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Date Posted: Sat 2003-08-30 06:37:00
Author: arendt
Subject: More responses (REPOSTED - it vanished)
In reply to: Redeye 's message, "Re: Responses to your points" on Thu 2003-08-28 21:27:49

Hi, Redeye-

> I don't think we should break down our points, at least for now. They still relate to
> one another too much..

First I'm going to deal with minor points and stuff where we agree. Then, I'm
going to restructure the remaining points into a couple of major topics where we
seem to have different points of view. Hopefully, these new major topics can
be spun out into separate threads. Let me know your opinion.

MINOR POINTS

> 4. Yes, we do agree. My question is, what is the equivalent of this half-second wait
> in politics?

Based on how fast TV news headlines change when real politics (as opposed to
reflex-speed crises) is happening, I would say that nothing significant happens in
under six hours. But that's just a guess, and I could be merely mistaking the times
of day when TV gives the news for an actual change in the news content.

> 5. the purpose of that provision is to prevent laws from being passed without debate.

I totally agree. I hate bullshit parliamentary tricks like the one the GOP pulled
when they called the cops in the HR, trying to ram a bill through in ten minutes
because the ten minutes straddled midnight.

> 7. Needless to say... states don't need SLs and DLs, btw, do they?

Correct. City-states (I call them that because each state is generated around a central
city.) have geographical not proportional representation.

> 11. Basically, my idea, which you can see in the freedom of information provision
> (article 16 in my latest proposal), is that the executive must report everything to the
> legislature and to the public. Sometimes details will have to be omitted

Well, if we can formalize things to the point where "everything" can be placed
into one or another XML template, and templates contains a "secret" method, this
could work.

> 13. Are you sure it's darkness? While I agree in principle, I don't see how a legislatrue
> dealing with 5 sub-issues can be subject to that kind of deals.

I have no experience how today's committees work. I find it hard to believe today
when stuff winds up in a bill and "nobody is quite sure who put those words in".
What utter hogwash. I may be paranoid, but daylight is the best disinfectant.

MAJOR TOPICS:

1. ORGANIC vs MECHANISTIC

> 1. I try to construct models according to what works best, not according to
> particular models. I'm trying to avoid in this case both the mechanistic model
> that's outdated and the organic model that's communistic. I'm using a
> combination of both as well as a networking system and a university course
> choice system...

One of the major issues in computer science today is Algorithmic Complexity (e.g.,
Gregory Chaikin). My personal experience in chip design and software design
is that some kind of grammar is absolutely essential to containing this complexity.
John Holland has one formalism for this, his Constrained Generating Machines -
essentially simple rules that are iterated many times to produce complex
results. (Think Conway's Game of Life on steroids.) And, these results wind up
looking organic, even though they are totally computer generated.

I have twenty years experience trying to write software for systems where people
just threw parts together because they saw that such a combination would work for one
specific application. Too bad for the software people that said design sucked for the
other fifty applications we had to write code for. I have seen chip designs from major
companies (e.g., The TI C80 DSP chip) that were so impossible to program, that
they were jerked from the market in less than a year, leaving customers stuck with
an investment in a dead dog.

If you are into Hard AI at all, you will see that they are talking "ontologies",
i.e., frameworks of formal relationships between objects in a specific domain
of application.

My point is that wherever you look, it is necessary to put formal restrictions on
designs in order to prevent them from dying of complexity. If this is true for
hardware and software design, it must be even worse for legislation. At what
point does such necessary structure become "communistic"? (And which
aspect of communism bothers you? State ownership of corporations? Well,
today it seems we have corporate ownership of the state. In either case,
individual human beings lose their rights to a faceless bureaucracy.)

After a lot of experience, I have come to the position that human beings are
forced to impose some flavor of grammatical structure on the world in order
to be able to grasp it at all. Without grammar, the ability to categorize, the
predictability of repetitive behavior, the world is unmanageable chaos. Therefore,
I believe that any workable government must have a much more formal
grammar to specify its OPERATIONS than is currently used. This greater
formality is necessary to RETURN CONTROL TO HUMANS by allowing
the machinery to be run honestly (without crooked political interventions in the
form of arbitrary, ungrammatical laws), but not necessarily automatically. When
such machinery is running, humans can talk about what problems to solve instead
of fighting over how to grab control of the machinery to serve a corrupt interest.

When you say your working on a combination of mechanistic, organic, networking,
and course choice, do you mean you are working on a formal model with an
explicit grammar+ontology? Can you turn your model into an XML ontology?
Or, are you philosophically opposed to such formality?


> Much of the basis of ethics talks about human beings as rational beings, which
> are what ethical/political systems should advance. Ant colonies do not work in
> an individualistic way but in a communistic one, which is an anathema to the
> whole liberal idea of people rather than structures mattering. In this respect the
> machine analogy is better than the organic one, although the machine analogy
> does fail to account for replacement of parts (i.e. birth and death) and for
> whatever sets the government in motion.

Even from this slight expansion of your fear of ant colonies, I cannot guess how
you feel about Darwin. Some individualists love him, and some hate him.
Sociobiology is an especially nasty flashpoint. (Personally, I think its self-
serving social darwinism.)

I mention Darwin because, from a genetic point of view, ant behavior makes sense
because all worker ants in the colony are genetically IDENTICAL. So, their
"communistic" behavior is maximally self-serving, from a genetic point of view.
An ant colony is really one big organism. Humans in societies are very different.

What you have not done is shown me just how government structures correspond
to {some *structure* in an ant colony that you think is anathema}. You just
equate some unspecified structure to ant hills and then to communism. You need to
connect the dots for me to differentiate what you think is good structure from
bad structure.

For me, the structure defined by a grammar is good structure. Arbitrary structure
is bad structure.

How about business? Business has plenty of structure. Are you also anti-business structure?
Are you anti-monopoly? Maybe you are. I can't tell from what you have said so far.

The essence of modern economics is division of labor, as espoused by Adam
Smith. And yet, Smith himself saw great danger for democracy in uncontrolled
business behavior:

"The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations...
generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being
to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing
or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous,
noble, or tender sentiments, and consequently of forming any just judgement
concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and
extensive interests of the country he is altogether incapable of judging."

Adam Smith
"The Wealth of Nations"
Book 5, Chapter 1, Part 3, Article 2, pp 734-5.

The bottom line is that I still don't understand your objection to organic.

For me, the pieces of a machine are inanimate and have meaning only as parts of a machine;
hence, the stereotypically bad feeling of being "just a cog in a machine". Engineers routinely
declare machines "obsolete" and consign their parts to junkyards, much as corporations
are doing to productive middle class workers today. ("We can get a newer, cheaper worker
from China.")

OTOH, organic machinery is made up of living parts (cells). Each part has to be healthy
for the machine to be working. The tissue has to have grown in a sensible manner, guided by
a "grammar" of signaling molecules and growth morphogens. (There's grammar everywhere.)
Living machines value the lives of their individual parts, and provide infrastructure to
nourish (blood vessels) and protect (immune system) them. Each cell has a complete copy
of the genome, and stem cells actually have choices about what kind of cell they differentiate
to become.

> 14. What are those kinds of fine-tuned control? Also, the proteome AFAIK naturally does
> what's it's programmed for instead of tries to expand and expand. Remember: power corrupts,
> and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The picture that is emerging is quite complicated. There is actually one group which believes
that it is the proteome that probably drives evolution. In their theory, this happens because
the environment causes the proteome to request the nucleus (genome) to produce more proteins
or different proteins in response to some stress. It turns out that mutations happen much more
frequently on DNA that is unfolded and producing protein (so-called euchromatin) than on
DNA which is inactive and folded (so-called hetero-chromatin). So, the theory is that it is
precisely those proteins which are most stressed that are most likely to mutate.

One other biological point about mutation. The role of transposons (Barbara McClintock's
"jumping genes") is increasingly seen as central to the mutation process because transposons
can move entire sections of functioning DNA to new positions without loss of function.
These kinds of mutations are equivalent to dropping a whole new subroutine into a
program as opposed to randomly changing one letter of one line of computer code.

Furthermore, the mutational picture depends not only on the genome and the proteome,
but also on the chromatin structure itself. Inactive DNA is wrapped around little spools,
called histones. The histones look like beads on a necklace. But, it is the chemical state
of the histones (whether certain sidechains are methylated or acetylated) which determines
the state of the chromatin. (Chromatin being even higher orders of folding and winding
of histones.) There is actually a "histone code" which "epigenetically" controls
the expression of genes. Some of the signalling proteins from the cytoplasm enter the
nucleus and interact with specific sidechains of specific histones, thereby causing genes
to go from inactive to active. An interesting factoid is that only 2% of the genome is
coding for proteins. About 30% is transposon insertions (Dawkins called these selfish
genes.), and maybe 25% is "non-coding DNA" - that is, DNA which interacts with
other DNA to control it.

My current thinking is that the proteome is in charge and knows what its doing. Sometimes
it needs more stuff, so it goes to the machine shop(i.e., the nucleus) and tells it to get out
the plans for widget number 123 and make some more of it. In that view, the genome is merely
a reference library. Of course, this viewpoint only applies to mature cells. When cells are
dividing, such as during fetal development, the activity is much more "open loop", and
much more resembles a genetic program running to build the cell or the tissue. Although,
even then, it responds to signals from the environment, e.g., to guide nerve growth cones.
In reality, control constantly shifts back and forth from the genome to the proteome, depending
on circumstances and point in the life cycle and cell cycle.

I see the executive/legislative tradeoff in the same way. The legislature is dominant
when things are mature, and the maintenance of the country depends on reacting and
fine tuning things. Then the legislature can command various executive agencies to
focus more or fewer resources on certain problem areas. OTOH, when the country
is doing something new, developing in some new way, then the executive takes the
lead, forcing a new plan. These plans have been replicating in various political think
tanks, which are like the transposons - alien entities which live in some symbiotic
but selfish relationship with the political parties and the government, inserting new
DNA into the mix.

But, my main rule is that "all authority is situational". That is, no one is in charge all
the time. A person's authority is circumscribed by his office, his role, his duties. I don't
want to eliminate either the executive or the legislative.

----

2. STRONG EXECUTIVE vs STRONG LEGISLATURE

A while ago, in a DU thread, sweetheart asked what a Buddhist government would
look like. I'm sorry I didn't read that thread.

I am very afraid of a strong executive for several reasons. First, it is too easy to
dispense with the legislature and declare yourself king or dictator or ayatollah.
Look at how the news media have initiated a "cult of personality" around Bush.
Second, its freedom of action can put the country in danger as easily as it can
save it. (Witness the idiots currently in charge.)

But, my main reason is a cognitive science reason. The president reifies the concept
of the homunculus. The president is the "little guy in the brain of our country" to
whom all information flows and from whom all decisions flow. We project way
too much onto our "leader", and give him way too much psychological significance.

The more cognitive science we learn, the more we understand just how much work
our unconscious does, as just how uninformed our consciousness is about what
is really going on. The more cognitive science advances, the more it validates
the Buddhist analysis of mental functioning, and the Buddhist claim that their
really is no "self". Here is a quote:

"The inveterate tendency of thought to think in terms of things is no less
evident in the case of self-image. The constantly changing flux of mental
images, affects, and perceptions that form the self-image is gathered together
under the name 'I'...We make the unconscious assumption that this 'I' refers
to one unchanging thing and attach to it whatever is the contents of consciousness
at each moment. Thus we say, 'I am hungry,' 'I am doubtful,' 'I am sad. 'I
think, therefore I am,' and so on.

"There is a constant tension between the conservative tendency of the self-image,
trying to remain fixed, and the changing flux of inner and outer perceptions
that have to be constantly assimilated...(this) gives rise to the underlying nameless
anxiety sometimes known as 'existential anxiety'. We find...that far from being
evidence of the real existence of a 'self', self-consciousness and its fixating tendency
is the primary cause of the basic anxiety understanding human life."

Jeremy Hayward
"Shifting Worlds, Changing Minds - Where the Sciences and Buddhism Meet"
Pp. 126-7

I personally think that the Office of President is the repository for our collective
national psychoses. Look at the religious nut case in there now. Look at "Morning in
America" Reagan. Look at "Great Society" LBJ and the Camelot Kennedys. We elect
these people on the basis of vaguely understood subconscious feelings, manipulated
by advertising. Then we give them way too much power to act out our psychological
fantasies.

My proposal for a strong legislature gives the president those functions that correspond
to a cognitive science understanding of how to manage an efficient information processing
system that processes real-world information in real-time and has a built-in sense
of self-preservation and avoidance of self-harm. That is, consciousness directs the
spotlight of attention, and vetoes impulsive, emotional ideas. In an emergency, conscious-
ness initiates a plan and blocks outside stimulus as it tries to control the emergency.
If such a proposal strikes you as communistic, then just shoot me.

3. AGE & PRIOR SERVICE REQUIREMENTS

"He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the
conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession.
The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and
cease to deceive their effect is gone."

Arthur Schopenhauer
"On the Sufferings of the World"

Your point about people becoming conservative with age is true. But, I would point
out that you have to be smart enough to survive long enough to become old. Older
people have seen all the scams that politicians run, and they try to explain them to
their kids. Of course, with parents working three jobs, this family immune system to
political nonsense has broken down even farther than when the 1960s teenagers
decided that anyone over thirty is the enemy.

Today's twenty year olds have never experienced a functioning, respected government.
They have been corporate conditioned from birth: government bad, business good.
It is true what the Catholics say: Give me a child for the first seven years, and he will
be mine forever. I am deeply afraid of today's children who have been brought up to hate
government; to be not citizens, not even customers, but merely consumers. I am afraid
they can be bamboozled into committing democri-cide.

How do you support your claim that young people will make the revolution, when they
seem not to give a fig about politics? The corporations are succeeding in turning Americans
into permanent adolescents; preoccupied with image, cars, sex, sports, and shopping.
Most of them barely have time to work, shop, sleep, and procreate a family. They certainly
don't have time to raise a family, which job they are forced to hand over to daycare,
schools, and shopping malls. They have no time for politics, so they get political junk
food supplied, like everything else in their lives, by the corporations.

My personal opinion is that the current age group of 20-40 year olds needs a tremendous
amount of training in how to be citizens in order to counter the corporate indoctrination
that is omni-present.

My proposals to limit voting by age and to force candidates to at least put in an appearance
in lower legislatures are attempts to incorporate such training into government. Its an
organic process of "differentiation to maturity". Both these proposals work synergistically to
bring attention, talent, and thereby stature, to "dull, boring, unimportant" minor offices.

Let me give an analogy. In England, there is still a strong theatre system. There are many
regional theatres where actors are decently paid and learn their craft over years. This
provides a steady stream of both journeyman actors and stars, plus lots of good theatre
to attend.

In the US, there is only the mad dash for the Hollywood gold. Would-be actors wait tables,
actresses go into porn films. They are all debased as they fight for the few megabucks
star slots that our system provides. Meanwhile, there are very few regional theatres, and
very few actors in them in comparison to Britain.

A governmental system must go on for generations. It must nurture new talent. That is
why I want to upgrade the importance of the lower legislatures by my proposals. You
see my upgrade as a "downgrade" to younger voters. I disagree. I think my vision is
longer ranged.

Perhaps we could consider these requirements to participate in lower legislatures the
equivalent of "national service". The current war is showing that a "volunteer" army
has its weak points. There are calls to bring back the draft and to expand it so that
everyone does some kind of national service, whether in the military or in a hospital
or in a poverty area, or in firefighting, etc.

Think of my proposals as voluntary, self-selecting, but required national service for
anyone who wants to be a politician.

----

Over to you.

arendt

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