[late]

Kant cant can't.

[ckaihatsu]

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

The period which followed in Europe is rightly known as the ‘Dark Ages’. It saw the progressive collapse of civilisation—in the sense of town life, literacy, literature and the arts. But that was not all. The ordinary people who had paid such a price for the glories of Rome paid an even greater price with its demise. Famine and plague racked the lands of the former empire and it is estimated that the population halved in the late 6th and 7th centuries.1 The first wave of Germanic warriors to sweep across the former borders—the Goths and Franks, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes—began to settle in the Roman lands and soon adopted many Roman customs, embracing the Christian religion and often speaking in Latin dialects. But behind them came successive waves of conquerors who had not been touched by Roman influence in the past and came simply to loot and burn rather than settle and cultivate. Huns and Norsemen tore into the kingdoms established by the Franks, the Goths and the Anglo-Saxons, making insecurity and fear as widespread in the 9th and 10th centuries as it had been in the 5th and 6th.

Eventually all the conquerors did settle. The majority had, in fact, been cultivators in their lands of origin, already beginning to use iron for tools as well as for the weapons that enabled them to defeat ‘civilised’ armies in battle. Their societies had already begun to make the transition from primitive communism towards class division, with chieftains who aspired to be kings, and aristocrats ruling over peasants and herders who still had some remaining traditions of communal cultivation. Had Roman agriculture been more advanced and based on something other than a mixture of large, slave-run latifundia and the smallholdings of impoverished peasants, the conquerors would have successfully taken over its methods and settled into essentially Roman patterns of life. We shall see that this is what happened with successive waves of ‘barbarians’ who carved out empires in China and its border lands. But Roman society was already disintegrating as its conquerors swept in, and they simply added to the disintegration. Some of the conquerors did attempt to adopt Roman agriculture, cultivating huge estates with captives from war. Some also attempted to re-establish the centralised structures of the old empire. At the end of the 5th century the Ostrogoth Theodoric proclaimed himself emperor of the west. At the end of the 8th, Charlemagne established a new empire across most of what is now France, Catalonia, Italy and Germany. But their empires fell apart at their deaths for the same reason that the original Roman Empire fell apart. There was not the material base in production to sustain such vast undertakings.

Soon the cities were not only depopulated but often abandoned and left to fall apart. Trade declined to such a low level that gold money ceased to circulate.2 Literacy was confined to the clergy, employing a language—literary Latin—no longer used in everyday life. Classical learning was forgotten outside a handful of monasteries, at one point concentrated mainly on the Irish fringe of Europe. Itinerant, monkish scholars became the only link between the small islands of literate culture.3 The books which contained much of the learning of the Graeco-Roman world were destroyed as successive invaders torched the monastic libraries.

Such was the condition of much of western Europe for the best part of 600 years. Yet out of the chaos a new sort of order eventually emerged. Across Europe agriculture began to be organised in ways which owed something both to the self contained estates of the late Roman Empire and the village communities of the conquering peoples. Over time, people began to adopt ways of growing food which were more productive than those of the old empire. The success of invaders such as the Vikings was testimony to the advance of their agricultural (and maritime) techniques, despite their lack of civilisation and urban crafts. Associated with the changing agricultural methods were new forms of social organisation. Everywhere armed lords, resident in crude fortified castles, began simultaneously to exploit and protect villages of dependent peasants, taking tribute from them in the form of unpaid labour or payments in kind. But it was a long time before this laid the basis for a new civilisation.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 104-105

---

Rational thinking just serves to underpin the intuition by constructing a rigid or dogmatic construct that is gradually drained of life as it becomes a hollow shell devoid of the original intuition as in religious dogma or in Ptolemaic's system of the universe, which scientists had to elaborate on with fancy orbits until it was replaced by Copernicus.

The scientific method is an empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century. It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.[1][2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

And:


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show

universal paradigm DATABASE

Spoiler: show

[late]

Kant cant can't.

I do like my writing.

If the Enlightenment came in a box, it would have a sticker on the outside saying 'some assembly required'.

The backdrop to Enlightenment ideas was the religious wars that had plagued the continent. When they expressed secular sentiments, they were also thinking about war, the Inquisition, the political power of churches.

"Enlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority."

In the middle of the 1800s, the Modern World was born. The secular ideas of the Enlightenment came to life with the evolution of the Modern.

I try to make this stuff easy, but there is a lot going on behind the curtain.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01916599.2016.1203601?journalCode=rhei20

[ckaihatsu]

I do like my writing.

If the Enlightenment came in a box, it would have a sticker on the outside saying 'some assembly required'.

The backdrop to Enlightenment ideas was the religious wars that had plagued the continent. When they expressed secular sentiments, they were also thinking about war, the Inquisition, the political power of churches.

"Enlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority."

In the middle of the 1800s, the Modern World was born. The secular ideas of the Enlightenment came to life with the evolution of the Modern.

I try to make this stuff easy, but there is a lot going on behind the curtain.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01916599.2016.1203601?journalCode=rhei20

Yeah, you make it a little *too* easy on yourself, because your historical dates are all off....

The Inquisition, in historical ecclesiastical terminology also referred to as the "Holy Inquisition", was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy. Torture and violence were used by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.[1] The Inquisition started in 12th-century France to combat religious dissent, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, including the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites (followers of Jan Hus), and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.[2]

During the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the scope of the Inquisition grew significantly in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. It expanded to other European countries,[3] resulting in the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused particularly on the anusim (people who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will) and on Muslim converts to Catholicism. The scale of the persecution of converted Muslims and converted Jews in Spain and Portugal was the result of suspicions that they had secretly reverted to their previous religions, although both minority groups were also more numerous on the Iberian Peninsula than in other parts of Europe.

During this time, Spain and Portugal operated inquisitorial courts not only in Europe, but also throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This resulted in the Goa Inquisition, the Peruvian Inquisition, and the Mexican Inquisition, among others.[4]

With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was abolished in the early 19th century,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

[late]

Yeah, you make it a little *too* easy on yourself, because your historical dates are all off....

Like the quote said, Enlightenment writers liked talking about the Inquisition.

It wasn't ancient history to them, and perfectly illustrated the abuses of religion, and the need for those impulses to be restrained.

[ckaihatsu]

Like the quote said, Enlightenment writers liked talking about the Inquisition.

It wasn't ancient history to them, and perfectly illustrated the abuses of religion, and the need for those impulses to be restrained.

I guess I mean to take up the question of what is 'modern':

Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissance—in the "Age of Reason" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century "Enlightenment". Some commentators consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or the 1980s or 1990s; the following era is called postmodernity. The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era. (Thus "modern" may be used as a name of a particular era in the past, as opposed to meaning "the current era".)

Depending on the field, "modernity" may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 17th and 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to "modern history" proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity

[late]

I guess I mean to take up the question of what is 'modern'

That's a great question that deserves a book length answer.

So let me tell you what I meant..

In the mid 1800s, you began to see an explicit secularity. The most famous advocate was Nietzsche. But he was just one of many. Mark Twain was one.

Nietzsche was talking about things he was seeing. What happened after the Rennaisance was that, across Europe, markets replaced the church as the center of town. You can see the change in the everyday language of people. Their communications became more secular.

There is more, of course, a lot more. But the decline and fall of the political power of religion is a big part of my thinking.

This is a nice article about some of the other parts of the change.
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/23/books/everything-s-up-to-date-in-1830.html

A really good book that covers the early Modern in America is What Hath God Wrought:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195392434/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=what+hath+god+wrought&qid=1615164833&sr=8-1

[blackjack21]

The average person doesn't know why they believe what they do, they don't have to know, and it's probably best that they don't know, because if they really thought independently, they would most likely not be happy or productive workers.

I would say that the average person is a subscriber. They don't have a point of view. Rather, they subscribe to one. I've seen people evolve their views, but I have also seen people change their minds to just conform to the current zeitgeist.

This does not mean, however, that the proscriptions of the enlightenment were wrong. They were entirely necessary to lift everyone out of feudalism and the mindset that education and wealth should be restricted only to a small elite.

Feudalism wasn't simply about restricting education or wealth to a small elite. Feudalism as barons and knights more or less running government was hereditary, and involved compulsory military service and military training throughout their lives among other things. Ironically, the Protestant Reformation had a great deal to do with mass education as they sought to reduce the influence of the Catholic clergy by teaching children to read the bible in their own native language. That's how mass literacy caught on.

Naturally, people who could read and write also learned to think more for themselves, and then could question whether kings, barrons and knights were really in their position by the grace and will of God. Even the modern notion of equality has its roots in equality before the eyes of God in the religious sense--and why the 20th Century rejection of Christianity is fraught with peril, because much of humanism is based on Christianity. Indeed much of humanism is just a plagiarism of Christianity and a huge heaping of religious iconoclasm. Yet, in many scientific disciplines, we more or less worship their prophets. When we refer to principles of electricity, we don't speak of current, frequency, flow, and so forth. We speak of Newtons, Watts, Volts, Amperes, Ohms, Joules, Hertz and so forth. Those are the new prophets or saints of the sciences--their surnames embodying the very concepts. Ironically, the average person doesn't know who they are anyway.

Nothing, save an acceleration of societal progress, can come from everyone having an equal ability to flourish, and it is a great thing that people have been working towards this.

This is where I disagree with the Enlightenment. Not everybody has the equal ability to flourish. That should be carefully considered and distinguished from the equal opportunity to flourish.

Interesting, so you are saying society is better of that we have the vast majority of people not really thinking for themselves and/or distracted by other things in life.

I would say that has always been the case.

More fundamentally it's replacement with the institution of reason/logic, which gives raise to science. Even if just a delusion I'd argue striving for reason/logic is better than religious indoctrination.

As we've been discussing across a number of threads, logic really provides internal self-consistency. It creates a foundation for the very introspection you spoke of earlier. For example, you can falsify a positive assertion if its contrapositive is false. It gets you closer to the truth--or more poignantly to more accurate descriptions of physical reality.

However, it does not do away with religious indoctrination as such and it doesn't undo the fact that we ultimately take everything on faith in the sense that even the sum of mathematics cannot be proven or disproven any more than the existence of God.

Then again, it has created the technology that prevents people from becoming enlightened.

I think it's overstating things to say that technology prevents people from becoming enlightened. I think its more reasonable to say that popular entertainment compels more of people's time than is warranted, and in some cases it is intended to prevent people from becoming "enlightened."

There is no reason why human logic should produce a truthful representation of reality. Perhaps religious intuition results in a better representation of reality.

Logic by itself does not. It's logical interpretation of the observation (empiricism) of physical phenomena that does it. That's why science is useful.

It's an artificial system set up by humans for our convenience.

No doubt that taxonomies change with new information or reinterpretation of existing information.

We can use math, physics, etc. to build bridges and all kinds of useful things, but science doesn't give any answers to the ultimate questions.

Some people don't like the answers to questions, and rather that they not be asked at all.

Ultimately, even advancing scientific knowledge requires intuition that is not too different from religious intuition. The understanding of matter in quantum physics is more akin to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness than to classical physics.

Indeed. That's why I'm not as impressed with AI and machine learning because of the limitations of algorithms. However, I also concede that mass storage can now hold far more information than human brains, so we will likely learn of insights that only machines could reasonably compute.

Also, the mechanics of quantum physics is pretty well understood. I'm also not sure of anyone that claims science will answer the ultimate questions. Religion most certainly won't either.

This is why I contend that science--and the understanding of basic forces--remains incomplete. It's why I use metaphors like a roast beef sandwich with everything in the context of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You just can't get to a sandwich with modern physics with reasonable levels of probability. It really requires something like intelligence as a first class force--or a force that is counter to the Second Law.

It was observation that advanced quantum physics. I doubt anyone finds it intuitive when first confronted with it.

Nowadays there's apparently lots of unproductive theorizing akin to religion (i.e. string theory, according to some), but that's simply because it's not driven by observation.

That's because it's conjecture. There are some new algorithms for constructing conjectures now.

The Ramanujan Machine: Researchers have developed a 'conjecture generator' that creates mathematical conjectures

I don't think this stuff will be a panacea, but it will certainly lead to some breakthroughs.

My knowledge of software development is greater than my knowledge of physics, but it seems to me we need individuals and groups to bash away on seemingly fruitless, even demented paths of exploration. Most will prove to be dead ends, but the few which do prove useful are of such benefit, that they outweigh the failures.

Yes, and that's why I think even discussing concepts like socialism is fruitless for moving humanity forward. As I'm in my 50s now, I definitely note the drawbacks of aging. Yet, it seems odd that we cannot do a better job of advancing health care, making it dramatically more productive and pushing the production possibilities forward. We know that we can use stem cells and grow things like a human ear auricle on a pigs back and so forth. Why should it not be possible for me to clone my liver, pancreas and kidneys at this point at a reasonable price so that I have spares if needed later? It's a shame that we lose people like Steve Jobs to pancreatic cancer, or that we have elderly people who have a chronic need for dialysis and yet we have no replacement kidneys banked when that is certainly within our reach at this point.

As a fellow computer head, I'm fascinated by genetics more than quantum physics, precisely because it is what we're all made of and it's biochemical, and it obviously incorporates intelligent and discrete behavior. That is an area that I think is a way forward for humanity, but the government doesn't get interested in it unless they can think of it in the context of an offensive or defensive weapons system.

In my opinion, the great majority of people have never thought independently and critically, and I think we have evolved this way.

Yes. Humans are social animals. Learning something new necessarily means deviating from current beliefs. To the extent that groups are defined by maintaining existing beliefs, there is an almost aversion to acquiring new knowledge. This is why I said in Wellsy's post that my view is that we have to move past an "expert" based society, and towards one of problem solvers where the problem solver doesn't know the answer before addressing the issue.

Hence, our social structures naturally take into account that only a minority of people will be visionary, so the majority will follow this minority.

And thus classes evolve naturally--or pecking orders as I chide Tainari88, because she can only see it as a hierarchy.

Theorizing without the possiblity to empirically verify the theory is pointless.

Maybe to some extent, but what if you don't have an idea of how to empirically verify a theory? For example, Einstein didn't initially have a way of testing curved space time. Yet, they figured out an approach.

The True Story Behind How Albert Einstein Was Proved Right At A Solar Eclipse 100 Years Ago Today

On May 29, 1919, astronomers from Britain traveled to Africa and Brazil to measure the exact position of stars in the Hyades star cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It was part of an ambitious, complicated and controversial attempt to see if, during an eclipse when the sky briefly darkened in the day, the stars appeared to be in the place where Isaac Newton’s long-accepted laws of motion predicted they would be, or whether they were where new-kid-on-the-block Einstein predicted. If the latter, science would have proof that the Sun (and, therefore, all stars and planets) curved space-time.

Think for example how long it took to realize a Bose-Einstein condensate. Neither Bose nor Einstein lived to see it. It was just a theory that technology did not have the ability to produce. Bose died in 1974, but the BEC wasn't first created until 1995. Now they've done interesting experiments and note that light slows down in a BEC, but then reaccelerates to the speed of light as we know it as it leaves the BEC. Would you really contend that Bose and Einstein were wasting their time, because they did not live to be able to test their theory because of technological constraints of their time?

I think this captures my attitude towards this attitude of the enlightenment.

Well, I think if we we're a bit more introspective about human nature, the idea that we COULD become less afraid would be easily understood as wrong as that is controlled by the limbic system--something enlightenment philosophers knew nothing about. Additionally, while physical sciences have gone to tremendous lengths to increase human survivability in the face of famine or disease, it has done very little to end violence among humans. Indeed it has given us weapons of mass destruction like nuclear weapons, and weapons of personal destruction like methamphetamine. Pandora's Box...

It wasn't ancient history to them, and perfectly illustrated the abuses of religion, and the need for those impulses to be restrained.

Yes, but it wasn't religion itself that was rightly blamed for wars, as modern society demonstrated with the most horrifying bloodshed imaginable. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the French and British Empires were all quite rational. As I said before, Hitler did not violate the chemical weapons treaties by using them in battle; although, he used Zyklon-B against Jews and other people he considered undesirable. While the US didn't use chemical weapons either, it developed nuclear weapons. This adherence to the letter of treaties, but not at all to the spirit of them is an ongoing feature of our societies.

Their communications became more secular.

Very little more in the 19th Century in my opinion. Read a history of General Patton or General MacArthur. Those men were secular in some senses, but in others they practically thought of themselves as gods. Most of the scientists were religious in some way--certainly not the atheists of today. Even mid-20th Century television shows would have nun shows or nuns as extras. It's really post-WWII after the '60s and '70s that you see none of the old nuns being replaced, church bells tolling the hour of the day and so forth. The latter being a product of atheists suing for noise pollution and so forth. Yet, if I'm in Dubai with my work colleagues, a request of "Can you get this done this week?" is ultimately met with "Insha'Allah" and it is totally normal. Yet, in the States if I answered my boss with "If God wills it," I'd probably be on a corrective action plan.

But the decline and fall of the political power of religion is a big part of my thinking.

Indeed it is, but of traditional religion. Not modern variants like scientism, and so forth. One thing that imaging has taught us is that when people are having what they believe are religious experiences, a certain part of their brain is activated. Imaging shows that clearly. It seems we are wired for religion of some kind. The flip side of that is that the irreligious probably rarely use that part of their brain. If that part of our brain is necessary for the next wave of scientific discoveries, certainly atheists will underperform.

[late]

1) When we refer to principles of electricity, we don't speak of current, frequency, flow, and so forth. We speak of Newtons, Watts, Volts, Amperes, Ohms, Joules, Hertz and so forth. Those are the new prophets or saints of the sciences


2) This is where I disagree with the Enlightenment. Not everybody has the equal ability to flourish. That should be carefully considered and distinguished from the equal opportunity to flourish.


3) we ultimately take everything on faith


4) Indeed. That's why I'm not as impressed with AI and machine learning because of the limitations of algorithms.

5) Yet, it seems odd that we cannot do a better job of advancing health care, making it dramatically more productive and pushing the production possibilities forward.


6) It seems we are wired for religion of some kind.

1) Old wine in a new skin... They aren't saints, just guys and gals that got it right.

2) Which is one way of telling us you don't understand the Enlightenment.

3) The whole point of science is not taking things on faith. You do the work, test, experiment, theorize...

4) China has poured a ton of money on AI, and other countries will follow. Over the next decade, it will explode.

5) The development of Covid vaccines was mind blowing. Scientists have been talking about developing those tools for a generation. The reason you don't see it is because that's the new normal.

6) It's also why we like fiction, we need closure. That runs deep, it's part of our perceptual system, for starters. The people that need closure a lot more are what you call religious. Sciences need a lot of different sorts of thinkers, one size definitely does not fit all.

[Verv]

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html


As in we attempt to be free thinkers but are bumbling idiots who generalize a little knowledge beyond its validity.
Or we repeat the mistakes of old problems already solved like resorting to empirical scepticism ie flat earthers.
Can the average person be a person of adequate ideas and think for themselves in modern conditions or is it possible only for some?

If we believe in the spirit of universal democracy and believe that all men are entitled to rights and suffrage, we have to believe it is essentially possible for every human with a healthy brain. If we do not accept this, then we essentially are acknowledging that our democracy with universal suffrage isn't about people coming together to vote for the best solutions, but ultimately is just a system where demagogues and oligarchs compete for a temporary mandate.

I think it is the case that all people are created in God's image and are thus capable of rationality, and that through proper education and a bit of self-motivation, all people can learn to be virtuous and principled.

But the problem is that the rest of the big narrative cannot be guaranteed. Every single society operates based off of stories about who they are, and different ideas about the duties of government and citizens. In addition to these basic stories, there are plenty of other stories that animate the popular feelings about government, institutions, God, the enemies & allies abroad, the economy, crime, etc., and no human being can be expected to really have deep knowledge of all of these things, nor can they be expected to be their own investigative journalists. There isn't enough time.

Because of how big the problem is, the democratic system is subject to implosion as people who are rational and good end up believing increasingly false and useless things because it is too difficult for people to escape the many narratives, some of which inevitably are just wrong.

[ckaihatsu]

I think its more reasonable to say that popular entertainment compels more of people's time than is warranted, and in some cases it is intended to prevent people from becoming "enlightened."

Hey, *do you mind* -- ?

I'm trying to watch a movie here -- !


= )


---

Indeed. That's why I'm not as impressed with AI and machine learning because of the limitations of algorithms.

Hmmmm, you're showing that you don't understand what AI is -- it's not algorithms. Try these:


Google's DeepMind AI Just Taught Itself To Walk

Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures

Neural network racing cars around a track

OpenAI Plays Hide and Seek…and Breaks The Game!

---

My knowledge of software development is greater than my knowledge of physics, but it seems to me we need individuals and groups to bash away on seemingly fruitless, even demented paths of exploration. Most will prove to be dead ends, but the few which do prove useful are of such benefit, that they outweigh the failures.

Yes, and that's why I think even discussing concepts like socialism is fruitless for moving humanity forward.

We're *well* past the point of having to throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks -- here in the 21st century there's plenty of material abundance and technology to make more stuff, but still a lack of *social organization* to make for equitable distributions of what *is* made, for those who *need* the stuff the most.

This isn't for lack of 'innovation', it's because the capitalist market system values *scarcity*, with higher pricing, than it does *abundance* (prices go down, and profitability goes down). So the market system would rather *destroy* abundance with world wars, so as to raise prices and profitability again.


---

Why should it not be possible for me to clone my liver, pancreas and kidneys at this point at a reasonable price so that I have spares if needed later?

Functional Approach to Ketogenic Diet | Mark Hyman, MD

---

Hence, our social structures naturally take into account that only a minority of people will be visionary, so the majority will follow this minority.

And thus classes evolve naturally--or pecking orders as I chide Tainari88, because she can only see it as a hierarchy.

Classes only 'evolved' into existence because, at one point, humanity started producing a *material surplus*.

The ruling class hierarchy / pecking-order is in regards to who *controls* the societal surplus, and for what purposes.

[ckaihatsu]

3) The whole point of science is not taking things on faith. You do the work, test, experiment, theorize...

I developed a 'universal framework', or 'universal schematic', based on the scientific method. Feel free to use it:


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show

universal paradigm DATABASE

Spoiler: show

---

6) It's also why we like fiction, we need closure. That runs deep, it's part of our perceptual system, for starters. The people that need closure a lot more are what you call religious. Sciences need a lot of different sorts of thinkers, one size definitely does not fit all.

I consider this dynamic to be part of *storytelling*, or the narrative form itself, and not necessarily the domain of *religion* -- many people tend to be what I call 'literary types'.


‭

1. Exposition: At the beginning of the story, characters, setting, and the main conflict are typically introduced.

2. Rising Action: The main character is in crisis and events leading up to facing the conflict begin to unfold. The story becomes complicated.

3. Climax: At the peak of the story, the main event occurs in which the main character faces the conflict. The most action, drama, change, and excitement occurs here.

4. Falling Action: The story begins to slow down and work towards its end, tying up loose ends of the plot.

5. Resolution: Also known as the denouement, the resolution is when conflicts are resolved and the story concludes.

https://literaryterms.net/resolution/

And:


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show

[blackjack21]

2) Which is one way of telling us you don't understand the Enlightenment.

Sometimes I can't tell if you're a Rorty-type acolyte that thinks trying to ridicule people you disagree with is a mature approach to discourse, or if you struggle with distinguishing between understanding something and agreeing with something. Your mode of discourse suggests that to understand something is to agree with it, and that if someone disagrees it shows that they don't understand or are somehow stupid.

3) The whole point of science is not taking things on faith. You do the work, test, experiment, theorize...

My point is that science is a type of faith for all practical purposes, because you cannot prove the universal validity of one of its most important tools: math. As a matter of course, we now have people of your political persuasion asserting that math itself is racist.

4) China has poured a ton of money on AI, and other countries will follow. Over the next decade, it will explode.

China is well behind private industry in the West. With driverless cars on the horizon, China realized they were well behind. When I was working in mass storage, they were very keen on using the product I worked on. One of the big strengths of AI and machine-learning is operating over massive data sets. So you often need petabytes of data in some deployments to make certain types of algorithms useful.

5) The development of Covid vaccines was mind blowing. Scientists have been talking about developing those tools for a generation. The reason you don't see it is because that's the new normal.

That's what I mean: it takes something like covid to get the fucking government to allocate resources in an interesting way. We can't even get these fuckwits to pave the roads much of the time. Thank God Donald Trump was in a position to remove all the red tape or it would have taken 4-5 years to get that done just on regulatory hurdles. Yet, even in these scenarios, they will fuck the economy up to no end and spend trillions to get it going again on pure stimulus, but cannot see a reason to spend trillions on basic research in life sciences and expand, for example, the ability to grow replacement organs. There are lots of people your age for example that depend on dialysis, but we just don't have the practical technology and economy to scale up a business growing replacement organs. That's because we have highly emotional and frankly unimaginative politicians.

If you are interested in the properties of pharmaceuticals, for example, it's often interesting to look at the mode of action and binding profiles. Personally, I find it shocking that so little is known about how drugs work in actual fact--just that they seem to statistically, and have some rigorous testing behind them. Yet, we have nowhere near the sophistication in computational chemistry to model biochemistry and the behavior of exogenous ligands interactions. We can do so much more with life sciences. Yet, I recently had the pleasure to add a person with a bachelors and masters in genetic engineering to my team--but we work in cloud computing. To me, that's a serious misallocation of human resources, but something I personally can do very little about except to bitch about it here and privately enjoy the fact that I can hire such amazingly talented people.

Hmmmm, you're showing that you don't understand what AI is -- it's not algorithms.

Yes. It's algorithms. You can call it something else if you would like. I would suggest reading "Algorithms to Live By" written by Brian Christian (who holds degrees in computer science, philosophy, and poetry, and works at the intersection of all three) and Tom Griffiths (a UC Berkeley professor of cognitive science and psychology). It talks about taking AI algorithms and applying them to our daily lives.

Algorithms are not limited to bubble sort or radix sort, etc. They often encompass much more complexity like inference engines, genetic algorithms, and so on. Here are some basics:

Types of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms You Should Know [A Complete Guide]

This isn't for lack of 'innovation', it's because the capitalist market system values *scarcity*, with higher pricing, than it does *abundance* (prices go down, and profitability goes down). So the market system would rather *destroy* abundance with world wars, so as to raise prices and profitability again.

That's oversimplifying things quite a bit. Generally, only well-capitalized firms or monopolies have the financial resources to create innovation laboratories like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs. Governments have tons of resources, but often times research grant systems are heavily abused by academics to just squeeze money out of government.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Eisenhower was quite right about both the military-industrial complex and the problems of a scientific-technological elite trying to bypass politics to create policy. It's humorous to hear him talk about hundreds of computers--each one of our cell phones is orders of magnitude more powerful than even the most powerful machines in the world at that time.

Classes only 'evolved' into existence because, at one point, humanity started producing a *material surplus*.

So you think chickens are producing a surplus, and if they were only a little less abundant they would be more egalitarian? Same for silver-back gorillas?

With communists/socialists, I think you want this to be true. It just isn't.

[late]

Sometimes I can't tell if you're a Rorty-type acolyte that thinks trying to ridicule people you disagree with is a mature approach to discourse, or if you struggle with distinguishing between understanding something and agreeing with something.

Most of the time, when you're not out and out wrong, you're ridiculous.

[ckaihatsu]

Hmmmm, you're showing that you don't understand what AI is -- it's not algorithms.

Yes. It's algorithms. You can call it something else if you would like. I would suggest reading "Algorithms to Live By" written by Brian Christian (who holds degrees in computer science, philosophy, and poetry, and works at the intersection of all three) and Tom Griffiths (a UC Berkeley professor of cognitive science and psychology). It talks about taking AI algorithms and applying them to our daily lives.

Algorithms are not limited to bubble sort or radix sort, etc. They often encompass much more complexity like inference engines, genetic algorithms, and so on. Here are some basics:

Types of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms You Should Know [A Complete Guide]

Okay, *technically*, yes, AI uses algorithms, but certainly not in the conventional, linear, fixed, human-designated way -- the *spirit*, and function, of AI is to *reiterate* a method / algorithm thousands of times, against real-world data, so as to *adapt* the approach in relation to the data environment, mimicking the biological evolutionary process of adaptation.

This makes AI more *statistical*, than algorithmic:

Some of the "learners" described below, including Bayesian networks, decision trees, and nearest-neighbor, could theoretically, (given infinite data, time, and memory) learn to approximate any function, including which combination of mathematical functions would best describe the world.[citation needed] These learners could therefore derive all possible knowledge, by considering every possible hypothesis and matching them against the data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificia ... nce#Basics

---

This isn't for lack of 'innovation', it's because the capitalist market system values *scarcity*, with higher pricing, than it does *abundance* (prices go down, and profitability goes down). So the market system would rather *destroy* abundance with world wars, so as to raise prices and profitability again.

That's oversimplifying things quite a bit. Generally, only well-capitalized firms or monopolies have the financial resources to create innovation laboratories like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs. Governments have tons of resources, but often times research grant systems are heavily abused by academics to just squeeze money out of government.

Oh, you're conveniently scapegoating *academia* -- I was talking about capitalism's *markets*, and the resulting inter-imperialist international *warfare* -- World War I and World War II -- which you're side-stepping.

The dynamic of capitalism's markets is towards *overproduction*, meaning that the resulting abundance of humanely-needed goods and services is an *externality* to capitalism's exchange-values system -- even though people *need* certain stuff that's produced the capitalist pricing regime actually incentivizes *destruction* so as to decrease availability, to increase prices and profitability in subsequent market exchanges for the stuff.


---

Classes only 'evolved' into existence because, at one point, humanity started producing a *material surplus*.

So you think chickens are producing a surplus, and if they were only a little less abundant they would be more egalitarian? Same for silver-back gorillas?

With communists/socialists, I think you want this to be true. It just isn't.

You *continue* to misconstrue meanings, and to be wantonly evasive.

Here's from history, regarding the material surplus that only *people* produce, socially:

Gordon Childe described the transformation which occurred in Mesopotamia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago as people settled in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. They found land which was extremely fertile, but which could only be cultivated by ‘drainage and irrigation works’, which depended upon ‘cooperative effort’.48 More recently Maisels has suggested people discovered that by making small breaches in the banks between river channels they could irrigate wide areas of land and increase output considerably. But they could not afford to consume all the extra harvest immediately, so some was put aside to protect against harvest failure.49

Grain was stored in sizeable buildings which, standing out from the surrounding land, came to symbolise the continuity and preservation of social life. Those who supervised the granaries became the most prestigious group in society, overseeing the life of the rest of the population as they gathered in, stored and distributed the surplus. The storehouses and their controllers came to seem like powers over and above society, the key to its success, which demanded obedience and praise from the mass of people. They took on an almost supernatural aspect. The storehouses were the first temples, their superintendents the first priests.50 Other social groups congregated around the temples, concerned with building work, specialised handicrafts, cooking for and clothing the temple specialists, transporting food to the temples and organising the long distance exchange of products. Over the centuries the agricultural villages grew into towns and the towns into the first cities, such as Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Kish and Ur (from which the biblical patriarch Abraham supposedly came).

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p.19

[ckaihatsu]

[AI is] more *statistical*, than algorithmic

It occurred to me that, being predicated on 'big data', artificial intelligence uses *inductive reasoning* for its approach, compared to a conventional, human-intentional feat of *programming* a computer, which would be *deductive* reasoning, by comparison:


inductive vs. deductive reasoning

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

How Well Can an AI Learn Physics ⚛

[Unthinking Majority]

Enlightenment is the idea that reason and scientific inquiry is the primary source of determining truth, rather than superstition, God, or simply pulling things out of one's ass.

Certain people understand this concept. Many others do not. If you believe in a flat earth without evidence, or believe vaccines cause autism without evidence, then clearly you are not an enlightened thinker. I think rationality and science are vital to knowing what the hell we are doing so we can believe in things based on reason and facts rather than bullshit. Basing our beliefs on bullshit is a sure way to follow a wrong course and make bad decisions. It can even lead to people dying, as the anti-maskers have shown us.

Postmodernists believe in no universal truths. Some things are subjective of course, there are many ways to look at certain social phenomena resulting in different narratives, but there aren't different temperatures at which water freezes. Some things are objectively true or false due to the laws of science.

[blackjack21]

Okay, *technically*, yes, AI uses algorithms, but certainly not in the conventional, linear, fixed, human-designated way -- the *spirit*, and function, of AI is to *reiterate* a method / algorithm thousands of times, against real-world data, so as to *adapt* the approach in relation to the data environment, mimicking the biological evolutionary process of adaptation.

Yes, but even the initial structure to iterate has been around since at least Sir Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson's method. We just have more sophisticated algorithms now, and we can get machines to do the work.

Some of the "learners" described below, including Bayesian networks, decision trees, and nearest-neighbor, could theoretically, (given infinite data, time, and memory) learn to approximate any function, including which combination of mathematical functions would best describe the world.

That is positive development in my view, but I'm skeptical that such approaches will demystify gravity straight away or incorporate some sort of "intelligence" or "deterministic" force into physics that is clearly present in our daily lives, while not inconsistent with other forces. We just don't have a complete picture yet.

Oh, you're conveniently scapegoating *academia* -- I was talking about capitalism's *markets*, and the resulting inter-imperialist international *warfare* -- World War I and World War II -- which you're side-stepping.

Well, if you want to paint with that broad a brush, academia is effectively a branch of government. Where would it be without government funding?

The dynamic of capitalism's markets is towards *overproduction*, meaning that the resulting abundance of humanely-needed goods and services is an *externality* to capitalism's exchange-values system -- even though people *need* certain stuff that's produced the capitalist pricing regime actually incentivizes *destruction* so as to decrease availability, to increase prices and profitability in subsequent market exchanges for the stuff.

It's not an externality. Capitalism is directly financing industrial technologies with an aim to increase output. That's why your scarcity argument doesn't do justice to capitalism. Yes, there are people who attempt to make things scarce to seek economic rather than normal profit. The DeBeers diamond cartel is an example. Incentivizing destruction might characterize WWII, or maybe something to follow our present situation. However, it certainly wouldn't characterize something like the Vietnam War. Say's law contends that supply creates it's own demand.

You *continue* to misconstrue meanings, and to be wantonly evasive.

No. I'm 53 now. I've listened to this stuff since high school. I've just come to a different conclusion that isn't supported by either the socialists or the liberals--that some human traits are innate, and some are shaped by the environment. Humans are territorial, tribal and have hierarchies like other species do. Humans like to pretend that they are not animals.

Grain was stored in sizeable buildings which, standing out from the surrounding land, came to symbolise the continuity and preservation of social life. Those who supervised the granaries became the most prestigious group in society, overseeing the life of the rest of the population as they gathered in, stored and distributed the surplus. The storehouses and their controllers came to seem like powers over and above society, the key to its success, which demanded obedience and praise from the mass of people. T

The problem is that not all humans settled down. Raiding an agricultural area would be perfectly normal for non-agrarian civilizations. Much of the Roman story of the barbarians or the medieval story of the Vikings is about being raided by groups that aren't particularly settled societies. So you end up having to build up a military to defend your surplus.

They took on an almost supernatural aspect. The storehouses were the first temples, their superintendents the first priests.

Specialization of labor, specialization of knowledge (when to plant, when to irrigate, when to harvest, how to preserve, etc.). To the illiterate masses, those with special knowledge and literacy probably seemed like sorcerers. I work on cloud computing. If I start talking about what I did for the day in a social context, invariably most people stop me and say, "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." Lots of people in highly specialized jobs have that experience.

If you believe in a flat earth without evidence, or believe vaccines cause autism without evidence, then clearly you are not an enlightened thinker.

Lots of people have had the experience of their kids being normal and after receiving a vaccine, their children's behavior changes. Why would medical experts deny it? Politics, medical malpractice, the economics of administering multiple vaccines versus one at a time, etc. I don't think a single vaccine causes autism, but I'm inclined to think that administering many vaccines at once that haven't been tested together can lead to unintended reactions. I just experienced this recently with a friend who had an ear infection and got a pneumonia vaccine and a shingles vaccine simultaneously. His immune system went ballistic and he came down with transverse myelitis. The doctors were initially diagnosing him with MS, but people don't just go from healthy to having MS one day. A vaccine can cause an autoimmune response.

I think rationality and science are vital to knowing what the hell we are doing so we can believe in things based on reason and facts rather than bullshit.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just also think that doctors, lawyers, politicians and media personalities will lie to you, particularly if it makes them money or it saves them money.

It can even lead to people dying, as the anti-maskers have shown us.

Masks haven't been shown to reduce viral spread much at all.

but there aren't different temperatures at which water freezes.

Solutions such as saline give you some variance, and there is also the super-critical state. I took one swig of a Gatorade I left in the freezer this weekend, and then the whole thing turned to slush. Super critical.

[ckaihatsu]

Yes, but even the initial structure to iterate has been around since at least Sir Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson's method. We just have more sophisticated algorithms now, and we can get machines to do the work.

Sorry, but I still think you're missing the point -- in *any* AI implementation the initial 'algorithm' may actually be *random*, and *not* pre-programmed, as is conventionally done.

It's because of the iterated interactions with the *environment* (data) that the learned / adapted process takes shape, as in the example of physically learning to walk given the physics that we're used to from our own lived experiences (see the Google DeepMind video from a previous post of mine).


---

Some of the "learners" described below, including Bayesian networks, decision trees, and nearest-neighbor, could theoretically, (given infinite data, time, and memory) learn to approximate any function, including which combination of mathematical functions would best describe the world.

That is positive development in my view, but I'm skeptical that such approaches will demystify gravity straight away or incorporate some sort of "intelligence" or "deterministic" force into physics that is clearly present in our daily lives, while not inconsistent with other forces. We just don't have a complete picture yet.

I don't know what 'intelligent' or 'deterministic' physical force you may be referring to here -- you're being *vague*, and I've never been religious. You may want to elaborate.

Artificial intelligence, being mechanical, can only ever be *empirical*, and will be limited to the totality of its (data) inputs. It cannot *reason*, to summarize and draw *conclusions*, as we do, effortlessly.


philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show

Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show

But what is a Neural Network? | Deep learning, chapter 1

---

Well, if you want to paint with that broad a brush, academia is effectively a branch of government. Where would it be without government funding?

Okay, no contention.


---

The dynamic of capitalism's markets is towards *overproduction*, meaning that the resulting abundance of humanely-needed goods and services is an *externality* to capitalism's exchange-values system -- even though people *need* certain stuff that's produced the capitalist pricing regime actually incentivizes *destruction* so as to decrease availability, to increase prices and profitability in subsequent market exchanges for the stuff.

It's not an externality. Capitalism is directly financing industrial technologies with an aim to increase output. That's why your scarcity argument doesn't do justice to capitalism. Yes, there are people who attempt to make things scarce to seek economic rather than normal profit. The DeBeers diamond cartel is an example. Incentivizing destruction might characterize WWII, or maybe something to follow our present situation. However, it certainly wouldn't characterize something like the Vietnam War. Say's law contends that supply creates it's own demand.

Well, you're actually being quite even-handed here, providing examples of both *leveraging*, and of *artificial scarcity*.

I'd be interested to hear more about how you *would* characterize the Vietnam War economically, and in terms of political economy.

Also, you may want to address *use values*, as stated here -- why can't more people get diamonds affordably (use-value), instead of the capitalist market's *artificial scarcity* reigning, for the sake of *exchange* values, for the / any cartel -- ?

No. I'm 53 now. I've listened to this stuff since high school. I've just come to a different conclusion that isn't supported by either the socialists or the liberals--that some human traits are innate, and some are shaped by the environment. Humans are territorial, tribal and have hierarchies like other species do. Humans like to pretend that they are not animals.

Oh, okay, then how do you explain 'market failures', like the existence of *roads*, which are administered by *government*, and not by the capitalist markets -- ? How does "biology" fit into *that*, exactly -- ?

The problem is that not all humans settled down. Raiding an agricultural area would be perfectly normal for non-agrarian civilizations. Much of the Roman story of the barbarians or the medieval story of the Vikings is about being raided by groups that aren't particularly settled societies. So you end up having to build up a military to defend your surplus.

Okay, again, no contention, but you're just proving my point *for* me, here -- it's the advent of a material *surplus* that gave rise to *class-divided* human society.

Specialization of labor, specialization of knowledge (when to plant, when to irrigate, when to harvest, how to preserve, etc.). To the illiterate masses, those with special knowledge and literacy probably seemed like sorcerers. I work on cloud computing. If I start talking about what I did for the day in a social context, invariably most people stop me and say, "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." Lots of people in highly specialized jobs have that experience.

Yes, exactly, and this societal *specialization* is far from benign, as you're depicting it -- it's been just as socially deterministic as the elitist ruling-class control of the material surplus itself.

Consider, for example, the great monolithic constructions of the ancient world that continue to mystify us today -- I came across a video that says that the ancient Egyptians were able to use *concrete* and *melt granite*, to create the Giza pyramids, and then traveled the globe to help other societies to create *their* monolithic structures, similarly, though covertly.