This is a special post for quick takes by James Stephen Brown. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
James Stephen Brown's Shortform
4James Stephen Brown
3James Stephen Brown
1James Stephen Brown
1James Stephen Brown
1James Stephen Brown
Developing an idea about complexity and emergence which looks at the stages of an emergent cycle—that being how a substrate gives rise to an emergent phenomenon, which reaches equilibrium providing the substrate for a the next phenomenon. The way I see it, it goes something like this:
quantum randomness > is predictable at a certain scale > reaches equilibrium > becomes base + randomness (as a byproduct)
or this
substrate + free energy > patterns emerge (disturbances in the uniformity of the free energy) > equilibrium reached > substrate + free energy
This echoes Hegel's cycle regarding history...
thesis > antithesis > synthesis (thesis - the substrate for further development)
But it's cumulative. Like a spiral (so is Hegel's actually, as it refers to History which moves forward so cycles don't fold back on themselves)
Karl Popper has a related cycle related to intellectual discovery...
Problem 1 > Tentative Theory > Error Elimination (equilibrium) > Problem 2 (the byproduct left out of the solution to P1)
Popper suggests that this is analogous to inorganic physics, biology (using the example of an amoeba responding to heat) and intellectual discovery. Popper refers to organisms as problem-solving structures (to my mind the problem being solved is how to serve entropy probably, organisms are said to be dissipative structures, that while being ordered themselves increase entropy more efficiently than if they weren't there).
My sense is that all creative or emergent processes follow this pattern. substrate + randomness, patterning (un-uniforming), equilibrium, substrate + randomness.
I'd be interested if anyone else has criticism, or better codifications of this, or elements I've missed in this very rough outline, before I solidify this kernel of an idea into a proper post (probably with pictures or interactives).
1
1
1I've been running into something I think of as "The Narrow Band Dilemma" where a moderate ethical position is fragile because it is in a battle on two fronts between a popular more pure ethical position and a popular unethical or a-moral position.
The first example is ethically produced meat / free-range farming, where a slightly more expensive product tries to find a market that loses patrons on both sides, either people who don't care about where their meat comes from, or care more about the expense than the ethics on the one hand, and the people who forgo meat altogether (vegans / vegetarians) on the other. As messaging successfully advertises the benefits of ethical meat production, it gains market share from one end of the spectrum (the "I care about ethics but can't justify the additional expense") but loses them on the other because the heightened awareness of animal cruelty drives ethical meat eaters away from eating meat altogether.
I noticed another example today in moderate Christianity, where it is flanked by fundamentalism and atheism. The more that Christians want to align their beliefs with modern secular ethics (moving away from fundamentalism), the more they are likely to leave the faith altogether.
Now, I'm not actually saying this is a problem, just a phenomenon I've noticed, I'm an atheist, so don't mind if more people come to think as I do, but I'd also like more Christians to be more moderate, but I can see it's difficult to build critical mass when they exist in a narrow band. I am in the narrow band when it comes to ethical meat, and I have seen how long it has taken for ethical meat products to become ubiquitous and accessible, and truly ethical real meat (lab grown) is still a way off. I imagine, if a much larger market had emerged (without the pressures of the narrow band), it's possible this could be available already.
An idea I'm workshopping that occurred to me while developing the Contagious Beliefs Simulation.
Cognitive Bias is A Feature Not a Bug:
Understanding that cognitive bias is a feature not a bug, is key to negotiation and changing minds. I find that in arguments, I only really convince someone by relating my case to the values they find important, sometimes those are the same as mine, which makes it easy, if they are clearly different I try to understand their core values. Sometimes people will reject this approach posturing as an objective rational agent, at this point I treat "rationality" as their cognitive bias, because we are not rational agents, we are irrational agents who are driven by desires over which we have no control, and for which the goal is not truth, but the reduction of mental tension and uncertainty, social acceptance and cognitive coherence—a measure of how well new information aligns with our current knowledge and views (the opposite of cognitive dissonance).
In this way bias is deleterious, so why has it survived natural selection? Because it is highly adaptive, and cognitively efficient (cheap). And when we think about it, if we discount the existence of a designer it's also logically impossible for it to be otherwise, unless it was hardwired (like imprinting instincts in animals) how else would we get this knowledge, it would be entirely inflexible, making us capable, but not intelligent, like a dog's supremely powerful nose that it uses to sniff other dogs' butts. It is our ability to use previous knowledge to assess and adopt or reject incoming information that is the core mechanism of intelligence.
So, when faced with someone you are trying to convince of something, if they don't already agree with you, they might have some important previous knowledge you need to help them square with this new info.
1The "Soldier Mindset" flag is a fair enough call, I guess this could be seen as persuasion (a no-no). Perhaps, I would rather frame it as bypassing emotions (that are acting as barriers to understanding) in order to connect. Correctly understanding the other person's position, or core beliefs, you actually have to let go of your own biases, and in the process might actually become more open to their position.
I'm trying out podcasting as a format for the ideas I share here and on the blog. Keen to hear if people think it translates well, or needs more tweaking—do you need to be more verbose in a spoken form to allow more time for absorption? Any ideas how to clearly describe payoff matrices in an audio format... tear it apart guys.
Curated and popular this week