Ideological Rebranding

sus

Well-known member
I was just talkin with mates about what't'd take to identify alien life totally different from our current conceptions, how it seems like the start would be broadening our understanding of intelligence, understanding the octopus
 

sus

Well-known member
where do I start with The Fall? I tried in the past and couldn't get much traction, but I like this
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Can we think of intelligence as matters ability to impose order onto itself? Artificial organization, going against the currents of equilibrium/disorganization?

But this artificial organization would be activated the moment "natural" organization begins. That is, it would begin to fold over on itself, administering its own entelechy.

The pinnacles of intelligence - we where are - boast abilities of macroscopic manipulation/organization of matter.

So in terms of radically different intelligences, would its method of organizing matter stand out to us? Or would it blend in with the noise?
 

sus

Well-known member
Can we think of intelligence as matters ability to impose order onto itself? Artificial organization, going against the currents of equilibrium/disorganization?

Yep, so this is basically Karl Friston's idea. I think intelligence is better defined by optimization of futures (cf forking paths), minimization of prediction error, but informationally, this looks a lot like maintaining homeostasis, maintaining boundaries. If you're interested, I'd read up on Friston's ideas about markov blankets
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Haven't even heard of Karl Friston, or markov blankets, but the optimization of futures sounds like a good way to put it. Optimizing for what ends, though? Subsisting? Does that necessitate growing complexity?

Could it be that the reason is entirely conjured up in reaction to whatever the "optimal" permutation is?

Although perhaps it is worth trying to bracket both means and ends within the map half of the map/territory dichotomy, no? Seeing as our attempts to understand this falls into that half.
 

sus

Well-known member
I think intelligence, as a natural kind, is basically separate from ends. It's purely a means. Sure, in almost all evolved organism, reproduction is the "ends" that get selected, but that's at a very abstract level. Intelligence is just the ability to achieve an ends, to predict what the outcome of a behavior will be and reconcile prediction against desired outcomes.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Well on the other side of things (and perhaps this has always been around, to a degree), plenty of young people (at least young lefties <25) hold up a very plain, black and white worldview. Informed by much of the cultural revisionism, as positive as those developments otherwise are, there seems to be a sensibility of conflating immorality with perpetuating current intersectional power arrangements.

That is, the core of what makes one immoral, much like the overton window, is seemingly being shifted to overlap with the discourse on demographic inequality. (aside, I think the overton model can apply to infinitely more than policy acceptance - it can refer to how a spectrum transforms)

Does anyone else see this? I've heard some voices on the reactionary left call it moral authoritarianism, which I think is a bit extreme, but the point is there.

Anyway, so if this black and white sensibility is already securing itself in the ground, then further reinforcement from the academic elite could change things even further, no? A bit scary to think about.

That said, I don't know of any academic elite types who are pushing this - but maybe I'm just unaware. Or maybe @entertainment meant something other than academic elite by "crit theory bunch".
 

Leo

Well-known member
The Koch family has a lot to answer for.

hmm, why do I remain skeptical...

Charles Koch: I "screwed up"

In his first on-camera interview in four years, Charles Koch told "Axios on HBO" that he "screwed up by being partisan," rather than approaching his network's big-spending political action in a more nonpartisan way. Koch, 85, told me at his home in Wichita that he's disillusioned with his political results, but is optimistic about what he believes will be a less divisive strategy.

"Boy, did we screw up. What a mess!" Koch writes. "[P]artisan politics prevented us from achieving the thing that motivated us to get involved in politics in the first place — helping people by removing barriers." I was slow to react to this fact, letting us head down the wrong road for the better part of a decade."
 
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