is to say, "You've played with it for a long time; and Johnny has been waiting, for his turn. Would you give him a turn in a few minutes and take it to him?" We have seen this approach result in autonomous sharing. This approach leaves some room for the child to act out of his own choice. While the young child may not fully be able to think about how the other child feels, he is still in some measure recognizing the existence of another person's desire and thus is constructing his own moral rule"

Nice.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:19 pm We may be talking about different things, I am not sure. Basically I am asking whether someone like Hoffman could mathematically confirm what 'we' already know to be experientially and philosophically true - that a subset of conscious agents-activity within a network engaged in voluntary interactions will reliably generate more stable and productive 'outcomes' for the whole network than those engaged in forced interactions. Perhaps you already answered that and I missed it, in which I case I apologize for the redundancy

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:00 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:19 pm We may be talking about different things, I am not sure. Basically I am asking whether someone like Hoffman could mathematically confirm what 'we' already know to be experientially and philosophically true - that a subset of conscious agents-activity within a network engaged in voluntary interactions will reliably generate more stable and productive 'outcomes' for the whole network than those engaged in forced interactions. Perhaps you already answered that and I missed it, in which I case I apologize for the redundancy

Oh, got it. Well, I don't know the answer.
On first thought I'm not sure if this is experientially and philosophically true in every context. What comes to mind is Huxley's Brave New World. He had the insight that routine and repetitive actions (which are nevertheless necessary for the whole) are best handled by half-conscious humans (deltas, epsilons). This would be painful for an alpha, who is involved with more complex tasks. In certain way that's the way things work in reality. The cellular machinery is largely involuntary at the lowest level, which still corresponds to a kind of semi-automatic consciousness, albeit not able to say "I" to itself.

So as far as optimization of a static system goes, the final product will probably be most efficient if everything works by well defined rules. But human evolution is always work in progress. In a dynamic environment I think it would be easy to show (it's practically obvious) that the higher degrees of creative freedom the system has, the better it's able to adapt. A fixed system will most probably die out, just as species that can't adapt to changing environment.

PS: Before someone accuses me - I'm not endorsing the Brave New World's caste system. Completely the opposite - I believe that everyone should be given the best possible conditions for growth and development so that they are able to contribute to the whole in the best way natural to them.